User blog comment:Dryst97/Fire is Superior than magma/@comment-62279-20100301000357

Like you I also love Dragon Ball, I practically grew up with the anime (Dragon Ball Z included) and later read the whole manga! The reason the anime was a bit of "annoying" was because of all those filler scenes that they put in, even in the fighting scenes.

Of course I was very little when I watched for the first time and later realised what they had done... The manga was ok but stretching it became obvious after the Freeza ( Frieza in the dub ) Saga!!

What made both the manga and the anime unstable though was the use of the magic balls (Dragon Balls) that could fix almost everything that happened.

Granted they couldn't defeat the Big Bad but almost every solution in the series was given directly (or indirectly) through them, even when the plot "moved them from the center of the story" they still were still used at the end of each arc/saga!!

In One Piece even when I kept in mind that the author had chosen a style for his manga where characters usually don't die, besides in flashbacks (minor ones excluded), I always found myself worried about their fates only to be revealed alive.

In Ace's case I said you're not gonna trick me again Oda, to show us in the next chapter that he really does die, that was the biggest shock of all mind you!!! That's something that Dragon Ball couldn't offer after Z started.