Trouble Comes in Threes

I guess those three could technically count as trouble. Like a bug bite. Not one in an impossible to reach spot, just one that's kinda awkward.

I don't remember why, or for that matter where, I bought volume 10 of Dragon Ball last year, but I did, so let's take a look. Volume 10 wraps up the second Dragon Ball hunt, which is probably better known as the Red Ribbon Army Arc.

By this point, Goku's already single-handedly trashed the entire RRA - as far as he knows - and is just trying to gather all seven balls so he can wish his friend Upa's father back. There's one ball to go, and while it was hidden from Bulma's radar, it's not hidden from Fortuneteller Baba's magic. And who's got it?

Yeah, the Pilaf Gang. They think they've got a good shot against Goku, and could almost be forgiven for the over-confidence. They trapped him successfully last time, and he only escaped because he transformed into a giant, berserker ape. They know his tail is his weak point, and they have three mech suits to exploit it! Except his tail is gone, and he's a lot stronger than they remember.

Look, I'm not showing any scans from the fight because the burned off Goku's pants trying to get at his tail, so he's fighting bare-assed most of the time. And a defeat like that just about draws a line under those three as characters of any significance. The only other thing they do in Dragon Ball is somehow find the rice cooker Demon King Piccolo is sealed in at the bottom of the ocean, and open it. Maybe Goku should have hurt them a little worse.

Dragon Ball retrieved, deceased father figure revived, and Goku even managed to catch his 4-star ball before it shot off over the horizon. Nothing left now but to prepare for the next Tenkaichi Budokai! Toriyama skips the intervening 3 years, although I know the anime added some filler episodes of Goku meeting some different martial arts experts and learning stuff.

But in addition to Krillin, Yamcha, and Jackie Chun, there's some new challengers to worry about. Roshi's old rival Master Shen is here with his Crane School students, a porcelain doll-looking twerp and a 3-eyed asshole. Tien talks a lot of shit, to Yamcha and Krillin's annoyance, but Goku's sure the guy can back it up.

And Yamcha finds out quickly that he can, suffering his second consecutive first-round defeat. To make it worse, Tien goes and breaks Yamcha's leg, just to be a dick. Yamcha's down already, there's no need for it. He just does it to prove a point. One thing that annoys me, after the Tournament is over, Yamcha brushes it off. Yeah, Tien apologizes, but I'd be a little pissed about someone doing that. But I tend to hold grudges. Maybe that's not in keeping with the true spirit of martial arts.

Also, Goku vows to avenge Yamcha in a match, then loses to Tien in the finals. Great job, Goku! Of course, years later Goku will promise Krillin that, if he lets Vegeta live, Goku will kick Vegeta's butt if he comes back to cause trouble.

*Looks at Vegeta helping Cell achieve his perfect form.*

*Looks at Vegeta helping Babidi release Majin Buu*

It's possible that, like "marriage", "promise" is a word that Goku doesn't actually know the meaning of. Or, in clickbait sports talk, Goku just isn't clutch. I'm picturing Stephen A. Smith on some show, yelling about how Goku always chokes when the stakes are highest. 'There is no question he's a great fighter. . .when the pressure is off. HOWEVAH. . .'

After a comedy match-up between Jackie Chun and a Man-Wolf angry he can't change back into human because of Jackie blowing up the Moon in the last tournament - pour one out for Boss Rabbit, stranded up there by Goku then blown to HFIL with no warning - we get another Turtle vs. Crane match-up, as Krillin's up against Chiaotzu and his weird bullshit.

But it's Goku blabbing his mouth about killing Master Tao (Shen's brother) that will kick things to another level of hostility. 

Sunday Splash Page #429

"Mid-Air Collision," in "Mad-Matic" from Akira Toriyama Manga Theater, by Akira Toriyama

In contrast to yesterday's entry, it feels like I bought this more recently than 3 years ago, but the blog posts don't lie. This is an omnibus collection of what was originally a 3-volume release of assorted shorter works Dragon Ball Z and Dr. Slump creator Akira Toriyama did over the years, going back to the late-1970s.

It's fun to see the evolution of Toriyama's style, alongside his difficulties finding a story idea or concept the fans like. His first two strips, Wonder Island and Wonder Island 2, have a MAD magazine feel to them in the short, squat figures and reliance on either pop culture references - the protagonist of the second story is "Dirty Herring" - or what seems like entirely random, absurdist humor. There are two suns in the sky. But one's an egg, with a 3-headed dragon inside, but all their necks are tangled. That kind of thing.

