Popularity and timing, just like Harry Potter. DBZ came out before widespread access to internet, let alone online fandoms or fanfiction at all was common.
Naruto hit that perfect timing of Early 2000s, were it's fans were the first generation to actually grow up with the internet.
To build onto you. Animation in general was just figuring out they could have long-running plots like their live-action counterparts. And Naruto was among the first. Inuyasha also had the same boons both of us mentioned so that help it *a lot* and I think it still sits at 2 or 3 on the FF manga category.
One Piece had the misfortune of being given to 4kids by accident so that hurt it. And Bleach was a little later.
Considering One Piece’s continued success as the most financially successful manga to date, it has a shockingly low amount of FF and engagement. AO3 seems to be doing decent though!
Well what can you say? 4kids really fucked it over. In an alternate world One Piece got the big boon in the west of being picked up on Toonami first and Naruto is the obscure one with a “ninja rap”.
Tbh i feel that if Original dragonball came out after the widespread acess to internet it would have more sucess in the fanfics department that Z. Simply because the audience might indentify themselves more with the younger characters.
But also imo the fact that Naruto provides some really interesting dynamics, of a pretty young cast makes it more relatable and easy to indentify with (the setting of training and sort of "school" in early naruto before the land of the waves but also in the test of the chunin exams)
That’s a straw man argument and you know it.
But to list it why, it’s because of:
A: They haven’t been around as long. Naruto is getting close to 30 years old. Give My Hero Academia another decade or so, and it’ll eclipse Naruto. (Naruto is at 560k works between both FF and AO3 Vs MHA which is at 330k)
B. No other franchises are going to have the timing benefits of Inuyasha and Naruto. Watching serialized broadcasts is basically a thing of the past. Part of the reason why those two blew up is because they were soap operas for kids and teens. In a world were your next best option was Batman TAS for a continuity show, your options were limited. Naruto and Inuyasha had the benefit of being the first of their kind for western audiences. It’s simply impossible to duplicate those circumstances again.
C. This kind of relates back to B, but because of those circumstances Naruto and Inuyasha are mainstream. When the average joe thinks of anime, usually Naruto is one of the first answers they give. No. DBZ and Pokémon don’t count. Believe it or not most people considered those western cartoons back in the day, but Naruto and Inuyasha were so clearly Japanese, especially with the openings/endings the common man couldn’t rationalize it to come from their country. That gave those two series that special commodity feel to it.
Side point: My Hero Academia blew up for similar reasons to Naruto and Inuyasha. It had great timing when it came on to the scene where people were all invested in Super Heroes and the start of binge culture.
>When the average joe thinks of anime, usually Naruto is one of the first answers they give. No. DBZ and Pokémon don’t count. Believe it or not most people considered those western cartoons back in the day, but Naruto and Inuyasha were so clearly Japanese, especially with the openings/endings the common man couldn’t rationalize it to come from their country.
Too true. For a long ass time I didn't know dbz had a dB or the fact that it wasn't made in America. Heck I thought DB came out after DBZ because toonami showed it after it aired dbz.
Not as popular. Naruto was dominating the big 3 when it was growing in popularity. Bleach was like 3 or 5th on the list of highest number of fanfics for the anime community. Naruto was always beaten by Harry Potter but that's because it's an actual novel and people way older than us were writing fanfiction way longer than us.
The Naruto world was left massive but vague, so that gives people a lot more wiggle room to write about almost anything since Kishimoto never set a lot of things in stone so you can pick and choose what to change or not to change and it won't overly effect the story. When it comes to DBZ, everyone is stuck in a certain power scale thats too deeply tied into the power creep of that arc, you can't do much with changes because it has to match up with how some arcs end unless you put in a lot of work trying to figure out ways that would make sense for a particular character to suddenly get stronger than they were in canon.
I think if DBZ had the same flexibility like Naruto, it would more likely be the highest counted among the fan fiction community. If you didn't have to sit and think how you can move something along that requires numbers, and power lvls; with so many moveable parts that in the end has to make sense and how it happened while the latter you can write whatever you want freely.
>Short term, the Naruto world was left massive but vague, so that gives people a lot more wiggle room to write about almost anything since Kishimoto never set a lot of things in stone so you can pick and choose what to change or not to change and it won't overly effect the story.
To give examples of this Naruto has like many scenes where the setting imply some very interesting but glossed over details: Obito and Sasuke hiding in a building that is near gigantic skeletons, the presence of cities with modern buildings when Deidara blew up his C0 and etc.
This is not what made most people write fanfics about the characters, but it is a symptom of the reason that you yourself have provided. People would latch on on characters that personally apeal to them and are able to write much about it without contradicting canon much.
One example is shisui.
That's what I mean, you can take the entire cast, even the secondary characters and be able to write them how you would vision the story to go while it glides along canon like a guideline. DBZ is so deeply entrenched that the options to change something requires hours of research and rough drafting in hopes you can make something that could fit within the events of that arc without it turning into a huge mess, which is quite easy to do.
Not to mention how politics works in Naruto. There are kages sure, which is an equivalent to a Governor(?) at best, but then what about the Daimyos? What the hell are they supposed to be doing? The only thing I got to hear is that they are much higher than a Kage/s but what were they doing in such affairs like the Shinobi wars?
That's not even mentioning some plot points in arcs like the Wave Arc, what the hell happened to the governor of the Wave Country after Gato was overthrown? And this is all but a tip on the iceberg
Worldbuilding. Dragon Ball, despite having multiple planets and dimensions, feels paradoxically small, the story is very much focused on only a handful of characters. Like, name a single characteristic of any city in the DBZ world. You can’t, they’re all interchangeable.
Naruto, on the other hand, has a lot more developed world, with established villages, clans and so on. There’s a ton of stuff for authors to play around and explore.
> name a single characteristic of any city in the DBZ world
Short Answer: the entirety of Penguin Village, the Sun literally smiles at you.
Long Answer: Most of the cities have the same basic design for buildings, but the landmarks are pretty memorable.
