For all the flak it gets as the father of modern shonen, many don't realize how rarely Dragon Ball uses the tropes it helped to codify without said tropes being parodied or subverted somehow. Overall, a lot of what the series is best known for is so rarely played straight that it actually borders on being Deconstructive Parody of its imitators when looked at from a perspective of a modern audience.
- The protagonist Son Goku is often considered to be the Trope Codifier of the Stock Shōnen Hero, but he lacks several attributes that are now considered iconic of this archetype:
- These characters usually have some grand ambition or goal (like being the next Pirate King, the next Hokage, the next #1 Hero, a Pokemon Master, etc), while Goku only cares about getting stronger and fighting strong opponents purely because he enjoys a good fight.
- While shonen heroes are usually noble and selfless, Goku isn't always straightforwardly heroic, and has many times put his own selfish desires over the common good, such as sparing dangerous antagonists so he can fight against them again in the future. He's closer to a Wuxia hero in that while he'll always help out someone he sees is in trouble, he doesn't spend all day looking for that sort of thing like Superman does. The nobility he has a reputation for was far more emphasized in the anime than in the manga (and the Funimation dub exaggerated it even further), which original creator Akira Toriyama has criticized since he always meant for Goku to have a more selfish side to him that occasionally sneaks through.
- Lastly, most shonen heroes are kids or teenagers and only appear as married adults with children in a Distant Finale. While Goku is introduced as a kid, he's spent most of the series as a married adult with a son and actually becomes a grandfather late in the series.
- While Goku is famous for codifying the Idiot Hero in shonen manga, he isn't actually an idiot so much as being very naive. A lot of his strangeness coming from ignorance of the world around him due to his upbringing: he was raised in a forest far away from modern civilization, and spent most of his early childhood living by himself among wild animals thanks to the death of his adopted grandfather. Because of this, he isn't aware of the kind of knowledge or social norms that most of the other characters (and the viewers) see as a rule-of-thumb, and it's Master Roshi who teaches him basic skills like reading, writing, and arithmetic. The series also makes a point of showing that, when it comes to battle, Goku is a genius-level prodigy, able to come up with new training techniques himself and think up clever strategies while fighting, making it an unintentional subversion of the Attack! Attack! Attack! method of fighting a lot of characters he's influenced rely on (though Goku himself is definitely no stranger to this method, as the series is also famous for its Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs). And, while shonen heroes are known for their large appetites, Goku's Big Eater tendencies are a trait that all Saiyans share, with it being demonstrated that no human could possibly eat such huge portions (while it is worth noting that Toriyama didn't come up with the whole Saiyan thing until later, Goku was Ambiguously Human from the start).
- Despite being the Trope Namer and Codifier for Power Levels, the whole idea was a concept meant to illustrate how inaccurate and frivolous it would be to try and numerically quantify someone's fighting ability (or, much more specifically, their chi), according to Word of God. Numerous times, the villains end up losing because they miscalculate the ability of their opponents by their power levels alone, not accounting for skill, tactics, or the fact that the characters learn to recognize this and trick their opponents by hiding their power, not to mention transformations. This becomes an Exaggerated Trope in the Android Saga, which explicitly states that the Artificial Humans do not have detectable power levels due to not having chi at all (and thus their chi would be read by a scouter as "0"). Attempting to sense an android's power level is the equivalent of trying to detect the power level of an atomic bomb: it'd be undetectable, despite the bomb obviously being nigh-infinitely more powerful than any human alive. Despite this, it's still very common to see fans attempt to put a number to their power level (which becomes problematic considering how many characters are introduced after power levels go away), which hilariously misses the entire point.
- The clearest example of this is Guldo in the Namek Arc. His battle power is pitiful to the point that even Krillin could take him on in a straight fight, but his time freeze ability completely side-steps the need to be powerful and lets him dodge attacks with ease or freeze his opponents in place, such that he could impale them with sharp objects and win that way. The only reason Gohan and Krillin survived is because Vegeta stepped in.
- It codified the Shonen Tournament Arc but subverted it long before other shows did. While most tournament arcs end with the main protagonist coming out on top in the end, Goku actually loses the first two and forfeits the last two (three if the Cell Games are counted). Master Roshi even tells him and Krillin that participating in the tournament is just another part of their training, and that winning isn't the point at all (and, in fact, he also entered the tournament under an alias to keep them from winning, so they wouldn't come to believe themselves above everybody else in fighting skill); instead, the point is to see what they're made of, an outlook Goku carries with him for every future opponent. This last point especially sticks out considering how the protagonist of another shonen anime that started right around when DBZ originally ended is often reduced to a laughing stock among viewers for his frequent losses. Lampshaded by this comic
, ironically released not long before said protagonist won the Alola League. - The manga also pulled one of these on itself: when Goku first confronts the shapeshifting Oolong, the latter constantly stalls time by taking on bigger and more powerful-looking forms to try and intimidate an increasingly impatient Goku (who just wants to fight the guy), only to run off because Oolong in actuality is very weak and can only hold a form for five minutes at a time. This is from the same series that would later become infamous for having copious amounts of padding and filler as a result of its anime adaptation, to say nothing of the number of later Dragon Ball villains with increasingly powerful transformations.