By the 4th entry, Pola & Roid, Toriyama starts to find the groove he'd adopt for early Dragon Ball. Desert settings with lots of rocky spires and plateaus. Plucky but somewhat boy-crazy heroines in swimsuit battle armors and legs that seem long relative to their upper bodies. Dimwitted but (mostly) decent guys who don't know how to behave around a girl that's flirting with them. Joke villains that are either pathetically weak or just kind of stupid. It's mostly comedy, where even the shifts towards action are played as gags. A giant lizard just reading his dialogue without inflection and defeated with a squeaky hammer. A giant fiddler crab challenges the hero - an interstellar cab driver - to rock-paper-scissors. The evil emperor's secret weapon is a rubber band.

One of the bits that's interesting, at least in volume 1, where Toriyama talks about the process for making some of the strips, is how often his work ended up being unpopular. Even after he shifts away from the style of the Wonder Island strips (both duds with the readers), his two Chobits adventures - an inept hick cop who looks a lot like adult Goku meets essentially an alien genie in a flying teapot - in his words, 'failed to garner any fans.'

By volume 2, as he adds a bit more action, though still with a heavy lean towards comedy, you start to see more of his aesthetic in machinery. The hover bikes, the spacecraft or aircraft with the vertical surfaces at the ends of the wings, attached to egg-shaped central cockpits. The idea of "capsule houses" shows up in Tongpoo - a young cyborg crash lands on an alien world while trying to learn the fate of an earlier space exploration mission, and the sole survivor is a ditzy girl - and The Elder is a long chase between a secret agent in a car full of James Bond gadgets and some perverted old sheriff in a jeep drawn in the "squashed nose-to-tail" shape Toriyama uses for so many cars.

The Elder is also where Toriyama starts in with the "creepy old man groping women" stuff, which is, not great. Up to then, he was mostly restricting the pervert humor to young guys accidentally (key word there, accidentally, the hick cop in Chobits being the exception) stumbling on a lady in undress. In those cases, most of the characters are either confused or apologetic.

He flips things a bit in the final entry in the collection, Go Go Ackman, where the demon title character is actively repelled by any hint of female sexuality. He's supposed to be killing people to collect their souls and a convenient gust of wind reveals the lady he'd targeted is wearing a thong? Nope, he's outta there. It's not like Sand Land, where the "demon" characters are far less evil and cruel than the humans. Ackman really does seem to want to kill people, but I guess he's supposed to be young enough - by devil standards - that sort of thing is still icky to him. Or Toriyama just want to draw women in underwear without having them get murdered, in a story ostensibly starring a devil kid out to murder people.

Anyway, some of the entries are stronger than others, but it's fun to see what elements and themes recur and how he mixed and matched them in different ways over time.

Saturday Splash Page #193

"Sand Trap", in Sand Land ch. 1, by Akira Toriyama

Sand Land was a manga Akira Toriyama wrote and drew in 2000, running a total of 14 chapters, and about 215 pages. Set on a world where humans narrowly avoided wiping themselves out in a war decades ago, only for the great river that provided water to most of the inhabitants to dry up as a great drought took hold. Everyone is stuck buying their water from the king, but Sheriff Rao wants to go looking for the "Phantom Lake." It's a dangerous journey, so he travels to the home of the demons that also live on the planet, and requests help. Ultimately, the Prince of Demons, Beelzebub, and one of his servants, named Thief, agree to go along (Rao offering them a Playstation 6, complete with Dragon Quest 13, helps seal the deal.)

A lot of the story revolves around Rao's past. We gets hint at it when Rao turns out to be a pretty good hand-to-hand fighter, taking on a gang of KISS Army rejects with just a pair of tonfa, or when he knows how to turn on and drive a tank belonging to the King's Army. Toriyama pulls a fast one on us when Rao hangs a pin-up of a well-known actress - named Sexy Terrier - in a tank they've stolen. It seems like Toiyama's usual gag about dirty old men.

It turns out more sad than anything. Rao was a general, who attacked a peaceful race because he was told they were building a doomsday weapon. The resulting explosion killed most of the Picchi people, and also destroyed Rao's home village, killing his wife in the process. His wife was the actress, and with his home destroyed, that magazine pin-up is the best he can do for a photo. The real joke, such as it is, was that the Picchi people were building a machine to make water, something Rao learns from Thief.