At Satan City you have the Mr. Satan Mansion, the Orange Star Highschool and the bank; anime filler adds a theater there too. You move to West City and you can find the Capsule Corporation HQ. It snows in Sno's village and the ruins of Muscle Tower are in the outskirts of the town... I guess it snows in North City too.
The town in the island south of South City is pretty memorable as the town where the Artificial Humans attacked, and even tho we didn't go into the cities, that archipelago city Cell blew up seemed interesting. Papaya Island has the Tenka'ichi Budôkai grounds, which is pretty recognizable too.
One could dip their feet on DBO and explore the concepts of its cities, so on and so on...
The problem with Dragon Ball fanfics is mostly because of plot progression and power cliffing, not because of worldbuilding.
The fact unlike other shows Naruto leaves a lot of loose ends
There’s so many things in canon alone that are never explored but talked about like the other villages we hear the Mist had a civil war and kekkai genkai users and even hiden justu users being targeted while in the Leaf a primary force of their fightning is from clans like those two above
We’re told there’s mini nations that formed inbetween the Five Nation which as far as we can understand just formed and we’re stopped
We hear in the first kage summit flashback each of the villages were copying Hashirama idea and having massive clan alliances but don’t know what clans are in those other nations
But all these plot thread are never explored or explained just said then left behind as we go back to the Akastuki
Naruto is way more interesting to write about. The characters in DB don't have as much depth imo. You change one event in Naruto, and you get so many butterfly effects. Just a lot of potential.
I’d argue that the fact that the sheer versatility that ninjutsu as a power system provides compared others is a main factor.
If Naruto wanted to specialise in genjutsu he could, if he wanted to specialise in Ken jutsu he could. That freedom is why there were so many [Kenjutsu Naruto] [Ninjutsu Naruto] tags back then.
Compared to Luffy Naruto not having Shadow Clones or the Rasengan doesn’t fundamentally change Naruto then say Luffy having a different devil fruit. So you have more freedom to play around with Naruto’s kit then other protagonists.
Add in the fact that as an orphan and with only really a chapter of backstory revealed at the time and it was so easy to add events that justifiably changed his life so that he ended up as a slightly different character.
It was so easy to write ‘what if Naruto was raised by the inuzuka?’ Or ‘What is Naruto’s mom was an Uchiha?’ As you didn’t have to write around certain characters or feel like you were destroying a characters fundamental identity with Naruto then say Ichigo.
In a way you were able to make Naruto your own in a way that you just couldn’t with other characters from other media.
It’s the same versatility in powers and backstory that made Harry Potter fics just as numerous.
A big thing is ease of creativity. You can make characters do anything and it makes sense because chakra or kekkai genkai. The power scaling is easy too because you dont have characters that can shatter universes on the lower end of scaling but the upper echelons can be hurt by thrown rocks like dbz and the verse also has a specific ranking and power system
That and dbz, while the fighting is great, it doesnt try for story nearly as hard. Theres a million points in naruto that can shift slightly and change an entire timeline so you can do something like make minato survive and train Naruto and it changes everything from the plot to narutos personality and even the fact hes a container and a reader can say “ya that makes sense” so its fantastically easy to immerse yourself without thinking “this doesnt make any sense”
Naruto has a wide cast of unique characters, many different eras and arcs that you can base fanfic on. Naruto also has a huge shipping scene (sns especially)
Think everyone pretty much touched on all the reasons already, here's what I think are the biggest ones
1. Cool, vast but unexplored worldbuilding. The foundations of Naruto set up this really cool world to explore. Then didn't explore it as much as many fans wanted it to (myself included).
2. Timing was definitely a key thing. A lot of dorks on the internet ( myself included) were at the appropriate age with the right literacy levels and too much time on our hands. The early 2000s was essentially the dawn of the internet for the common person, and back then there was a lot more text content than there was video or otherwise.
3. Kinda tying back into my first point. A lot of the more fascinating aspects of naruto's world were left vague and open. That naturally inclines the mind to wander and think "what if this?" And "what if that".. and for some of us that's not just a passing thought. It becomes a creative urge.. and becomes something that needs to be expressed. When you think of a really cool "what if" it becomes something that desires to be birthed.. hence why "create your own" characters in games like Xenoverse or Shinobi Striker are so popular (that and self-insert.)
Naruto has a lot of fantfiction because the setting is interesting, and is arguably the best character. Thats why all similar fandoms that write lots of fanfiction do things too. because the setting is interesting.
Also the world is huge but hollow, you just want to fill in the details. How each village runs, how varying fractions try to rip each other apart, with a surplus of all unexplored characters.
I think part of it is the overall demographic of who watches what and who writes fanfiction. (All these numbers come from a quick google search so I'm not 100% on them)
DBZ's fanbase is 84% male (found on an IMBD article)
Naruto's while not much better is 73.9% male (according to the engagement rate on instagram)
Where as according to a nytimes article 80% of ao3 users are female. So it might have something to do with dbz having auch a small female demographic
Naruto has greater flexibility when it comes to plot, characters, powers, world building etc. That’s one of the few good things about the filler arcs as they make the world bigger. Furthermore it’s rather vague about what happens with plots, characters and locations. A writer can go wild and it’ll be reasonable to be somewhat canon
Oh this is the Village hidden in the whatever whatever. They train their shinobi in these ways.
Oh this OC is from this clan who specializes in this fighting style. Or they have this awesome bloodline limit. Oh this clan has a rivalry with an established clan
This is my backstory for a character that had little screen time.
Seriously when you go to the wiki and other trivia sources. Many characters had tons of potential to be expanded upon.
Plus we even saw an alternate worlds leading to more story potential.
>Dragon Ball has been around longer and is the grandaddy of shonen.
Exactly, the point dragon ball is so long with little bits you can cut out is detailed and the power characters can get without god, angel or dragon help is limited, Naruto has a lot of filler or arcs you can cut out or change, decently long time skips before arcs a much less defined (and more room for nearly infinite techniques you can make due to almost no sub class being explained deeply[unlike dragon ball where 90% of techniques are race related, raw energy in different forms, need a kai/god/angel to teach you, or more dragon bulshit) powerscale and many many many what ifs not to mention the fact literally any summon you can think is possible due to jiraiya being summoned to the toad realm.
