by The anime is catching up with the manga.
With the end of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Pillar Training Arc, it was announced that the movie trilogy “Infinity Castle Arc,” which will be the final battle with the demons, will be released. We can expect high-quality animation like the “Infinity Train Arc.”
However, some fans are concerned that there are not enough episodes and that the screening time will be drawn out. What kind of direction is the “length padding” they are worried about? In this article, we look back at how the anime Dragon Ball Z stretched out the original manga.
Battle scenes are over in an instant when animated! One of the fundamental problems when turning manga into anime is the speed at which content is consumed. In the manga, it is common for battle scenes to be drawn over several pages or even over several volumes. The more detailed the depiction, the more pages there will be. However, even battle scenes drawn with extensive depictions are over in an instant when visualized.
High-quality animation can encapsulate the original work’s essence in a single movement, profoundly engaging the viewer’s emotions. Anime allows you to experience the manga you’ve savored over weeks or months in just a few minutes. This accelerated consumption often leads to the anime catching up with the original work, as seen in the case of Dragon Ball.
Dragon Ball Z, the anime that follows Son Goku’s adult life, is heavily focused on battles. The speed at which the original work is consumed when animated is genuinely astonishing, leaving fans in awe of the rapid progression.
To suppress the consumption of the original work, the insertion of original episodes for the anime and the slowing down of the staging, called “length padding,” was adopted. Both were adopted in the anime Dragon Ball Z. The final battle between Goku, who has become a Super Saiyan, and Frieza, known for the extensive use of length padding, to the point that even young fans found it unnatural.