Which is a recurring theme in the story. For all they're called demons, even by themselves, Beezlebub and his people aren't all that bad, or even bad, period. Certainly not compared to humans. Beezlebub does rob water shipments, but doesn't take all of it, and even gives some of it to a small child, arguing it's better to wait until the kid gets bigger to beat him up, when it'll be more fun. His examples of "evil" are sleeping in late and not brushing his teeth, whereas Rao acknowledges that he's killed many. In war, but, 'killing is killing.' He was the one fooled by the propaganda of his superiors, and went on a mission he wasn't meant to survive, because he didn't like his bosses and was outspoken about it. Yet he followed orders all the same, and it cost him everything. His wife, his home, the men who followed him, his idealism. It's the demons, who exist outside human society, but could conquer it easily if they chose, who see the truth of things.

Toriyama does add in a few goofier aspects. There's a family of criminals called "The Swimmers" who wear swim trunks, swimming caps and goggles. None of them except the father can actually swim, since there's not been any water around to learn, but they've got history with Rao and Beelzebub both. Thief gets them supplies from a village while dressed as Santa, because that'll provide a cover story if anyone catches him. The Supreme Commander of the King's Army is a miserable, withered old bastard, but he's confined to a floating version of that wheelchair Commander Pike had on Star Trek.

I believe Toriyama was working on a sequel or continuation to Sand Land when he passed away, and there was going to be anime adaptation as well. I don't know what the status is on those at this point, and the series seemed to pretty well resolve itself. The river was restored, Commander Zeu is dead, the King's pressured into giving up half his wealth as food for the people, and the demons are revealed to be great heroes who helped the land.

And with that, throw your hands in the air, because we are finally - finally! - done with the letter "S."

Akira Toriyama

Akira Toriyama died on March 1, although the official announcement was delayed a week to grant the family time to mourn privately. I'm glad that happened, if a little surprised no one blew it by just not being able to help texting a friend with the news.

I suspect if you are someone to which that information is significant, you already knew. It's a little staggering, to see Jackie Chan or the President of France, sharing their thoughts and feelings at Toriyama's passing. The reach of the characters and stories he created, the number of people that felt their lives enriched by his work.

This is going to ramble, I don't know. Like a lot of people in the U.S., I first encountered his work through DragonBall Z on Cartoon Network. The fighting, the transformations, the long sequences of powering up while screaming loudly. A lot of that was padding done for 22-minute episodes, rather than being like that in the actual story Toriyama wrote and drew. Example: When he powers up for the Kaioken x 3 against Vegeta, the powering takes over 75 seconds in the anime. In the manga, it's less than 4 pages, and most of two of those pages are other characters reacting to what he's doing (selling that yes, this is as dangerous to Goku as it is to Vegeta, as matter of establishing stakes.)

There's a post on Tumblr, talking about how Toriyama drew fight scenes. The clarity and simplicity of the action. The knowledge of when to remove the surroundings details so all the focus is on that kick, that punch, the impending beam struggle. That even when the character's attacks have big elaborate names - like Thunder Shock Surprise - it's still presented as a straightforward, easy-to-follow, movement. That's no small thing. If you've read many comics, whether Japanese, American, whatever, you've probably seen plenty with just awful fight scenes. Either the characters look static, like mannequins posing, or there's no sense of where anyone is in relation to one another or what's actually going on.

I've heard that DragonBall, in addition to drawing heavily for Journey to the West, was always Toriyama having some fun spoofing what were the conventions of shonen anime at that time. If true, crazy to think what he created became the new standard that so many others would draw from or emulate. It also points to what I didn't realize until I actually encountered DragonBall: As good as Toriyama was at action, he was a comedy guy first.

Dr. Slump is the most notable example (albeit one I haven't read), but going through the Akira Toriyama Manga Theater, most of the his shorter works, and especially the earliest ones, were comedy. Where there's action or violence, it's in service to a joke. The pilot in Wonder Island, so condescending and rude, who tries to show off his homemade wings, and falls flat on his face. Or one of the locals shouts so loudly the word strikes the pilot in the face as a physical blow.

And that carried over to DragonBall, with one of Goku's early attacks being the Rock-Paper-Scissors Attack, which he then uses successfully against Jackie Chun by yelling "Rock!", but doing a 3 Stooges eye-poke (i.e., scissors). Or Krillin beating a big smelly opponent by farting in the guy's face. Or the leader of the Red Ribbon Army just wanting the Dragon Balls so he can wish to be taller.