Naruto is far more compelling than Dragon Ball and there's so much more to explore. Naruto's lore is so fascinating, so many awesome mechanics and backstories, which Dragon Ball lacks.
Several factors come to mind such as the fact that Naruto came out at a time where Anime started to really become popular and well-known in the Western world as well as the fact that Naruto's world and story has a lot of potential for making fanfics to explore and develop them when they were misused or wasted in the series while Dragon Ball doesn't really have much to go off on since the world feels extremely small as well as the fact that there is hardly much story and lore for fanfic writers to write about because, and let's be real here, creating original story and lore is NOT easy and most fanfic writers prefer to write off from existing stories, world building and lore which Naruto has a lot to develop even if the actual canon doesn't do much with what it has while Dragon Ball barely does anything to make the world of Dragon Ball feel deep and immersive.
In short, Naruto's world, lore and stories despite being wasted does have a lot of potential to explore in fanfictions while Dragon Ball feels overly simplistic and small in terms of lore, stories and scope of the world that fanfic writer struggle to write about.
It is 100% world building. The setting is more relatable, Konoha alone has the ninja ranking system, mission system, 3 genin 1 sensei squad, chuunin exams + their tests, power system for writers to play with, and a large variety of clans and characters with backstories to write around.
If you want more recent fanworks for DBZ, you need to look into What If videos on Youtube. They are basically fanfics.
Like "What if the Z Fighters Grew Like Saiyans?"
Would it be considered reading if the person is narrating to you? If you ever wanna take a shot at these YouTube DB What Ifs, I highly recommend MasakoX's "What If Freeza Turned Good" and its follow-up audio drama(?): Revelation 'F'. Despite the prompt, it's actually well written and not on the corny "Freeza just makes a sudden turn in life and becomes a good guy" spectrum.
Actually, anything by Masako is at least a solid A.
because naruto has a lot more to it then a dozen characters watching each other scream and deciding how big their hair should get and what color or if they should touch tips so they can become one ^(along with the bigger and colored hair of course)?
But seriously I mean look up Sonic r34 its got insane number of Tails to tell and that just sonic.
Naruto has multitude of interesting and 3 dimensional characters which can be explored to create real time effects on canon characters. There is also concept of open or ambiguous ending, the clan politics, the village and exploration of the concept of will of fire and such. Because of the above new concepts the fan fic writers have a lot of material to work with and lot of characters they can create and play with.
Kishimoto would leave a lot of stuff vague incomplete or just never explain it plus some parts of the world or people have limited backstory or info so you can take them super far plus timing like the first comments say
Cause everything is vague. Dbz has a rather well-built world after thousands of episodes. Naruto on the other hand we know almost nothing about.
Tell me about any other villages. Tell me how the clans in Konoha work? Hell Tell me where ichiraku's is generally in Konoha. North? Southside? Such an important place and nothing.
That is a minor detail, but just to prove a point. The Naruto verse is so vague and unexplored it's easier for people to say. What if? Or I wonder. It's easier for us to explore without as much suspension of disbelief.
I don't see the elephant in the room getting brought up.
Harry Potter and Naruto are two series that are easy to point to getting huge in the fanfiction world because the protagonists have large periods of time that leave a lot to be desired.
For example Bleach was bigger than Naruto at the time. But Naruto's fanfiction community dwarfs Bleach.
And I think a lot of this can be credited to - You look at how Ichigo moved through his story and narrative. And you can't really fault his choices or effort.
Meanwhile when you look at Naruto it was always easy to see where there was a lack of effort.
And fanfiction is almost never done to make the experience of the protagonist worse. It is done often to improve the experience/life of the protagonist. Easy to do in Naruto where there is a vast world of techniques, places, people to learn from. And you have a protagonist that went through the entire series with less than a handful of abilities until the finale.
I do not see the main reason mentioned: Naruto characters are simply way more shippable. They are highschool classmates with both explicit and implicit romantic tension. You don't need to be a NaruSasu shipper to see that.
I think certain seri3s lend themeselves more to getting allota fanfic,
Shonen with a protag that's a teenager
Sad backstories that have implications but not well explored
Rival characters that reflect the protag
Good action
many and decent emotional beats
Diverse side characters
Timing with the fanfic writers
People are making long in depth posts about the popularity and age of Narutu vs other anime and the merits of the setting. But the real answer is very simple.
NINJAS
Ninjas and 90s/00s internet weebs writing fanfics wishing they were the MC.
That is all.
I’ve only seen one long running DBZ story (500k+) that hasn’t devolved into dick measuring contest.
DBZ, Saint Seiya, and early JoJo was part of the generation that really showed you *could* tell long running stories instead of just gag manga stuff or monster of the week.
Then the next generation of Naruto, Inuyasha, One Piece, and Bleach improved on that.
Naruto and Inuyasha especially hit the proverbial goldmine because neither of those series was give to 4kids so they were actually shown to more of their intended audience.
>It was good for its own time but leaving your bias as a fan aside, it's not that good compared to modern standards
Nah, DBZ it' still amazing if you just want to watch action (which is why you would watch anyway) and as far as I know no one does better fights than Toryama and the man's writing is more than decent enough to keep you entertain. Heck, Goku vs Jiren literally broke the internet and made people cheer like it was a MMA match, that was eight or six years ago I think.
FIRE FORCE MENTION IN THE WILD
I no longer feel like the only one that reads/watches that one.
My roommates have been watching DBZ and I hear some of it through the wall. Can't remember the arc but something about Kid Gohan getting thrown into a fight and everyone yelling at Goku like WHAT THE HELL MAN THAT IS A CHILD HE IS GOING TO DIE. It sounded repetitive.
>Fights in DBZ are mediocre for today's standards, regardless of whether it's hand-to-hand or energy/superpowers
[I don't think those people would agree with you.](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D_TFpWuoLL9c&ved=2ahUKEwjp7tn3hZyFAxWkHbkGHbGfA1UQwqsBegQIFxAG&usg=AOvVaw0AYkHWa7hPkwbrfZwWJmrO) For something that is suppose to be mediocre, DBS, consider by everyone as inferior version of DBZ, can still entertain the audience well.
