Jemini
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2019
- Messages
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- 153
-Introductions and defining terms
Hello everyone. I was watching a recent video that commented on Akira Toriyama's unfortunate passing, and it got me thinking about this subject. Nobody would dispute, his franchise, Dragonball, was undoubtedly a groundbreaking piece of media.
For the purpose of this... I am not certain whether to call it an essay or just me getting my thoughts out, but for the purpose of this presentation, when I use the term "groundbreaking," I am referring to the first shovel of dirt removed from a plot of land as one is beginning a massive project. This is not to be confused with "earth-shattering," a phrase referring to a massive upheaval of earth all at once that is a giant spectacle, but I had to clarify this because the terms are often conflated these days.
However, in terms of media, even the term "grounbreaking" doesn't quite seem to be as adherent to the analogy. If we used the definition of the literal thing the term referred to, then Final Fantasy 1 would be the "groundbreaking" game of the franchise. However, in the west, it is actually FF7 that gets the honor of that position as it is the one that brought the franchise to the attention of western audiences. As such, something of a merger of the definitions is appropriate in media as it does need to make a certain level of impact to qualify.
-Preamble and observations
Now that I have gotten all the definition stuff out of the way, the reason I was talking about this is because I actually needed to come to grips with the DragonBall series a little bit in the wake of Akira Toriyama's passing. There are many videos these days talking about him and the DragonBall franchise these days, and how it introduced Western audiences to anime at scale.
All of these are statements that nobody can argue with. They are just indisputable truths. I even remember watching Dragon Ball Z myself a lot as a kid before I even knew what the term "anime" meant. To me, it was just the cartoons that were on Toonami. I watched the entire run up through the Cell Saga, never missing an episode. It was part of my childhood.
At the same time, I compare it to some of the things that are out today and I am the type who can take the nostalgia goggles off and see that it just doesn't hold up to today's standards. The pacing is atrocious, and the action scenes are extremely samy. The story is rather shallow, it is all almost entirely in service of either facilitating more fights or more training arcs.
But, while all these criticisms are true if compared to the stuff we have today, which does a better job in all of those areas, none of the things we have today would even exist if Toriyama had not bravely broken ground on the subject. He had such a profound effect on the shonen manga/anime genre that he might as well be described as the father of the entire genre. There really is nothing else you can say about it. It was simply groundbreaking. The first to go in and spread this new genre. This new way of writing. Yes, it did have it's flaws. Yes, we do have stuff that is better written today. But the only reason these newer stories have reached such a high quality is because they are standing on the shoulders of the giant that was Akira Toriyama. Their works, their stories, they would not even exist if it wasn't for Toriyama breaking that ground.
And, when I began looking at it in that perspective, I began realizing the same can be said of a great many other media that are also groundbreaking for their own genres or premises.
Sword Art Online is a very harshly criticized story for all the things it does wrong. It was also not the first "trapped in an MMO VR full-dive RPG" story. That honor goes to .hack//sign. However, it was the one that broke through and gained recognition, spreading the genre concept to many audiences around the world, and is the reason why the concept has managed to develop, and eventually start creating writers who could do more to make the concept of a full-dive MMO truly interesting. We would not have a gem like Shangri-la frontier if Sword Art Online was never written.
The previously mentioned FF7 popularized JRPGs in the west. That game had it's own problems, but regardless it is still fondly remembered by many people who grew up in the 90s.
And then, we also have to give acknowledgement to the GOAT himself. JRR Tolkein. His stories get very overly verbose in their descriptions of details. He goes so overboard he actually spends two whole pages just describing the leaves on the ground in alliterative detail. It is atrocious how much he gets bogged down in such details. But, he wrote such a deep and imaginative world and absolutely nobody can deny that he shook up and forever changed the entire fantasy genre forever. His works had such a profound effect that there is actually a very clear demarkation between fantasy written before Tolkein and fantasy written after Tolkein.
The more I look into the groundbreaking media of their respective genres, the more I find that this is a pattern. Yes, they have their flaws. They are flaws that make it very easy for anyone who knows the work properly to criticize them over. But, what they all share in common is that the author has the courage to do something different. Something big that will shake things up. And then, the pour their entire heart and soul into it, holding nothing back.
