Top 10 Biggest Dragon Ball Controversies

On paper, the idea of a new, weekly “Dragon Ball” series had fans rejoicing around the world. But, then “Super” started to air, and the monkey’s paw curled. Instead of the hype action people expected, the animation was practically melting before their eyes. As it turns out, “Dragon Ball Super” had been rushed onto screens without the pre-production necessary for such an action-heavy battle shonen. The result? Fight scenes that looked really, really bad. They were so stiff, “Super” became the laughing stock of the entire anime community. To be fair, the show eventually clawed its way back to glory and delivered some genuinely awesome moments. But, there’s just no forgiving that rough start.

The franchise may still be relevant today, but don’t forget, “Dragon Ball” started all the way back in the 80s. Things were different. For example, back then, Master Roshi trying to get in every girl’s pants came off as a joke. But you can’t really get away with that sort of thing in the modern climate. Unfortunately, “Dragon Ball Super” didn’t do much to reign in Roshi’s problematic behavior. If anything, it doubled down on it. Since that kind of stuff isn’t a laughing matter anymore It led to a formal complaint from the Ethics Committee of Japanese Broadcasting. Had Roshi been introduced in “Super,” he would’ve been canceled faster than you can say “Kamehameha.”

Ever since the “Dragon Ball Super” manga began serialization, series creator Akira Toriyama has left the drawing to a new artist, Toyotarou. Inevitably, there’s a lot of parallels between his and Toriyama’s work. But, that’s not the only place Toyotarou found inspiration. In 2018, comic-book artist Dexter Soy found that one of Toyotarou’s drawings looked an awful lot like his rendition of Captain America. When put side-by-side, it’s pretty obvious that Toyotarou borrowed Soy’s work to trace Goku’s pose. Despite the massive fan blowback, no official channels ever released a statement on the controversy. Either way, Toyotarou continues to draw the “Super” manga to this day.

Between 2000 and 2003, French broadcaster AB Group commissioned English versions for a handful of “Dragon Ball” films and specials. Although, calling them English dubs is pretty generous. The voices were recorded in France using local British and American actors, and you can tell. The translation also came with a whole lot of baffling name changes. Like Piccolo, who was randomly renamed to “Big Green,” giving this infamous dub its name. With all due respect to those involved, it’s kind of embarrassing that this is how some people had to experience “Dragon Ball.” Say what you will about the series’ other English iterations, but they’re leagues better than whatever this is.

It’s no small secret that “Dragon Ball GT” doesn’t exactly put its best foot forward. So, in order to drum-up interest for the new series, the original English broadcast skipped the entire first arc, fast-forwarding to the much-better received Baby Saga. Then, in a genius bit of marketing, they double-backed and tried to resell the skipped content as exclusive “Lost Episodes.” Which meant they didn’t have to skip episodes and were also spared of the horrid rap featured in the American one.

Remember what we said about Master Roshi? Well, the same principle applies to Kami’s assistant, Mr. Popo. When he first appeared in the series, He was depicted with black skin, large red lips and dressed in a genie outfit, which seemingly did not garner a negative response from Japanese audiences. However, when the series began to air overseas, his dark skin and prominent lips came across to audiences as an offensive racial caricature. In response, the English manga has digitally shrunk Popo’s lips in a few places. During Dragon Ball Z Kai’s original airing on CW4Kids, they instead opted to make Popo blue. Interestingly enough, in every single official release since, Popo’s design has reverted back to the way it was in his first appearance.

As every fan knows, live-action anime don’t have a great reputation. Films like “Dragonball Evolution” are exactly why. For one, there was no passion behind the scenes, and it shows. It’s honestly kind of impressive for a movie named after “Dragon Ball” to completely miss every single thing fans love about the series. Although, rest assured, the film isn’t just a bad adaptation. It’s simply a bad movie, period, to the point that fans are still trying to understand how it ever saw the light. If there’s any silver-lining, it’s that this poor excuse for an adaptation motivated Akira Toriyama to give us a true “Dragon Ball” film with “Battle of Gods.”

For decades, fans of “Dragon Ball” video games were in good hands with composer Kenji Yamamoto. In fact, the response to his work was so positive, he was brought on to score the flagship “Dragon Ball Z Kai.” But, as it turns out, his work was too good to be true. Fans quickly realized that Yamamoto’s work sounded awfully familiar to James Horner’s tracks in “Avatar” and Danny Elfman’s work on “Terminator: Salvation.” Coincidentally, those two films came out the exact same year “Kai” did. The rabbit hole kept going deeper, encompassing Yamamoto’s work on the games, too. Soon enough, “Dragon Ball” had no choice but to remove his work from “Kai” and future game releases altogether.

To set the scene, Vic Mignogna is easily one of the most prolific voices in the English dubbing community. Or, should we say, he was. In 2019, Mignogna weathered several accusations of inappropriate behavior towards fans and peers. Following an official company investigation, dubbing studio Funimation officially terminated Mignona’s contract. They later recast all of his ongoing roles, including the Legendary Super Saiyan Broly, a part he’d played since 2003. Mignogna responded by filing a defamation suit against his accusers, He lost the case and the appeal

2019 was a rough year for the “Dragon Ball” dub. Following Vic Mignogna’s very public departure from the franchise, the actor’s lawyer released several incriminating audio clips onto the web. They featured other members of “Dragon Ball’s” English dub saying all sorts of offensive slurs and tasteless jokes. Mostly surrounding sexuality, incest, and race. To put it into perspective, the audio is so graphic, we can’t even play it for you on YouTube. These weren’t background actors, either. Any dub fan can easily clock these as the voices of Goku, Krillin, Chi-Chi and more. Funimation declined to comment on the story at the time, and to this day, there’s never been any public recourse on the situation.

Did we miss any buzz-worthy Dragon Ball scandals? Let us know in the comments below!