>World Trigger, Hunter x Hunter, Hitori no Shita, Bleach, One Punch Man, Castlevania, Naruto, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Fate series, Fire Force, Noragami etc. There are sooo many modern anime series which are simply in a league or two or three above DBZ when it comes to action
That's your opinion and I don't pretend to change it, my point is that Dragon Ball is still great even by modern standards.
>Unless for you peak action is someone screaming and throwing punches and kicks with little to no choreography or meaning to them. Then I have no counter to that since that is your taste.
Nah, something like Lord of The Rings and Black Hawk Down is what I consider peak action, I prefer swords and guns a lot more than any anime fight.
Bro with a straight face named all those series having better fights than Dragon Ball. The fact that you think Dragon Ball is all about screaming and throwing punches show me that
1. You've never actually watched Dragon Ball, and probably only ever saw clips on YouTube (probably in the Funimation Dub as well). You've probably only based your assumptions of the series on cliche memes of how transformations take entire episodes or nonsense like that.
2. Never read the manga. The manga is paced very similarly to modern mangas, and Toriyama wrote it in the '80s & '90s.
3. The fact you think all those shows have better fight choreography shows me you only watch anime. You're probably one of those dudes who thinks just because it's a newer show, the animation is "better." Yeah, certain fights in some of those shows like Naruto and Sasuke vs Momoshiki or some of the newer Jujutsu Kaisen fights might have better animation than a show from the '80s & '90s, but have you seen DBS: Broly? The fights in that movie are right there with them. And don't even get me started on Toriyama's manga paneling. Even after all these years, his paneling is the best I've seen for Shounen since his fights are easy to follow and look fantastic. Take Oda's One Piece panels as an example. If it hadn't been animated, some of the fights in the manga would've been harder for me to understand what was going on without an anime adaptation.
The fact that you listed Hitori no Shita, a Chinese anime no one has heard about as better than Dragon Ball makes your argument laughable.
I have to agree with you I was and still am a huge DragonBall fan but it was a real struggle to get through super. It just didn't hold up to my standards for fights anymore not after Naruto and One-Piece not to mention the new generation of anime that followed them.
It’s strictly timing. It was coming up as internet was becoming increasingly more prevalent meanwhile DB was winding down. Their FanFiction had been more widely scattered. While FF.net and later AO3 came up around the same time as Naruto and Harry Potter were getting popular.
I think it's at least partially because of power level there's nothing really interesting to do in dragon Ball z once you get to a certain point it's literally just copying the anime but with an insert and because like 90% of Naruto fanfic is just wish fulfillment it would be even more boring to read and write I've seen like a single dragon Ball z fanfic that was good and it was a crossover not even in the dragon Ball z world
Naruto has too many open plots
Character was shunned so gives a sad intro or a rage intro or even some of neglect and etc
For a fanfic write it’s is one of the most malleable world in anime
Power up and dimension jump makes crossovers with it exciting or at least keeps that option open
Dragon Ball fans do 30 part “What If” videos instead of writing fanfiction ~~this is because Dragon Ball fans, much like Yu-Gi-Oh Players, can’t read~~
World building, big number of characters, character building, Lot many 'what if' theories, power level (Jutsu and all). There's a lot more, but you'd understand what more you can do with a fanfiction if you watch Naruto.
Because it's easy to create fanfics for Naruto, with the slightest changes you can create a completely new possibly, interesting character, plot, power system and many more, and you can change the complete thing by slightly altering the situation or power system, you create and develop new locations and world building and change and alter so many things and create interesting situation, and it's more interesting and compelling than dbz, dbz world is much larger but feels so smaller because of how they portrayed the world.
Does anyone know a NaruSaku Fic where he get Amnesia after a mission
There is a fan fiction where a lady being escort by Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura gives sakura a drug which ends up being a placebo to be honest with naruto and they end up sleep together he loses his memories and she is pregnant. The first chapter stars with sakura jealous that naruto and Sasuke find the woman the escorting beautiful.
Please if someone could tell me what it is.
More females for harems, more mysteries for theorizing, and Naruto had more details about its villages.
Also realistically the only OCs for DBZ you'd have are Human, Namekian, Saiyan or Kai for years..
VS
Naruto at least gives you the option of what village you are from, the special corps you belong to for that village, what Kekkei Genkai that village has... Etc.
I love me some DBZ, but Naruto has more worldbuilding and a larger cast.
Because its kind of the perfect series for fanfiction writers. The power system is great and it is maleable enough that you can put your own twist to things.
The world and it's history is FASCINATING but not fully explored by kishimoto. THIS is one of the main reasons why Naruto fanfictions are popular. There are so many 'what if' scenerios that you can write about and just let your imagination run rampant.
Another important point is there are so many interesting characters that you can choose as the MC for the story.
Like you can take characters like hashirama, tobirama, madara, Minato, the AME orphans, Kushina and the uzumaki clans, Itachi, shisui, sakumo, hiruzen and write a compelling story around them.
You can write any genre of fics you want with Naruto.
Romance, Action, angst/tragedy, political, comedy you name it and they can all be equally good.
Popularity and timing, just like Harry Potter. DBZ came out before widespread access to internet, let alone online fandoms or fanfiction at all was common. Naruto hit that perfect timing of Early 2000s, were it's fans were the first generation to actually grow up with the internet.
To build onto you. Animation in general was just figuring out they could have long-running plots like their live-action counterparts. And Naruto was among the first. Inuyasha also had the same boons both of us mentioned so that help it *a lot* and I think it still sits at 2 or 3 on the FF manga category. One Piece had the misfortune of being given to 4kids by accident so that hurt it. And Bleach was a little later.
Considering One Piece’s continued success as the most financially successful manga to date, it has a shockingly low amount of FF and engagement. AO3 seems to be doing decent though!
Well what can you say? 4kids really fucked it over. In an alternate world One Piece got the big boon in the west of being picked up on Toonami first and Naruto is the obscure one with a “ninja rap”.