Which is also a little terrifying, that this guy formed an army that killed and pillaged, to get a magic dragon that could grant him anything, just to make him taller. But Toriyama was also good at making villains who had petty goals and grievances, but were ruthless about achieving them. Kind of a valuable life lesson, not to underestimate someone just because their goals seem small or limited to you. Those are the kinds of things a person might fight the most viciously for.

Although the lesson I try to take most to heart is the idea not to calcify, to withdraw and become stagnant. It's part of the Kame School creed to live well, eat well, study well, play well. To do whatever you do to the fullest, to not just accept a limitation imposed on you. But it comes up in Toriyama's other work. Characters that have isolated themselves. They're bitter or jaded, just going through the motions. But when they stretch themselves, go different places, or even see old places with a new outlook, their perspective changes. Things don't seem so hopeless or pointless. You aren't dead until you're truly dead, but you can let yourself drift into spiritual death so easily.

Fast Cars, Leggy Ladies and Giant Monsters

That's the Chicago, er, the Toriyama Way.

Originally released as 3 separate volumes, but collected into one big hardcover omnibus here, Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater is a collection of a lot of Toriyama's shorter works, ranging from his earliest published story, Wonder Island from 1978, up through Go! Go! Ackman, which concluded in 1994.

There are also one-page strips after some of the stories about what was going on with Toriyama at the time, or the reaction to the stories. For example, Toriyama (whose rendition of himself is a lot like those Shyguys from Super Mario Bros. 2) excitedly calling his editor after Wonder Island was published, only to get some bad news about its reception. Or, after the flop of Wonder Island 2, that his editor recommended he try doing a comic with a female lead (Tomato the Cutesy Gumshoe, which is what the panels at the top are from), and that its success spurred him on to eventually create Dr. Slump.

Given the massive, ongoing, success of Dragon Ball, with the tournaments and power-ups and screaming and ass-kicking (which Toriyama's very good at drawing), it's easy to forget Toriyama might be more of a comedy writer. Early Dragon Ball had a fair amount of that, even during the fights (see Krillin winning against Bacterian when he remembers he doesn't have a nose and can't smell anything) and I think Dr. Slump was primarily an absurdist comedy series.

The earliest works are almost entirely comedy. Toriyama's characters in Wonder Island wouldn't look that out of place in an issue of MAD Magazine, with their bizarre heads and almost miniaturized bodies. The stories themselves are an almost constant string of jokes, puns, sight gags or just strange shit that happens for seemingly no reason. The World War 2 pilot hoping to escape gets hit with fire from an artillery gun. When wondering how he's alive, the characters demonstrate they use the gun as part of a giant slingshot to shoot rocks at birds. When their shot misses the target and the little fairy asks the caveman what they'll eat now, he shrugs and suggests coal. If there's a logical progression to that, it's either lost in the translation or the logic is, "anything goes."

Toriyama doesn't abandon comedy over time, but he does dial it back. Mad Matic involves some guy and his winged dog finding a giant fridge in the desert being guarded by a couple of jungle gals. There's still a fair amount of silliness, but there's also just enough plot and character interaction that the story breathes a bit, allowing the comedy time to land.

The tone of the humor is questionable at times. Gropey old men (The Elder, which is otherwise a fun car chase/battle between an old man with a souped up jeep and a super-spy with a roadster full of James Bond gimmicks), or characters accidentally (accidentally would need to be in quotations some of the time) walking in on a girl bathing. Ackman's repeatedly thrown off his attempts to kill humans by things like a gust of wind revealing a young mom is wearing a g-string. Lot of upskirt shots in this collection, so depending on your tolerance for that, be aware.

And there are some gags that just don't translate well, or at all. Ackman's angel rival hires a big martial artist by the name of Yakimo Heederu, and an editor's note informs us this translates to, "potatoes make you fart." If I knew Japanese, that would probably make me laugh. I think there's a similar one in Tomato where she adds an ant to her hostage collection and the crook threatening the baby does a pratfall at such a great "pun."

His art style slides back-and-forth over a sort of continuum across the stories. Sometimes the characters are very much in the Dragon Ball style, tall and a bit lanky, long heads. Big, bald grinning guys with Fu Manchu mustaches. Other times, he shifts back more towards his earlier style, with all the characters being exaggeratedly short and squat, their heads out of proportion to the rest of them. Or some combination of the two. The two Chobit stories involve a hick cop protagonist very similar in look to Goku, but one of the villains is dressed like a cowboy with a head the size of his entire body. That's more of a comedy, including a bit where the cop tries to demonstrate his marksmanship and only succeeds in shooting holes in the panel they're in.