Tolkein made his own language. This was his passion and his love, and he wanted to give this created language to the world. So, he created LOTR as a vehicle by which to put out his work.
Toriyama was so dedicated to the craft of manga that he created 2 entire projects that re-defined the entire manga industry (Dr. Slump and Dragonball), and even influenced the world of JRPGs with his help in the design of the original Dragonquest and later Chrono Trigger.
Reki Kawahara (SAO author,) while he may have not known the gaming industry well enough to create a fictional game that anyone in the real world would ever want to play, nobody could say he wasn't passionate. In fact, one could even say it was his ignorance that allowed him to so boldly charge into the things that interested him and pathed the way for later stories to follow the same path and improve upon his model.
-Thesis
And so, given all I have seen about the truly groundbreaking works out there, I have noticed this pattern. Being influential and being the best technically written story of all time are not things that seem to necessarily go hand-in-hand. For a technically well-written story, you need to really know your genre well and everything needs to be very well researched. For that, you can only work within what already exists.
The truly ground-breaking works are those that are created by the true pioneers. The ones who are not seeking to create something that is the best within an existing genre. They are the people who decide to make their own genre, the ones who blaze a path where no path has previously existed.
You would not blame Lewis and Clark for taking 2 and a half years to get from St. Louis to the West Coast of the United States on the basis that a modern person can make the same trip in a few hours by plane. We wouldn't even know where the West Coast of the US was if they hadn't taken that trip. That is what a pioneer is.
The pioneers of the industry are the ones who are discovering the techniques. They do not have to be the best, only good enough, but just because they are only "good enough" does not make their accomplishment any less impressive. The sheer overwhelming level of brilliance needed to create an entire genre from whole-cloth is nothing to scoff at.
Of course later works in the same genre are going to be better. They are better because everyone looks back to these pioneers and tries to improve upon the example they set. It is a natural consequence. But those who are later improving upon the already proven model have it comparatively easy to the ones who blazed the trail in the first place, so the later works being better do in no way detract from those great pioneers.
And, they are rewarded for their efforts. Another thing about these ground-breaking forms of media are that they are remembered. They are not remembered just out of nostalgia either. These new and amazing sensations that shake up the industry are spread far and wide, and are known by people everywhere. Dragon Ball Z is a story known pretty much the world over, and despite it's flaws it had a profound impact on the culture. It was a formative part of many childhoods in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Compare this to Ascendance of a Bookworm. AoaB is likely one of the most technically well written and thoroughly well plotted pieces of long-form literature I have ever encountered in my life. Tolkein's LOTR is likely the only other thing in all of history that had the same amount of sheer effort put into it, but unlike LOTR, AoaB is a book series that is projected to be at least 33 books long. It is absolutely ridiculous how in-depth that series is. However, it was a series that followed a trend. To most, it was just another entry into the Isekai genre. One of a long line of similar entries. As such, while it may be the best on a technical level, it does not gain the same prominence and attention that a true pioneer of a new industry would have gotten.
-Conclusions
So, in conclusion, in recognizing what truly made Akira Toriyama great, I think we can all also learn a great many lessons from him in the value of charting your own path. As a pioneer, he was one of the greatest in all of fictional media.
Tolkein was a pioneer for high-fantasy, and gave us a true solid alternative to the portal fantasy genre (otherwise just called "fantasy" before Tolkein.) But, Tolkein only revolutionized entertainment media once. Akira Toriyama did it twice, with two different revolutionary manga of his own, he also contributed to the creation of the JRPG genre. And, while he did not have a direct hand in it, his Dragon Ball Z series had a profound influence on the fighting game genre.
There is great value in being a pioneer, and Akira Toriyama was one of the best. If we limit the scope to only entertainment media, we could even say he is a firm contender with Tolkein for the position of the very best that there ever was.
It is only a shame that his true worth and value is something we are only looking at now after he has sadly passed away. It is easy to take for granted the talents of our time. We all knew that he had an influence, but it was hard to appreciate the sheer weight of exactly how influential he really was until the world started remembering him in his passing, started really looking into the sheer breadth and scope of his works and his impact.
He is truly someone we lost way too soon, but there is a great deal we can all learn from him.
