>>531324949
I'm not advocating for hard rules that would apply 100% of the time. In fact I liked some of the more serious parts of DBM, especially the Gast special chapters. Pic related. It's basically just "Dragon Ball but Star Wars lmao" but it's easy to dissociate from the usual Dragon Ball setting the way it's written, and with the very different (but competent) art. This is a decent way to handle it, as long as you don't pretend too hard this fits the "regular" Dragon Ball universe (because it doesn't)

If you want to be more faithful to the way Dragon Ball is written then yes you should have some self-awareness as a writer and avoid being overindulgent. You can get serious, like Toriyama did on Namek by showing dark things, but you need to keep the tone and pacing right so that it doesn't become melodrama and a different kind of work. Dragon Ball can get serious and tragic but it has its own way to do it, it's very different from what the fanfictions do.

Basically I'm saying you don't have to write Zeno-samas and make everything a joke like modern Toriyama did, but at the very least if you're trying to be in line with Dragon Ball then pay attention to the tone the manga had over the years and don't deviate too much from it.

The Yamcha isekai did it really well, NTR chapter excluded maybe.