Overall, I found it really interesting to see a lot of his lesser known work. See the change in what he wrote and drew, and how. Also, what elements crop up frequently. Dragon Boy feels like a dry run for Dragon Ball, with a young martial artist protagonist with curious extra appendages, who protects a pampered girl on a long a perilous journey. He even has a teacher named Master Roshi (who looks much different from the Turtle Hermit.) Toriyama also really likes desert wastelands with rocky columns and arches scattered about. Easier than drawing a crapload of trees, I'll bet.

Sunday Splash Page #273

 

"Self-Promotion," in Jaco The Galactic Patrolman, chapter 10, by Akira Toriyama

Released in 2013, Jaco the Galactic Patrolman is about. . .Jaco, the Galactic Patrolman, sent to Earth to try and intercept a dangerous alien believed to be headed there. Being fairly inept, Jaco hits the Moon and crash lands on Earth near an island that was formerly a research lab. Now it's home to a grouchy old widower named Omori. Omori reluctantly agrees to let Jaco stay until he sees if he can repair the ship enough to radio for help.

Several problems quickly arise. Omori learns the government wants the island as a getaway for important officials and so he has to move. Jaco can't resist fighting crime, but also can't keep a low profile, so once he beats up two cops he thinks are part of the gang he just stopped from robbing a young girl named Tights, he's a fugitive.

Toriyama writes Jaco as vain and more than a little incompetent, but not necessarily a bad guy. He doesn't get flustered about most things, unless it jabs at his pride. He gets angry about the extremely inaccurate sketch the police circulate of him, and also that they refer to him as "Mask Man," but the fact he's a fugitive doesn't bother him (partially because he's strong enough humans don't seem like a threat.) He did legitimately want to help Tights when she was in danger. At the same time, he admits that if the alien he's supposed to stop is an adult, he won't be able to stop it and then he'll just run away. He's here for his job, but he's not going to get killed over it.

Which makes for contrast with Omori, who has isolated himself for years and scoffs and sneers at what he sees of the larger world on TV. Yet when Jaco takes him at his word about humanity being awful and offers to use his "extinction bomb" capsule, Omori changes his tune and pleads that there are still many good people out there. Hanging around Jaco brings more people into Omori's orbit and forces him to open up and starting caring again.

(Also, when Omori pleads with Jaco to be careful with his extinction bomb, Jaco replies he only accidentally triggered one once. Like I said, more than a little incompetent.)

Toriyama fills the panels with lots of little details and visually interesting characters. The gang that menaces Tights is comprised of four guys each dressed as a different type of warrior (samurai, Roman legion, barbarian). Why? Because they thought they look cool, probably. Omori's island is circled by a giant shark with spikes sticking out of its back and multiple rows of visible teeth. It's freaking awesome.

He also uses Jaco's deadpan reactions for good comedic effect. When Tights helps he and Omori escape onto the top of an apartment building, Jaco gets on the railing to loudly introduce himself as a Galactic Patrolman. Which draws the attention of the police searching the streets. When Omori asks what's wrong, Jaco very simply replies that the police saw him, which leads to a panel of Omori freaking out. Toriyama knows how to draw action, but he's always been good at comedy, and Jaco lets him get back to that a little more.

Sunday Splash Page #172

 

"Welcome to Earth, Dipshit," in Dragon Ball Z vol. 4, chapter 36, by Akira Toriyama

Yeah, I know, in Japan the Dragon Ball Z manga isn't a separate thing from the Dragon Ball manga, but it is in the collected volumes they released here in the States. Besides, like hell I was going to pass up an opportunity to post a picture of Vegeta getting punched in his stupid face.

Toriyama does the old Five Years Later maneuver between Goku beating Piccolo and marrying Chi-Chi and the start of this. At which point he reveals that Goku's not just a weird kid who had a monkey tail, he's a weird alien kid who had a monkey tail. Oh, and he was sent here as a baby to subjugate this world so it could be sold to someone else, killing all the present inhabitants if necessary.

The story still has a lot of Goku going to some new place to fight new people and learn new tricks, but the periodic tournaments are largely abandoned. So are a lot of the comedy elements, especially during the Androids and Cell Sagas. There are brief bouts of it here and there, though. The brief stretch on Namek with the Ginyu Force, basically a bad guy version of Power Rangers, complete with choreographed poses and what not. Captain Ginyu asking Frieza if he should perform the Dance of Joy (although that was probably anime filler). 

