Watching some DBZ from that torrent anon linked int he last thread, fuck I forgot how padded this shit was. Like excruciating episodes in the Cell saga. I get it animation is expensive but god damn spending like 30 seconds on a 4-frame looping animated cloud of dust really drives home how cheap production was then.
Episode is 24 minutes; op-ed take about 2.5, recap is another 2-3. call it 5 minutes total. so that's over 20% of the run time right there. you have 19 minutes to fill. lot of static panning shots, lot of people staring in incredulity/horror at something very Spielberg he does this too. I wouldn't be surprised if the episodes got trimmed down in America to cram more commercials in as well, which might reduce some the obvious repetitiveness of the animations.
I'm really glad anime production values went up. Compare DBZ to something like Frieren or even Strike Witches. the difference in quality is obvious. You might say this is unfair, but Disney was already killing it in animation, so it's not a technological hurdle. It's money and effort. If I were to make DBZ today I would simply mandate less episodes and spend less time on these static shots, pack more into each episode, stop wasting so much of the viewers time. Gohan putting Cell away should be two episodes tops.
Anyway I couldn't see myself rewatching this shit today with such obvious padding out and stretching of minimal animation. Not in Current Year.