Dragon Ball has often been criticized for being too focused on fighting, and Akira Toriyama recognizing that helped push the story in a new direction.

Dragon Ball is famous for its intense and often lengthy fights, but that’s often a detriment to the series as much as it is a compliment. With how much of Dragon Ball focuses on fighting over story and character interactions, Dragon Ball often gets labeled as lacking any sort of depth in its writing, and that, in turn, has given it a fair amount of contention among modern audiences.

Dragon Ball is often criticized for being aggressively style over substance, and that’s something that even series creator Akira Toriyama has acknowledged. In an interview for Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero as translated by Reddit user Terez27, Akira Toriyama said that if they did another movie focused on fighting after Dragon Ball Super: Broly, then they would “lose Dragon Ball’s cheerful spirit”, which is why Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero was more lighthearted and focused on character work.

The previous film, “Broly”, focused on battles of next-level strength. If we had just kept going on like that and made the next movie another battle film, it seemed like we would lose Dragon Ball’s cheerful spirit. So this time around, I figured I should return things to a somewhat lighter route, with character-based daily life, which is then threatened by a crisis which results in a big battle.

That shows that Toriyama is well aware of what sort of story Dragon Ball is supposed to be, and it’s why Super Hero and other stories are such a boon to the franchise.

Dragon Ball Has Always Been About The Characters, Not The Action

Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama seems to acknowledge the criticism of Dragon Ball being too focused on fighting, and that makes sense with how the series has been written from day one. While fighting has always been part of Dragon Ball, the series’ story has progressed primarily from how the characters play off of each other. Elements like Future Trunks’ character arc wouldn’t work if there was never any meaningful character work to speak of. The execution might not always be great, but that doesn’t change how Dragon Ball has always prioritized characters over everything else, and Akira Toriyama’s comments on the series perfectly reflect that.

Dragon Ball’s Most Recent Stories Have Already Fixed Its Biggest Criticism

Something else that goes along with Akira Toriyama’s acknowledgment of Dragon Ball’s biggest criticism is how the series has already been working to fix it in recent years. As previously discussed, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero was written specifically to focus more on characters than action, and that more than shows itself with the film’s adherence to comedy and the focus on Piccolo and the Gammas’ character arcs. Thanks to that, Super Hero stands out as one of Dragon Ball’s most inventive and all-around greatest stories in years, and that wouldn’t have happened if it had prioritized action over fighting like other stories are accused of doing.

That sort of increased focus on character work is also present in the Dragon Ball Super manga. In addition to the manga adaptation of Super Hero, both the Galactic Patrol Prisoner and Granolah the Survivor sagas had a much larger focus on character work with things like Goku dealing with his Saiyan heritage and Vegeta seeking atonement for his past, all of which further suggests a conscious effort for Dragon Ball to have more character-driven stories. These moments and others have all done a great job of bringing Dragon Ball’s focus back to the characters, and with any luck, the franchise will keep to that idea, going forward.

Source: Reddit.