Both “Dragon Ball” by Akira Toriyama and “One Piece” by Eiichiro Oda are two of the most important and popular manga and anime series in history. The first due to the great cultural influence it had on a generation of mangakas and viewers around the world. The second for offering us a plot that explores cooperation to achieve a common good, besides being one of the longest running series in publication and transmission. This time the fandom of both series has revived the debate about which series is better, but this time for a rather more peculiar reason.
One Piece or Dragon Ball, which is better, fans debate about it
Recently, the debate between Dragon Ball and One Piece fans has surprised us with a new chapter, this following an article published in “Yahoo! Japan” where the premise in the form of a question was “why do women empathize more with Akira Toriyama’s female characters?”. The article described how Japanese women found the work that chronicles the adventures of Goku and his friends more interesting because the female characters had more weight in the development of the story.
They exemplified this with Bulma, a talented scientist who was basically the driving force behind the search for the Dragon Spheres and the whole story of the first stage of the series. They also appealed to how they showed her development as a woman herself, from being a teenager in love with Yamcha to being a mother and now heiress of the family business. The article even mentioned that over the years, even when she ceased to be a recurring character, usually at crucial moments her importance was significant.
She was always called upon to help solve the problem that the group of heroes were facing, whether it was the ship in which Goku traveled to Namek or the time machine in the Cell arc. On the contrary, they mention that in One Piece the cast of female characters contributed very little to the plot, as Nami did not have the same plot weight and that the rest of the girls were only presented with “costumes” and huge “attributes” that were out of proportion, as they looked more like “nursing staff” than protagonists of an anime series.
This article reached the Japanese forums, where as we mentioned at the beginning, fans of both series reopened the debate about which one was better. In the comments several users gave the reason to the weight of Bulma as a character, but also many said that they had forgotten to mention the “fan service” elements of the series, such as the case of the underwear with Oulong or the fact that there were also characters with large breasts in the series as Maron. But above all, they mentioned that beyond Bulma there were no other female characters that were transcendental.
They also questioned the fact of belittling One Piece for the design of its characters, since this work also had female characters that were developed in a great way and that contributed significant moments for the main characters in the respective arcs in which they were presented. Finally, several said that the “fan sevice” did not necessarily make it a bad work and that the 2 series used it and in the case of Dragon Ball at the time this was a little more subdued than what Eiichiro Oda’s work uses nowadays.
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