First, I know it's DBZ is technically Dragonball.
...
Okay, not that that pedantic quip is out of the way, this is something I always think about, primerily because the answer has always been clear to me. Which series is the best? To me, is pretty obviously Dragonball. By a mile. But most people in the west grew up with Drasgonball Z first, and so their hearts lie with that.
This is something that has been dormant until Super came out, most notably this latest episode where Gohan get's to show off. A lot of the DB fanbase is excited about this. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't too. I pretty much think that most of Dragonball Z is really bad, but Gohan and Vegeta were pretty much the only reasons I like DBZ in retrospect, and Gohan was really ruined during the Buu Saga, so it's nice seeing him ready for action again.
That being said, seeing people get excited by what to me seemed to be a pretty crappy fight outside of the context got me thinking again about just how much better Dragonball was.
Now there are quite a few reasons, but I want to dispell something that I see a lot when this subject comes up. For some reason, people seem to think that people who prefer Dragonball prefer it because it focuses more on humor and is more light hearted, which is silly. People like Dragonball more because it tells more interesting stories with more interesting characters in more interesting settings. I don't even thing that Dragonball is exceptional in any of these catagories, but DBZ and Super are so much worse here.
A most of this is because of Zuper's focus on powerlevels with no consequence. If you're a character who isn't OP powerful, you're literally irrelevant. Even if you are a fighter with interesting abilities, you're irrelevant because of this focus. Bulma was one of the most fun characters in Dragonball, because she was not just useful, but integral. Now she's irrelevant outside of being a plot device. Oolong, Tenshinhan, Chiaotzu, Yamcha, etc are all irrelevant now because all the narrative cares about is making Saiyans look cool.
The stories can't have interesting settings because every setting has to be an empty battlefield. Think about that. How many major fights in DBZ took place in environments that weren't barren waste lands? Little to none, and if they weren't a barren wasteland in the beginning, they desolved into one soon into the fight. In most of Dragonball, characters would actually use their environments in their battles.
They would also just go to more interesting, varied places because Dragonball was an adventure story first. People get caught up on Dragonball not being about dragonballs anymore, but that's not the problem. The problem is what it represents. The narrative structure weakens when there's no incentive to go anywhere.
This can go on forever, really. The focus on powerlevels makes travel less interesting because everyone just flies/teleports everywhere, so traversal isn't interesting. You know the saying "it's about the journey, not the destination?" Zuper sure doesn't. Having characters adhere to gravity actually made for more interesting travel because it was limited. Goku had his nimbus, but only the pure could sit on it, and it could break. Everyone had vehicles, but they could break or run out of gas or anything, meaning that interesting scenarios and complexities of progression arose from that.
Speaking of flying, it also makes the fights suck. Fights suck when no one needs to adhere to gravity. You need rules because rules create limits and limits create tention and creativity. When Goku faught Piccolo Jr., he couldn't fly (shut up, he couldn't), so he had to use a Kamehameha wave from his feet to propell himself off the ground into the air to knock him out. That's cool. In other instances, Goku would use his power pole, or Ki blast the ground. Being grounded also means that you can do simple things like trip your opponent or run. There's nothing interesting about flying combat because all you can do is punch and kick and power up and do ki blasts.
Fights are also worse in Zuper because fights are only made interesting by power ups, not by technique. Does anyone remember when Piccolo could shoot lazer beams from his eyes? Or stretch his arms? Or grow into a giant? Electricity? Mouth beam? Blowing gusts of wind strong enough to turn rocks into bullets? Literally anything besides limb regeneration? Because he could do all of that in one fight in dragonball. Tenshinhan can grow extra arms, shoot a lazer from his third eye, and split into four people, yet he's relegated to fodder because Zuper is the Super Saiyan show now. Even the Kaio Ken was a more interesting power up, because it had limits.
That's not to say that Zuper doesn't have techniques, just that none of them are interesting because they revolve around who is more powerful. Buu had powers, but fighting just revolved around power boosts. Hit does too, but no clever thinking was used in that fight. Just a power boost. Nothing like the foot kamehameha can happen in Zuper because innovation doesn't matter in fights anymore - power scaling does.
Which brings me back to Gohan. Why does his power boost even matter? How will his fights be different now? Well, he won't lose as much. Any new attacks? No. New skills? No. New developement? Well he retreads the Gohan/Piccolo arc of early DBZ, which isn't nearly as effective because we've already been here and Picollo isn't evil anymore. Is anything in that fight more interesting than Goku vs. King Picollo? No. It's just skyboxing in an empty wasteland with the same old ki blasts and no interesting techniques to make the fight choreography destinct.
It's just so frustrating for me to see the series devolve like it has. Goku had a cool ability he could have honed with the Great Ape transformation that would have actually required character developement, but that was axed in favor of Goku being exactly the same but with yellow hair. Exploring the universe and other planets and time should be awesome, but its basically teleportation because none of that stuff matters as much as the fighting, which isn't even good anymore. But I'm attached to these characters because of what they used to be.
And for the record, I only like Vegeta and gohan because of their development. They suffer the same problems in other places. Goku doesn't develope in Zuper. Picollo is great until he dies, and finishes his arc. Then he stops. Everyone else is static the entire series, and some regress. (like Gohan)
Come at me.
