Fantastische Hure said:
DragonBall has done so many times. It's like AT's characters each Saga role-playing characters from other films/series/mythologies l0l. I guess one thing he didn't rip-off was designs, even-though come to think of it 3rd Form Freeza was a complete Alien rip-off design-wise.
I'd say that's a gross exaggeration, aside from perhaps Future Trunks (and even then, he's a very poor man's John Connor). Most of the similarities to other works in the characters' personalities comes as the result of several roles being archetypical such as Roshi's role as a mentor or Freeza's role as a tyrant. Whenever Toriyama brought in a character clearly inspired by another work, there was always a twist to their personality such as Gyumao being a friendly giant or Roshi's perverted nature making him a twist on the wild old master trope.
Again, if the design is such a strong area of contention then this applies double for OP with how many of its character designs were inspired from a multitude of sources and if drawing just as thin a line of what constitutes as a "ripoff", you could make just as many grand claims in the inspiration behind some characters such as saying Luffy is a Goku ripoff, Nami is a Fujiko Mine ripoff, etc. of which you could imply double when some later characters basically become rehashes of previous characters within the series (Hody being a poor meng's Arlong, Doflamingo being a less intelligent Crocodile, etc.)
Kenshi said:
Nothing in Dragon Ball was as bad of a shameless rip off as Naruto ripping off the Hunter Exams arc or the entirety of Bleach in general.
To be fair on Naruto, the Chunin Exams were at least a unique take on the Hunter Exams in several ways, since it had more of a focus on showing variety in its cast and making it seem as though most of the competitors had the chance of passing, whereas the Hunter Exams made it apparent Gon's group, Hisoka and Illumi were the only ones who mattered to the plot. Chunin Exams also had an extra bit of interest in how it acted as a way of showing how fragile the peace was between each of the nations. Also, in terms of plagarism in comparison to unique ideas, it's at least far better than the Hero Exams of My Ripoff Academia was.
Bleach could kind of be defended for its first arc in that it had a lot more focus on what the battles between the Hollows meant for the characters involved than YYH did, though its far harder to defend the basic premise following so many story beats of YYH and impossible to defend for the later arcs when they abandon the one premise that made Detergent somewhat unique.