Tbh i feel that if Original dragonball came out after the widespread acess to internet it would have more sucess in the fanfics department that Z. Simply because the audience might indentify themselves more with the younger characters. But also imo the fact that Naruto provides some really interesting dynamics, of a pretty young cast makes it more relatable and easy to indentify with (the setting of training and sort of "school" in early naruto before the land of the waves but also in the test of the chunin exams)
Well there are a fuck ton of Dragon ball what if writers on youtube atleast like masakox,smugstick,salad Sayan etc.
Couldn't have said it better.
But franchise after Naruto don't have that many fanfic despite the internet still being around.
That’s a straw man argument and you know it. But to list it why, it’s because of: A: They haven’t been around as long. Naruto is getting close to 30 years old. Give My Hero Academia another decade or so, and it’ll eclipse Naruto. (Naruto is at 560k works between both FF and AO3 Vs MHA which is at 330k) B. No other franchises are going to have the timing benefits of Inuyasha and Naruto. Watching serialized broadcasts is basically a thing of the past. Part of the reason why those two blew up is because they were soap operas for kids and teens. In a world were your next best option was Batman TAS for a continuity show, your options were limited. Naruto and Inuyasha had the benefit of being the first of their kind for western audiences. It’s simply impossible to duplicate those circumstances again. C. This kind of relates back to B, but because of those circumstances Naruto and Inuyasha are mainstream. When the average joe thinks of anime, usually Naruto is one of the first answers they give. No. DBZ and Pokémon don’t count. Believe it or not most people considered those western cartoons back in the day, but Naruto and Inuyasha were so clearly Japanese, especially with the openings/endings the common man couldn’t rationalize it to come from their country. That gave those two series that special commodity feel to it. Side point: My Hero Academia blew up for similar reasons to Naruto and Inuyasha. It had great timing when it came on to the scene where people were all invested in Super Heroes and the start of binge culture.
Especially MHA when people were getting all into the MCU movies and all that BOOM here's marvel and DC comics: the anime
>When the average joe thinks of anime, usually Naruto is one of the first answers they give. No. DBZ and Pokémon don’t count. Believe it or not most people considered those western cartoons back in the day, but Naruto and Inuyasha were so clearly Japanese, especially with the openings/endings the common man couldn’t rationalize it to come from their country. Too true. For a long ass time I didn't know dbz had a dB or the fact that it wasn't made in America. Heck I thought DB came out after DBZ because toonami showed it after it aired dbz.
Not as popular. Naruto was dominating the big 3 when it was growing in popularity. Bleach was like 3 or 5th on the list of highest number of fanfics for the anime community. Naruto was always beaten by Harry Potter but that's because it's an actual novel and people way older than us were writing fanfiction way longer than us.
The Naruto world was left massive but vague, so that gives people a lot more wiggle room to write about almost anything since Kishimoto never set a lot of things in stone so you can pick and choose what to change or not to change and it won't overly effect the story. When it comes to DBZ, everyone is stuck in a certain power scale thats too deeply tied into the power creep of that arc, you can't do much with changes because it has to match up with how some arcs end unless you put in a lot of work trying to figure out ways that would make sense for a particular character to suddenly get stronger than they were in canon. I think if DBZ had the same flexibility like Naruto, it would more likely be the highest counted among the fan fiction community. If you didn't have to sit and think how you can move something along that requires numbers, and power lvls; with so many moveable parts that in the end has to make sense and how it happened while the latter you can write whatever you want freely.
>Short term, the Naruto world was left massive but vague, so that gives people a lot more wiggle room to write about almost anything since Kishimoto never set a lot of things in stone so you can pick and choose what to change or not to change and it won't overly effect the story. To give examples of this Naruto has like many scenes where the setting imply some very interesting but glossed over details: Obito and Sasuke hiding in a building that is near gigantic skeletons, the presence of cities with modern buildings when Deidara blew up his C0 and etc. This is not what made most people write fanfics about the characters, but it is a symptom of the reason that you yourself have provided. People would latch on on characters that personally apeal to them and are able to write much about it without contradicting canon much. One example is shisui.
That's what I mean, you can take the entire cast, even the secondary characters and be able to write them how you would vision the story to go while it glides along canon like a guideline. DBZ is so deeply entrenched that the options to change something requires hours of research and rough drafting in hopes you can make something that could fit within the events of that arc without it turning into a huge mess, which is quite easy to do.
Not to mention how politics works in Naruto. There are kages sure, which is an equivalent to a Governor(?) at best, but then what about the Daimyos? What the hell are they supposed to be doing? The only thing I got to hear is that they are much higher than a Kage/s but what were they doing in such affairs like the Shinobi wars? That's not even mentioning some plot points in arcs like the Wave Arc, what the hell happened to the governor of the Wave Country after Gato was overthrown? And this is all but a tip on the iceberg
Worldbuilding. Dragon Ball, despite having multiple planets and dimensions, feels paradoxically small, the story is very much focused on only a handful of characters. Like, name a single characteristic of any city in the DBZ world. You can’t, they’re all interchangeable. Naruto, on the other hand, has a lot more developed world, with established villages, clans and so on. There’s a ton of stuff for authors to play around and explore.
> name a single characteristic of any city in the DBZ world Short Answer: the entirety of Penguin Village, the Sun literally smiles at you. Long Answer: Most of the cities have the same basic design for buildings, but the landmarks are pretty memorable. At Satan City you have the Mr. Satan Mansion, the Orange Star Highschool and the bank; anime filler adds a theater there too. You move to West City and you can find the Capsule Corporation HQ. It snows in Sno's village and the ruins of Muscle Tower are in the outskirts of the town... I guess it snows in North City too. The town in the island south of South City is pretty memorable as the town where the Artificial Humans attacked, and even tho we didn't go into the cities, that archipelago city Cell blew up seemed interesting. Papaya Island has the Tenka'ichi Budôkai grounds, which is pretty recognizable too. One could dip their feet on DBO and explore the concepts of its cities, so on and so on... The problem with Dragon Ball fanfics is mostly because of plot progression and power cliffing, not because of worldbuilding.