RIP Akira Toriyama.
Hello everyone. I was watching a recent video that commented on Akira Toriyama's unfortunate passing, and it got me thinking about this subject. Nobody would dispute, his franchise, Dragonball, was undoubtedly a groundbreaking piece of media.
For the purpose of this... I am not certain whether to call it an essay or just me getting my thoughts out, but for the purpose of this presentation, when I use the term "groundbreaking," I am referring to the first shovel of dirt removed from a plot of land as one is beginning a massive project. This is not to be confused with "earth-shattering," a phrase referring to a massive upheaval of earth all at once that is a giant spectacle, but I had to clarify this because the terms are often conflated these days.
However, in terms of media, even the term "grounbreaking" doesn't quite seem to be as adherent to the analogy. If we used the definition of the literal thing the term referred to, then Final Fantasy 1 would be the "groundbreaking" game of the franchise. However, in the west, it is actually FF7 that gets the honor of that position as it is the one that brought the franchise to the attention of western audiences. As such, something of a merger of the definitions is appropriate in media as it does need to make a certain level of impact to qualify.
-Preamble and observations
Now that I have gotten all the definition stuff out of the way, the reason I was talking about this is because I actually needed to come to grips with the DragonBall series a little bit in the wake of Akira Toriyama's passing. There are many videos these days talking about him and the DragonBall franchise these days, and how it introduced Western audiences to anime at scale.
All of these are statements that nobody can argue with. They are just indisputable truths. I even remember watching Dragon Ball Z myself a lot as a kid before I even knew what the term "anime" meant. To me, it was just the cartoons that were on Toonami. I watched the entire run up through the Cell Saga, never missing an episode. It was part of my childhood.
At the same time, I compare it to some of the things that are out today and I am the type who can take the nostalgia goggles off and see that it just doesn't hold up to today's standards. The pacing is atrocious, and the action scenes are extremely samy. The story is rather shallow, it is all almost entirely in service of either facilitating more fights or more training arcs.
But, while all these criticisms are true if compared to the stuff we have today, which does a better job in all of those areas, none of the things we have today would even exist if Toriyama had not bravely broken ground on the subject. He had such a profound effect on the shonen manga/anime genre that he might as well be described as the father of the entire genre. There really is nothing else you can say about it. It was simply groundbreaking. The first to go in and spread this new genre. This new way of writing. Yes, it did have it's flaws. Yes, we do have stuff that is better written today. But the only reason these newer stories have reached such a high quality is because they are standing on the shoulders of the giant that was Akira Toriyama. Their works, their stories, they would not even exist if it wasn't for Toriyama breaking that ground.
And, when I began looking at it in that perspective, I began realizing the same can be said of a great many other media that are also groundbreaking for their own genres or premises.
Sword Art Online is a very harshly criticized story for all the things it does wrong. It was also not the first "trapped in an MMO VR full-dive RPG" story. That honor goes to .hack//sign. However, it was the one that broke through and gained recognition, spreading the genre concept to many audiences around the world, and is the reason why the concept has managed to develop, and eventually start creating writers who could do more to make the concept of a full-dive MMO truly interesting. We would not have a gem like Shangri-la frontier if Sword Art Online was never written.
The previously mentioned FF7 popularized JRPGs in the west. That game had it's own problems, but regardless it is still fondly remembered by many people who grew up in the 90s.
And then, we also have to give acknowledgement to the GOAT himself. JRR Tolkein. His stories get very overly verbose in their descriptions of details. He goes so overboard he actually spends two whole pages just describing the leaves on the ground in alliterative detail. It is atrocious how much he gets bogged down in such details. But, he wrote such a deep and imaginative world and absolutely nobody can deny that he shook up and forever changed the entire fantasy genre forever. His works had such a profound effect that there is actually a very clear demarkation between fantasy written before Tolkein and fantasy written after Tolkein.
The more I look into the groundbreaking media of their respective genres, the more I find that this is a pattern. Yes, they have their flaws. They are flaws that make it very easy for anyone who knows the work properly to criticize them over. But, what they all share in common is that the author has the courage to do something different. Something big that will shake things up. And then, the pour their entire heart and soul into it, holding nothing back.
