Reviewing Dragon Ball Z's Best & Worst Animated Episode

This is a beautiful video. The aesthetics of the background as well as the identification of the animators scene by scene were so great. As an animation student and content creator this was a great study on all levels.

Excelent review

I remember watching that Goku vs. Freezer episode as a kid but not being able to pay attention to its bad animation. It was amazing for me at that moment.

the "bad" is only bad for your taste, i dont find it bad at all

Even at worst the art style holds up

As much as i respect this video, there is still a part of me thats blood is boiling and just wants to be deffensive and yell. DONT YOU BE DISSING MY DBZ!! 🤬🤣❤

Worst of DBZ animation is still better than the best of DBS animation.

I wonder how Kai defenders gonna defend this filler fight lol

i always unterstand "every star wars" instead of ebisawa

The frieza vs goku fight is definitely the definition of make em wait for it

whats the deal with frieza having his tail when he fights Goku? Krillin cut it off.....

I totally understand the reasoning behind critiques like this, but personally when I watched this show for the first time when I was younger, none of this sort of analysis was relevant to me. I didn't have any standards. I thought it was really exciting to watch two characters who are about to battle it out, stand there and look at each other for a minute or more. I thought the tension served the show. And the repetitive animations of a character dodging attacks over and over also never struck me as problematic or annoying or in any way negative. That's not to say that these sort of "errors" Don't exist but for me personally they did not hinder the experience of watching the show. But I was a lot younger back then and just really didn't care about that type of thing. I just wanted to watch Goku beat up the bad guys.

So kids, when somebody asks you for an example of GOOD filler, just show them the SS2 Goku vs. Kid Buu fight.

Honestly I do enjoy these analysis but I think as fans we could stand to take a step back. Like the quality of episode 8 did not bother me at all as a 7 year old boy in the late 90s, and looking back now I still don't care. And I think it's pretty shitty to come in here with your 2023 lens and praise only the best animations from the era, cos things were different. And even at that, modern animations are all the fucking same now. Brightly-coloured chibi-adults drawn to really clean lines. There's rarely any artistic flair these days, and it's because fans demand better and better animations, so the same assets and design styles are re-used in order to speed this process up

Even with all the flaws, Goku vs Freeza, is still the best fight in the entire series, next would be Goku and Vegeta's first fight

I didn’t realize toei was onepiecing dragon ball z before one piece 🤣

Even Dragon Ball Z's worst animated episode looks far better than the overall poor animation from Super onwards.

For some reason i thought only one animator animated each episode. Thinking about that now. Episodes would take centuries to release.

That ssj transformation in the early Android saga was fire

You should try doing this with naruto, although it’d be a little hard since there are a lot of really well animated episodes

Ep 5 super all am saying ok

Idk I feel there are plenty of worse animation examples you could've shown. A standoff scene that's meant to build tensions, or time, isn't a good argument imo

I think some people forget that z also had bad animation time to time but most people just give the hate to super like episodes 5 and 24 are poorly animated but not just super DB DBZ and GT do have bad animation even Kai.

I really like your animation commentary, how are you able to determine what artist is drawing and when? Interview, dizenchu, released storyboard notes? Anyways if you or anyone could fill me in I would appreciate it

What is the background art for goku? I want to find that picture

Honestly I prefer the limited animation style. Though limited,it still requires a good degree of skill to get across with any amount of satisfaction, and thats evidenced by the fact that its still fun to watch in motion. Being able to portrait a higher amount of strikes with less frames and make it exiting as hell is some Japanese black magic I'm still trying to understand.

Bad episodes in super, just feel bad.

idk if its because its on a digital canvas, or because even the rushed stills have a degree of alloted care that its successor lacks, but bad animation in super just feels bad smh. Even the worst animation in z era feels leagues better than the worst episodes in super... but great animation in super (especially in the movies) feel mind blowing. thats the trade off.

279 is overrated tbh.

I love this old style of animation. It feels more real. Whereas today CGI and overly smooth animations just ruin everything for me tbh. Lord of the rings is perfect. Marvel is a joke. CGI and more CGI. Nothing of substance.

I'd say the episode Future Trunks returns to the future was the worst.

I think Goku jumped faster than what you can see my dude. That’s why it’s panning as if he jumped… your doing subtraction but your watching derivatives.

There is no reason to complain over dbz which Has a perfect animation for its time ! Complain Over super which has an Even worse Animation

This art style is extremely distinct, it inspired an entire generation. There’s something about DBS animation that feels way more… generic? All the round shapes and super bright colors make it feel like a cartoon instead of an anime. Somethings just a bit off nowadays and it’s heartbreaking in a way to know we might never see this particular art in the franchise again. The only thing so far in DBS to kinda come close to this were fights like Goku and vegeta vs Jiren.

Where's the Goku button face 😂

279 is an animation masterpiece. Has always been a favorite of mine

Nah you tripping I love when they stare at each other

Naw, them episodes flip flopped in DBZ. One episode they'd be animated fresh to a drip drop with highlights and everything, then the following episode they'd look like cheap refrigerator magnets with no detail but some thick looks like a child drew it lines here and there LOL

To be fair, the people making this had no idea it was even possible that they would one day be subject to such harsh public scrutiny. These dudes had a deadline to meet and they got the job done, which is particularly hard to do when you have to fill 3/4 of an episode with fighting.

Imagine if all the episodes had the artwork of that buu episode, dbz would be perfect

The intro to trunks episode was by far the best

It seems it had different artists for different episodes I thought this back in 2000

Vegeta looked ugly all throughout the Namek arc. He looks downright disgusting a lot of the the time.

Dude, not everything is movement. DBZ had to create tension, not only hit hit hit.

And this is why Faulconer music is key. While DBZ is just sitting there staring at Goku and Frieza, Faulconer fills the void by going to town on the synthesizer. Its like listening to a symphony

I’m currently re watching dragon ball because I love the old anime

What is filler? Can someone explain

I follow him

Still beats American animations