Then the Buu Saga brings some of the humor back. First with Gohan trying to fit in at a regular school, then his trying to be a masked superhero, complete with his own ridiculous poses. After that, there's the brief stretch where Goten and Trunks are the ones on the front lines, and since they're little kids, they come up with stupid attacks. Poor Piccolo gets reduced to playing the straight man for them. Even Buu himself, in his initial form alternates between terrifying and silly. The way he sort of dances around or puffs pink steam out of his skull when he gets annoyed, but then he turns people into cookies and eats them. Yikes.

But most of the series is still fighting, people getting punched in the face or shot with energy blasts. The antagonists are stronger, but at the end of the day I'm not sure that changes much really. Is there a functional difference between Vegeta coming to Earth and being able to destroy and entire planet, and Frieza or Cell showing up and being able to do the same, but even more easily? Motivations, I guess. Vegeta trying to find a way to reach the top of the heap, Frieza for revenge, Cell because he's been designed to be perfect, and he wants to know that he is. And the best way is to beat everyone else.

I admittedly prefer the earlier arcs, the Saiyan and Frieza Sagas. I read a post recently that said Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z could be divided into two halves, at the point where Vegeta first mentions the Legendary Super Saiyan. Before that, the series is all about Dragon Balls. After that, it's all about Super Saiyans, and I think that was part of my issue. Anyone that wasn't at least part Saiyan got sidelined more and more. Maybe if the character that benefited the most in terms of focus wasn't friggin' Vegeta I wouldn't have minded so much, but it was, so I did. Vegeta is the equivalent of the dumbshit police chief in Die Hard, always there to be wrong or make things worse.

Like a lot of people I got into Dragon Ball Z through the anime first, on Cartoon Network late in my high school years. I think a friend of mine mentioned it to me first, and Cartoon Network had finally been added to my family's basic cable package, so I watched it when I could after school. I don't think it was the first anime I'd seen - I know I watched Voltron as a kid, and I remember Sailor Moon being on another network before it was on Toonami, even if it wasn't really my jam - but it was the first one where I understood this was from a different country, and where the series really interested me and made me want to watch more. Granted, that's been more branching into other styles of anime and manga; none of the shonen series that owe something to DBZ have ever come close to interesting me as much as it does (One Piece comes closest, but I feel like that's still more in concept, or maybe the fictional setting in general, than the actual story Oda is telling.)

Sunday Splash Page #171

 

Blink and You'll Miss It," in Dragon Ball vol. 11, chapter 122, by Akira Toriyama

I don't know, what do you say about Dragon Ball? That Akria Toriyama came up with a story, based on Journey to the West, that became the template for a a huge chunk of shonen manga? The cheerful protagonist who loves to eat and fight, who loves a challenge and makes friends wherever he goes has been duplicated or riffed on in so many other series or video games or whatever. The repeated tournament structure, the steady escalation of threats. I mean, Goku starts out having trouble rescuing Bulma from a single pterosaur, and by the end of this stretch of the manga, he's fighting the offspring of a demon who forced the entire world to surrender to him and vowed to destroy a country every year on that day, just for a celebration.

I don't think Toriyama was the first to use those elements, although perhaps using them altogether was a novel idea. But it was the way he did it that seems to have resonated with an entire generation of artists, in Japan and the States.

The series has its issues. Master Roshi is a warning all his own, the archetypical perverted old master, groping girls and trying to get them to flash him. Oolong the shapeshifting pig is the same, although he's at least sort of an antagonist at the start (a pathetic one, but still.) The Mr. Popo character looks like a Sambo caricature or something. So there's things that aren't great, and it's things that could be eliminated at no real cost. The series has plenty of humor without peeping tom shit gone awry, and it wouldn't be that hard to come up with a less offensive design for Mr. Popo.

I've read somewhere the initial World Martial Arts Tournament arc sort of saved the series from being canceled. Which is odd to think of, because up to that point, it had been about hunting the Dragon Balls and running into various semi-comic threats. An evil rabbit that turns people into carrots. A desert bandit who gets social anxiety around pretty girls. Emperor Pilaf and his two beleaguered henchmen. Goku's complete ignorance of almost anything. 

And the series still revolves around that for a time. Goku or someone else seeking the Dragon Balls for one reason or another, and Goku getting stronger in the process. The tournaments are really just a way to showcase the improvements in a series of well-illustrated fights. Toriyama knows how to draw for comedy, exaggerated looks when someone arrogant gets shown up. But he also knows how to draw someone taking a punch and make it look like it hurt.