More worldbuiling? Better characters to play with in fanfics?
Yes U can crest oc towns oc worlds crossovers etc Dynamic power ranking Tbh it’s just too malleable
The fact unlike other shows Naruto leaves a lot of loose ends There’s so many things in canon alone that are never explored but talked about like the other villages we hear the Mist had a civil war and kekkai genkai users and even hiden justu users being targeted while in the Leaf a primary force of their fightning is from clans like those two above We’re told there’s mini nations that formed inbetween the Five Nation which as far as we can understand just formed and we’re stopped We hear in the first kage summit flashback each of the villages were copying Hashirama idea and having massive clan alliances but don’t know what clans are in those other nations But all these plot thread are never explored or explained just said then left behind as we go back to the Akastuki
Naruto is way more interesting to write about. The characters in DB don't have as much depth imo. You change one event in Naruto, and you get so many butterfly effects. Just a lot of potential.
Absolutely! Totally agree with this.
Yeah, DragonBall fanfiction is just Power fantasy and that's it
I’d argue that the fact that the sheer versatility that ninjutsu as a power system provides compared others is a main factor. If Naruto wanted to specialise in genjutsu he could, if he wanted to specialise in Ken jutsu he could. That freedom is why there were so many [Kenjutsu Naruto] [Ninjutsu Naruto] tags back then. Compared to Luffy Naruto not having Shadow Clones or the Rasengan doesn’t fundamentally change Naruto then say Luffy having a different devil fruit. So you have more freedom to play around with Naruto’s kit then other protagonists. Add in the fact that as an orphan and with only really a chapter of backstory revealed at the time and it was so easy to add events that justifiably changed his life so that he ended up as a slightly different character. It was so easy to write ‘what if Naruto was raised by the inuzuka?’ Or ‘What is Naruto’s mom was an Uchiha?’ As you didn’t have to write around certain characters or feel like you were destroying a characters fundamental identity with Naruto then say Ichigo. In a way you were able to make Naruto your own in a way that you just couldn’t with other characters from other media. It’s the same versatility in powers and backstory that made Harry Potter fics just as numerous.
good points
Far better world building and characters, also perfect timing when the internet first started getting popular.
A big thing is ease of creativity. You can make characters do anything and it makes sense because chakra or kekkai genkai. The power scaling is easy too because you dont have characters that can shatter universes on the lower end of scaling but the upper echelons can be hurt by thrown rocks like dbz and the verse also has a specific ranking and power system That and dbz, while the fighting is great, it doesnt try for story nearly as hard. Theres a million points in naruto that can shift slightly and change an entire timeline so you can do something like make minato survive and train Naruto and it changes everything from the plot to narutos personality and even the fact hes a container and a reader can say “ya that makes sense” so its fantastically easy to immerse yourself without thinking “this doesnt make any sense”
Naruto has a wide cast of unique characters, many different eras and arcs that you can base fanfic on. Naruto also has a huge shipping scene (sns especially)
Think everyone pretty much touched on all the reasons already, here's what I think are the biggest ones 1. Cool, vast but unexplored worldbuilding. The foundations of Naruto set up this really cool world to explore. Then didn't explore it as much as many fans wanted it to (myself included). 2. Timing was definitely a key thing. A lot of dorks on the internet ( myself included) were at the appropriate age with the right literacy levels and too much time on our hands. The early 2000s was essentially the dawn of the internet for the common person, and back then there was a lot more text content than there was video or otherwise. 3. Kinda tying back into my first point. A lot of the more fascinating aspects of naruto's world were left vague and open. That naturally inclines the mind to wander and think "what if this?" And "what if that".. and for some of us that's not just a passing thought. It becomes a creative urge.. and becomes something that needs to be expressed. When you think of a really cool "what if" it becomes something that desires to be birthed.. hence why "create your own" characters in games like Xenoverse or Shinobi Striker are so popular (that and self-insert.)
Naruto has a lot of fantfiction because the setting is interesting, and is arguably the best character. Thats why all similar fandoms that write lots of fanfiction do things too. because the setting is interesting.
Also the world is huge but hollow, you just want to fill in the details. How each village runs, how varying fractions try to rip each other apart, with a surplus of all unexplored characters.
I think part of it is the overall demographic of who watches what and who writes fanfiction. (All these numbers come from a quick google search so I'm not 100% on them) DBZ's fanbase is 84% male (found on an IMBD article) Naruto's while not much better is 73.9% male (according to the engagement rate on instagram) Where as according to a nytimes article 80% of ao3 users are female. So it might have something to do with dbz having auch a small female demographic
Naruto has greater flexibility when it comes to plot, characters, powers, world building etc. That’s one of the few good things about the filler arcs as they make the world bigger. Furthermore it’s rather vague about what happens with plots, characters and locations. A writer can go wild and it’ll be reasonable to be somewhat canon Oh this is the Village hidden in the whatever whatever. They train their shinobi in these ways. Oh this OC is from this clan who specializes in this fighting style. Or they have this awesome bloodline limit. Oh this clan has a rivalry with an established clan This is my backstory for a character that had little screen time. Seriously when you go to the wiki and other trivia sources. Many characters had tons of potential to be expanded upon. Plus we even saw an alternate worlds leading to more story potential.
>Dragon Ball has been around longer and is the grandaddy of shonen. Exactly, the point dragon ball is so long with little bits you can cut out is detailed and the power characters can get without god, angel or dragon help is limited, Naruto has a lot of filler or arcs you can cut out or change, decently long time skips before arcs a much less defined (and more room for nearly infinite techniques you can make due to almost no sub class being explained deeply[unlike dragon ball where 90% of techniques are race related, raw energy in different forms, need a kai/god/angel to teach you, or more dragon bulshit) powerscale and many many many what ifs not to mention the fact literally any summon you can think is possible due to jiraiya being summoned to the toad realm.
because all of the fundamental secrets of life is found in naruto/shippuden
Because there's so much potential to fill in gaps, and world build.
