By Casey Baseel, RocketNews24

Akira Toriyama feels your pain, anime fight fans.

Some six months into its run on broadcaster Fuji TV, "Dragon Ball Super," the follow-up to anime smash hit "Dragon Ball Z," hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. While the latest installments of the newly restarted "Dragon Ball" animated movie franchise have been met with warm responses, there’s been surprisingly little excitement generated by the second coming of one of the most successful and influential TV anime of all time.

Among other things, discerning viewers have been grumbling about "Dragon Ball Super’s" art, and at least in the cases shown here, it’s hard to say they’re being unreasonably picky.

But audiences aren’t the only ones who sometimes get miffed at the franchise’s lackluster portrayal of purportedly epic martial arts battles. In an interview included in the just released "30th Anniversary Dragon Ball Super History Book," which commemorates the three-decade mark since the first episode of "Dragon Ball" aired, Toriyama expressed his appreciation for his fans’ support, and also revealed that he’s not entirely without opinion on the way the adaptations of his manga are sometimes handled, saying: “I was upset about the live-action [American-produced] movie…and I complain when the quality of the TV anime is poor.”

Toriyama doesn’t specify whether he’s talking about "Dragon Ball Super" or some other segment of "Dragon Ball’s" TV incarnation, but we’re guessing someone got an earful for this.

It’s one thing to brush off the grumblings of obsessive fans, many of whom may have inflated expectations for the animation quality of the "Dragon Ball" franchise stemming from their nostalgic childhood memories of the anime, or from first experiencing it in its retouched "Dragon Ball Kai" form. But it’s a little harder to dismiss the criticisms of the series’ creator, so here’s hoping that Toriyama expressing his frustration helps slow the trend of TV broadcasts being the rough beta version of anime.

Source: Yahoo! News Japan

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