You don’t have to be an anime fan to know how popular Dragon Ball is. Akira Toriyama’s iconic adventure series has captured fans’ hearts for decades and stands as one of the most recognizable anime out there.
It’s hard to beat Dragon Ball, and the series inspired tons of different anime and manga that came after it. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t series that come close. These anime rival Dragon Ball as some of the best the medium has to offer.
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Attack on Titan
Though it might not quite be on the level of Dragon Ball, Attack on Titan became a worldwide phenomenon during the 2010s. Even years after its conclusion, AoT still has a dedicated fan base and continues to be talked about and looked back on fondly.
What really makes Attack on Titan stand out is its strong narrative and world-building. Sure, the action is great, and the animation is top-notch, but the thing that will stick with you the most with this series is the characters, their struggles, and how the world they live in shapes them, as well as your understanding of their motivations and morality.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
Having at one point shared the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump with Dragon Ball, Hirohiko Araki’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has remained a fan-favorite series for decades. It took a little longer for JoJo’s to get the same kind of international recognition Dragon Ball did, but now that the series has a wider reach, fans have been able to see just how great it is.
Guess the anime from the emojis.
Guess the anime from the emojis.
Easy (120s)Medium (90s)Hard (60s)
With different ‘parts’ spanning multiple eras and timelines, JoJo’s has a versatile cast of characters and is one of the few long-running series to have avoided becoming stale. It constantly reinvents itself and can always be counted on to give fans an interesting story with great characters and memorable moments.
Bleach
One of the ‘Big 3’, Bleach is a series that was influenced by Dragon Ball and would go on to carry on the legacy it left behind while it ran in Weekly Shonen Jump. Though the anime seemed like it would never fully adapt the manga, the resurgence the series has been experiencing thanks to the Thousand-Year Blood War anime has been a welcome surprise to many.
Bleach’s focus on transformations, strong rivalries, and world-threatening villains are some of the things it shares in common with Dragon Ball. Kubo does a lot to make Bleach stand out on its own, but just like the rest of the ‘Big 3’, you can see the Dragon Ball influence throughout.
You could also make the argument that the original 2003 adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist belongs here, but Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood still stands as one of the best anime of the 2000s.
It’s easy to see why Brotherhood is such a beloved classic. The story is interesting and full of impactful moments, but what stands out the most is the strong bond between its leads, Ed and Al, as well as the amazing development the series gives to its supporting cast. Ed and Al’s journey to reclaim their bodies and atone for the sin of committing Human Transmutation is filled with emotional highs and lows, and by the end of it, you’ll see why so many anime fans hold the series in such high regard.
Naruto
Another one of the ‘Big 3’ that served as the face of Shonen Jump well after Dragon Ball had ended, Naruto is a quintessential adventure anime. There have been plenty of anime to use Ninjas as a hook, but none managed to be as unique and interesting as Masashi Kishimoto’s magnum opus.
There are a bunch of little things about Naruto that you can see were most likely inspired by Dragon Ball. Things like a glutinous protagonist with an insatiable appetite, a brooding rival, a lecherous mentor, and an energy-based power system are just some similarities between the two. Like so many great shonen that came after Dragon Ball, Naruto was able to build off elements and tropes that made Toriyama’s series so beloved and use that template to create something that truly stuck out on its own.
Yu Yu Hakusho
Dragon Ball might be one of the biggest anime of the ’90s, but another shonen series that’s just as good, and that sometimes gets overlooked, is Yu Yu Hakusho. Some fans might know series creator Yoshihiro Togashi for Hunter x Hunter, and while it’s a hit, it wasn’t Togashi’s only major success.
Yu Yu Hakusho and Dragon Ball are somewhat similar, with both being battle shonen and coming from around the same era. But there are plenty of things that differentiate it from Toriyama’s classic. Yu Yu Hakusho is thought by many to have stronger character development, especially when it comes to Yusuke. It also comes across as a little more grounded when compared to the constant one-upmanship Dragon Ball would engage in later on in the series.
One Piece
Not only was One Piece inspired by Dragon Ball, making up the ‘Big 3’ alongside Naruto and Bleach, but in the nearly three decades that the series has been running, Eiichiro Oda’s pirate adventure may have very well surpassed Dragon Ball in popularity.
It’s easy to see why fans love One Piece. Oda has done an amazing job of carefully crafting a fun adventure with some of the best world-building in anime and manga. You’d think that a series running as long as One Piece has would be running out of juice, but Oda has a plan, and he’s been executing it flawlessly for years. There’s so much payoff and so much more to come that it’s hard not to suggest One Piece to any anime fan interested. It might be notoriously long, but the characters, unique world, and still unanswered mystery behind the eponymous One Piece make it all worth it.
Dragon Ball
- Release Date
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1986 – 1989
- Network
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Fuji TV
- Directors
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Osamu Kasai, Daisuke Nishio, Kazuhisa Takenouchi, Minoru Okazaki, Mitsuo Hashimoto, Yoshihiro Ueda, Yutaka Satoh, Yûji Endô
- Writers
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Akira Toriyama, Keiji Terui, Toshiki Inoue, Takao Koyama, Michiru Shimada, Yasushi Hirano, Katsuyuki Sumisawa, Yuichiro Oguro, Miho Maruo, Shunichi Yukimuro
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Masako Nozawa
Son Goku (voice)
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Mayumi Tanaka
Krillin (voice)