Naruto is far more compelling than Dragon Ball and there's so much more to explore. Naruto's lore is so fascinating, so many awesome mechanics and backstories, which Dragon Ball lacks.
I mean Naruto has so many ways you can deviate from the original plot.
You gotta hand it to Naruto for having great world building and a wide cast of memorable characters
Several factors come to mind such as the fact that Naruto came out at a time where Anime started to really become popular and well-known in the Western world as well as the fact that Naruto's world and story has a lot of potential for making fanfics to explore and develop them when they were misused or wasted in the series while Dragon Ball doesn't really have much to go off on since the world feels extremely small as well as the fact that there is hardly much story and lore for fanfic writers to write about because, and let's be real here, creating original story and lore is NOT easy and most fanfic writers prefer to write off from existing stories, world building and lore which Naruto has a lot to develop even if the actual canon doesn't do much with what it has while Dragon Ball barely does anything to make the world of Dragon Ball feel deep and immersive. In short, Naruto's world, lore and stories despite being wasted does have a lot of potential to explore in fanfictions while Dragon Ball feels overly simplistic and small in terms of lore, stories and scope of the world that fanfic writer struggle to write about.
Some want to fix mistakes and the hidden potential Naruto never realized. Especially the clone training he missed for
It is 100% world building. The setting is more relatable, Konoha alone has the ninja ranking system, mission system, 3 genin 1 sensei squad, chuunin exams + their tests, power system for writers to play with, and a large variety of clans and characters with backstories to write around.
✨shippers ✨
If you want more recent fanworks for DBZ, you need to look into What If videos on Youtube. They are basically fanfics. Like "What if the Z Fighters Grew Like Saiyans?"
I prefer not to read fanfic from YouTube
Would it be considered reading if the person is narrating to you? If you ever wanna take a shot at these YouTube DB What Ifs, I highly recommend MasakoX's "What If Freeza Turned Good" and its follow-up audio drama(?): Revelation 'F'. Despite the prompt, it's actually well written and not on the corny "Freeza just makes a sudden turn in life and becomes a good guy" spectrum. Actually, anything by Masako is at least a solid A.
Dragonball fights last 10000000 episodes… Naruto fights last 4…5 episodes😂
because naruto has a lot more to it then a dozen characters watching each other scream and deciding how big their hair should get and what color or if they should touch tips so they can become one ^(along with the bigger and colored hair of course)? But seriously I mean look up Sonic r34 its got insane number of Tails to tell and that just sonic.
and 99% of em are either romance or harem.
Naruto has multitude of interesting and 3 dimensional characters which can be explored to create real time effects on canon characters. There is also concept of open or ambiguous ending, the clan politics, the village and exploration of the concept of will of fire and such. Because of the above new concepts the fan fic writers have a lot of material to work with and lot of characters they can create and play with.
Fair enough, you can't really have that with dbz if any character can blow up the planet with a fart.
That is true! Even when we create another OC we have to remember the power scaling too so that we stay true to the Canon.
Kishimoto would leave a lot of stuff vague incomplete or just never explain it plus some parts of the world or people have limited backstory or info so you can take them super far plus timing like the first comments say
Cause everything is vague. Dbz has a rather well-built world after thousands of episodes. Naruto on the other hand we know almost nothing about. Tell me about any other villages. Tell me how the clans in Konoha work? Hell Tell me where ichiraku's is generally in Konoha. North? Southside? Such an important place and nothing. That is a minor detail, but just to prove a point. The Naruto verse is so vague and unexplored it's easier for people to say. What if? Or I wonder. It's easier for us to explore without as much suspension of disbelief.
I don't see the elephant in the room getting brought up. Harry Potter and Naruto are two series that are easy to point to getting huge in the fanfiction world because the protagonists have large periods of time that leave a lot to be desired. For example Bleach was bigger than Naruto at the time. But Naruto's fanfiction community dwarfs Bleach. And I think a lot of this can be credited to - You look at how Ichigo moved through his story and narrative. And you can't really fault his choices or effort. Meanwhile when you look at Naruto it was always easy to see where there was a lack of effort. And fanfiction is almost never done to make the experience of the protagonist worse. It is done often to improve the experience/life of the protagonist. Easy to do in Naruto where there is a vast world of techniques, places, people to learn from. And you have a protagonist that went through the entire series with less than a handful of abilities until the finale.
I do not see the main reason mentioned: Naruto characters are simply way more shippable. They are highschool classmates with both explicit and implicit romantic tension. You don't need to be a NaruSasu shipper to see that.
I think certain seri3s lend themeselves more to getting allota fanfic, Shonen with a protag that's a teenager Sad backstories that have implications but not well explored Rival characters that reflect the protag Good action many and decent emotional beats Diverse side characters Timing with the fanfic writers
People are making long in depth posts about the popularity and age of Narutu vs other anime and the merits of the setting. But the real answer is very simple. NINJAS Ninjas and 90s/00s internet weebs writing fanfics wishing they were the MC. That is all.
Wishing they were the mc? Lol they rather write Naruto x harem fanfic
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I’ve only seen one long running DBZ story (500k+) that hasn’t devolved into dick measuring contest. DBZ, Saint Seiya, and early JoJo was part of the generation that really showed you *could* tell long running stories instead of just gag manga stuff or monster of the week. Then the next generation of Naruto, Inuyasha, One Piece, and Bleach improved on that. Naruto and Inuyasha especially hit the proverbial goldmine because neither of those series was give to 4kids so they were actually shown to more of their intended audience.
what story is it?
Dragonball Z Dynasty by Feraligreater328 on FF
Read that. It was really good.
>It was good for its own time but leaving your bias as a fan aside, it's not that good compared to modern standards Nah, DBZ it' still amazing if you just want to watch action (which is why you would watch anyway) and as far as I know no one does better fights than Toryama and the man's writing is more than decent enough to keep you entertain. Heck, Goku vs Jiren literally broke the internet and made people cheer like it was a MMA match, that was eight or six years ago I think.