- Goku is almost always the one to defeat the main villain in every arc, and winds up being one of the most powerful characters in the series (if not the most). Naturally, the rest of the cast come to rely on him a little too much. It gets so bad that the other characters are unable to catch up, getting slaughtered by the Androids in Future Trunks' timeline specifically because he's not there to save them (he succumbs to a heart disease well before the Androids even show up). Not only is he aware of this problem, but he also takes steps to avoid it: starting with the Cell Saga he willingly takes a back seat, while still helping his friends, just so they'll learn to handle their problems without him, and starts looking for a successor, initially choosing his firstborn son Gohan, then Goten and Trunks, and later Uub. This is the reason he trains Gohan to fight Perfect Cell, instead of doing it himself, and naturally everyone is shocked. Given that the series (chronologically) ends with Uub becoming his apprentice, it's unclear whether this attempt at a successor works out.
- Vegeta is the codifier for the Stock Shōnen Rival... except that he's almost always placed below Goku. Vegeta is unable to accept that Goku is above him and he's unable to catch up, and this combined with Goku's habit of constantly surpassing him even when he squeaks ahead is what ultimately drive him to pull a second (and brief) Face–Heel Turn. All those years of resentment and anger at being second best to The Hero pushed him to his breaking point, causing him to make a Deal with the Devil, play right into the villains' hands and essentially doom the world, solely in exchange for enough power to finally beat Goku. It's also worth pointing out that unlike the rivalries seen in later shonen series, Vegeta's rivalry with Goku is almost entirely one-sided, with Goku regarding Vegeta as a friend and sparring partner, but never having to worry about catching up to him after his introductory arc. This along with Goku's general friendliness just makes Vegeta even angrier. It takes until the Buu Arc for Vegeta to admit that Goku is the better warrior between them, but that doesn't mean he can't keep trying alongside Goku to surpass him as a Friendly Rival and thus gains a far healthier outlook on his drive to defeat him again.
- While time skips are commonly used in shonen these days, at the time it was very unusual and even controversial when Toriyama decided to do one and age all the characters up. In particular, Goku, who went from a somewhat stubby little boy, aged up to a muscular, full-grown man, a decision Toriyama's editor was against at the time because it changed the appeal of the character. Toriyama chose to do it because Goku's small, short frame made it difficult to draw fight scenes in a series that was becoming increasingly more action-oriented; the skip to the 22nd Tournament was explicitly done just to lengthen his limbs to how they appeared in action panels, but even that wasn't enough. Even before this, time actually did pass, and the characters did age, but it was subtle enough to not be too noticeable. The series then went on to have several more time skips, often occurring after each major arc, until the characters were all middle-aged, with children ranging from toddlers to adults. By comparison, most shonen only have one major Time Skip (usually at the halfway point of a series), and characters don't start getting married and having children until the epilogue. Most of them are stuck in their teenage years throughout, usually to emphasize Adults Are Useless despite the fact that the codifier's adult self is the most iconic one.
- "Ultimate Techniques", an ace-in-the-hole attack, are also most notable in Dragon Ball, especially the most famous of all, the Spirit Bomb. Shockingly however, Goku's first two attempts to use them - against Vegeta and Frieza - actually failed to defeat them. If anything, they only brought time and evened the playing field, if at all, and charging it up left Goku very vulnerable. The one time it does canonically work against Kid Buu, just beforehand, Goku would have been killed by his own attack had Dende not wished for him to regain his lost energy. Other more "low-key" examples, such as Vegeta's Final Burst Cannon and Piccolo's Light Grenade, did nothing to Frieza or Imperfect Cell respectively, even though it was their most powerful attacks at the time. And who can forget the Final Flash, which actually did possess the power to kill Perfect Cell...had it hit him directly, but Vegeta had to curve it up slightly to avoid destroying the Earth, meaning he couldn't pull off a direct impact; his aforementioned Final Burst Cannon and Goku's Instant Transmission Kamehameha would have done the same. Turns out, ultimate attacks from people powerful enough to destroy planets won't just take the bad guy down. Overall, ultimate attacks are very high-risk, low-reward manoeuvres in the setting, whilst others often demonstrate them as being the end-all, be-all.