Tolkein made his own language. This was his passion and his love, and he wanted to give this created language to the world. So, he created LOTR as a vehicle by which to put out his work.
Toriyama was so dedicated to the craft of manga that he created 2 entire projects that re-defined the entire manga industry (Dr. Slump and Dragonball), and even influenced the world of JRPGs with his help in the design of the original Dragonquest and later Chrono Trigger.
Reki Kawahara (SAO author,) while he may have not known the gaming industry well enough to create a fictional game that anyone in the real world would ever want to play, nobody could say he wasn't passionate. In fact, one could even say it was his ignorance that allowed him to so boldly charge into the things that interested him and pathed the way for later stories to follow the same path and improve upon his model.
-Thesis
And so, given all I have seen about the truly groundbreaking works out there, I have noticed this pattern. Being influential and being the best technically written story of all time are not things that seem to necessarily go hand-in-hand. For a technically well-written story, you need to really know your genre well and everything needs to be very well researched. For that, you can only work within what already exists.
The truly ground-breaking works are those that are created by the true pioneers. The ones who are not seeking to create something that is the best within an existing genre. They are the people who decide to make their own genre, the ones who blaze a path where no path has previously existed.
You would not blame Lewis and Clark for taking 2 and a half years to get from St. Louis to the West Coast of the United States on the basis that a modern person can make the same trip in a few hours by plane. We wouldn't even know where the West Coast of the US was if they hadn't taken that trip. That is what a pioneer is.
The pioneers of the industry are the ones who are discovering the techniques. They do not have to be the best, only good enough, but just because they are only "good enough" does not make their accomplishment any less impressive. The sheer overwhelming level of brilliance needed to create an entire genre from whole-cloth is nothing to scoff at.
Of course later works in the same genre are going to be better. They are better because everyone looks back to these pioneers and tries to improve upon the example they set. It is a natural consequence. But those who are later improving upon the already proven model have it comparatively easy to the ones who blazed the trail in the first place, so the later works being better do in no way detract from those great pioneers.
And, they are rewarded for their efforts. Another thing about these ground-breaking forms of media are that they are remembered. They are not remembered just out of nostalgia either. These new and amazing sensations that shake up the industry are spread far and wide, and are known by people everywhere. Dragon Ball Z is a story known pretty much the world over, and despite it's flaws it had a profound impact on the culture. It was a formative part of many childhoods in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Compare this to Ascendance of a Bookworm. AoaB is likely one of the most technically well written and thoroughly well plotted pieces of long-form literature I have ever encountered in my life. Tolkein's LOTR is likely the only other thing in all of history that had the same amount of sheer effort put into it, but unlike LOTR, AoaB is a book series that is projected to be at least 33 books long. It is absolutely ridiculous how in-depth that series is. However, it was a series that followed a trend. To most, it was just another entry into the Isekai genre. One of a long line of similar entries. As such, while it may be the best on a technical level, it does not gain the same prominence and attention that a true pioneer of a new industry would have gotten.
-Conclusions
So, in conclusion, in recognizing what truly made Akira Toriyama great, I think we can all also learn a great many lessons from him in the value of charting your own path. As a pioneer, he was one of the greatest in all of fictional media.
Tolkein was a pioneer for high-fantasy, and gave us a true solid alternative to the portal fantasy genre (otherwise just called "fantasy" before Tolkein.) But, Tolkein only revolutionized entertainment media once. Akira Toriyama did it twice, with two different revolutionary manga of his own, he also contributed to the creation of the JRPG genre. And, while he did not have a direct hand in it, his Dragon Ball Z series had a profound influence on the fighting game genre.
There is great value in being a pioneer, and Akira Toriyama was one of the best. If we limit the scope to only entertainment media, we could even say he is a firm contender with Tolkein for the position of the very best that there ever was.
It is only a shame that his true worth and value is something we are only looking at now after he has sadly passed away. It is easy to take for granted the talents of our time. We all knew that he had an influence, but it was hard to appreciate the sheer weight of exactly how influential he really was until the world started remembering him in his passing, started really looking into the sheer breadth and scope of his works and his impact.
He is truly someone we lost way too soon, but there is a great deal we can all learn from him.
RIP Akira Toriyama.
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