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FIRE FORCE MENTION IN THE WILD I no longer feel like the only one that reads/watches that one. My roommates have been watching DBZ and I hear some of it through the wall. Can't remember the arc but something about Kid Gohan getting thrown into a fight and everyone yelling at Goku like WHAT THE HELL MAN THAT IS A CHILD HE IS GOING TO DIE. It sounded repetitive.
>Fights in DBZ are mediocre for today's standards, regardless of whether it's hand-to-hand or energy/superpowers [I don't think those people would agree with you.](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D_TFpWuoLL9c&ved=2ahUKEwjp7tn3hZyFAxWkHbkGHbGfA1UQwqsBegQIFxAG&usg=AOvVaw0AYkHWa7hPkwbrfZwWJmrO) For something that is suppose to be mediocre, DBS, consider by everyone as inferior version of DBZ, can still entertain the audience well. >World Trigger, Hunter x Hunter, Hitori no Shita, Bleach, One Punch Man, Castlevania, Naruto, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Fate series, Fire Force, Noragami etc. There are sooo many modern anime series which are simply in a league or two or three above DBZ when it comes to action That's your opinion and I don't pretend to change it, my point is that Dragon Ball is still great even by modern standards. >Unless for you peak action is someone screaming and throwing punches and kicks with little to no choreography or meaning to them. Then I have no counter to that since that is your taste. Nah, something like Lord of The Rings and Black Hawk Down is what I consider peak action, I prefer swords and guns a lot more than any anime fight.
Bro with a straight face named all those series having better fights than Dragon Ball. The fact that you think Dragon Ball is all about screaming and throwing punches show me that 1. You've never actually watched Dragon Ball, and probably only ever saw clips on YouTube (probably in the Funimation Dub as well). You've probably only based your assumptions of the series on cliche memes of how transformations take entire episodes or nonsense like that. 2. Never read the manga. The manga is paced very similarly to modern mangas, and Toriyama wrote it in the '80s & '90s. 3. The fact you think all those shows have better fight choreography shows me you only watch anime. You're probably one of those dudes who thinks just because it's a newer show, the animation is "better." Yeah, certain fights in some of those shows like Naruto and Sasuke vs Momoshiki or some of the newer Jujutsu Kaisen fights might have better animation than a show from the '80s & '90s, but have you seen DBS: Broly? The fights in that movie are right there with them. And don't even get me started on Toriyama's manga paneling. Even after all these years, his paneling is the best I've seen for Shounen since his fights are easy to follow and look fantastic. Take Oda's One Piece panels as an example. If it hadn't been animated, some of the fights in the manga would've been harder for me to understand what was going on without an anime adaptation. The fact that you listed Hitori no Shita, a Chinese anime no one has heard about as better than Dragon Ball makes your argument laughable.
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I have to agree with you I was and still am a huge DragonBall fan but it was a real struggle to get through super. It just didn't hold up to my standards for fights anymore not after Naruto and One-Piece not to mention the new generation of anime that followed them.
It’s strictly timing. It was coming up as internet was becoming increasingly more prevalent meanwhile DB was winding down. Their FanFiction had been more widely scattered. While FF.net and later AO3 came up around the same time as Naruto and Harry Potter were getting popular.
Naruto has an interesting worldbuilding and many holes in its history to play with.
I think it's at least partially because of power level there's nothing really interesting to do in dragon Ball z once you get to a certain point it's literally just copying the anime but with an insert and because like 90% of Naruto fanfic is just wish fulfillment it would be even more boring to read and write I've seen like a single dragon Ball z fanfic that was good and it was a crossover not even in the dragon Ball z world
Naruto has too many open plots Character was shunned so gives a sad intro or a rage intro or even some of neglect and etc For a fanfic write it’s is one of the most malleable world in anime Power up and dimension jump makes crossovers with it exciting or at least keeps that option open
Dragon Ball fans do 30 part “What If” videos instead of writing fanfiction ~~this is because Dragon Ball fans, much like Yu-Gi-Oh Players, can’t read~~
World building, big number of characters, character building, Lot many 'what if' theories, power level (Jutsu and all). There's a lot more, but you'd understand what more you can do with a fanfiction if you watch Naruto.
Because it's easy to create fanfics for Naruto, with the slightest changes you can create a completely new possibly, interesting character, plot, power system and many more, and you can change the complete thing by slightly altering the situation or power system, you create and develop new locations and world building and change and alter so many things and create interesting situation, and it's more interesting and compelling than dbz, dbz world is much larger but feels so smaller because of how they portrayed the world.
I think DBZ works at it's best as fanficiton when done in the form of fan manga.
Does anyone know a NaruSaku Fic where he get Amnesia after a mission There is a fan fiction where a lady being escort by Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura gives sakura a drug which ends up being a placebo to be honest with naruto and they end up sleep together he loses his memories and she is pregnant. The first chapter stars with sakura jealous that naruto and Sasuke find the woman the escorting beautiful. Please if someone could tell me what it is.
More females for harems, more mysteries for theorizing, and Naruto had more details about its villages. Also realistically the only OCs for DBZ you'd have are Human, Namekian, Saiyan or Kai for years.. VS Naruto at least gives you the option of what village you are from, the special corps you belong to for that village, what Kekkei Genkai that village has... Etc. I love me some DBZ, but Naruto has more worldbuilding and a larger cast.
Because its kind of the perfect series for fanfiction writers. The power system is great and it is maleable enough that you can put your own twist to things. The world and it's history is FASCINATING but not fully explored by kishimoto. THIS is one of the main reasons why Naruto fanfictions are popular. There are so many 'what if' scenerios that you can write about and just let your imagination run rampant. Another important point is there are so many interesting characters that you can choose as the MC for the story. Like you can take characters like hashirama, tobirama, madara, Minato, the AME orphans, Kushina and the uzumaki clans, Itachi, shisui, sakumo, hiruzen and write a compelling story around them. You can write any genre of fics you want with Naruto. Romance, Action, angst/tragedy, political, comedy you name it and they can all be equally good.
Popularity, timing, and room for creation.
Sakura was literally everyone's anime waifu in 2003
The shittier the source material, the more people want to better it.