Ah, the simple joys of childhood. Ignorance was bliss and one of my favorite anime of all time was DRAGONBALL. I watched Dragonball back in the 90s long before i saw Dragonball Z(which only showed here in 2000), and it soon became one of my favorite shows on TV. I proudly paraded my Dragonball school bag in front of my classmates, owned dragonball key chains, even had a dragonball water bottle.

Fast forward a full decade to 2007. In lieu of the announcement of a live action Dragonball movie(do check out my other review of Dragonball Evolution), i decided to pick up the remastered DVDs of the classic Dragonball anime series(which was going cheap, so how could i resist).

2 episodes into it and I was sadly asking myself "what the hell was i thinking?". Checking out the rest of the series on youtube did not help either.

I cannot believe i used to like such an absurd, silly and bizarre show! It is more like a badly handled satire comedy than an action adventure that i initially thought it was. So many outrageous elements are thrown into the mix like weird talking animal characters, anthropomorphic people, Goku's monkey tail, characters with outrageous hair. The show can't seem to decide if it wants to be a fantasy story or a sci/fi story. We have fantasy elements like magic, flying clouds and fantasy landscapes together with futuristic cities, hover cars, alien races and other science fiction technology. There are even pop culture references like Master Roshi disguising as "Jackie Chun(Chan)"

Oh and did I mention the characters? Though highly interesting for all their quirks and allowed to develop well over the course of the show, they often fall into pre-set anime stereotypes. Goku is your typical arrogant kid main character, Bulma is the typical temperamental screaming female lead, Roshi is the usual "lecherous old man" and "Ancient kung fu master" stereotypes in one character, the list goes on. Oh and the NAMES of the characters are so nonsensical when you actually think about it. The creator was probably really hungry when he thought up those names as a lot of them are named after food.

Examples include "Bulma Briefs"(a brand of underwear maybe?), "Yamcha"(which means "to drink tea"), "ChiChi"(which is an adjective for "trendy" or "chic"), "Piccolo"(a tiny woodwind instrument), Puer and Oolong(different kinds of tea) and Pilaf(a rice dish).

There is absolutely no end to the bizarreness of this show.

On the plus side, the characters do have their enduring moments and the story does advance at a good pace. But more often than not, it gets bogged down in lame jokes and funny moments, hardly ever taking itself seriously. The animation itself is standard low budget 80s fare with nothing special at all.

If i suffered from selective memory like so many fans out there, I would have gladly given Dragonball 10/10 based solely on a fleeting childhood memory from the good ol days of ignorance.

But being objective here, I can safely say that while the story, setting and characters are funny, quirky and interesting at first, it soon becomes really boring and starts to grate on the nerves.

The look and feel of the show is highly juvenile but the writing is definitely NOT FOR KIDS. There is a good deal of nudity and sexual jokes here. Some are fine, but it does tend to get overboard just a little bit. The violence, naked scenes, dirty humour, all make this show highly unsuitable for a younger audience. However, any adult with half a mind for decent storytelling would immediately be put off by the child-like simplicity of the plot and the absurdity of the characters.

This seems to be made for the same audience that adores silly spoof shows like Scary Movie and Meet The Spartans.

Dragonball is at most a homage/spoof/satire/ of the action/adventure/sci-fi(hell its every single genre yet none at all) genre of Japanese anime.