And by clone, I don't mean the suggestions google gives of stuff like yu yu hakusho and such; Dragon ball had a world of humans, animal people, vampires, demons and unexplained weird races (basically it felt like whatever occurred to Toriyama to draw, he drew); it had people in low tech areas living and interacting with people in super high tech areas; parts of the world felt remote and unconnected even despite modern + advanced tech existing, such that you had towns that would be plagued by an ogre (Oolong in disguise) or other strange beings. You could be strolling and reach a gateway into the demon realm; the world had more dinosaurs than it did modern creatures. The main character was also able to turn into a giant ape. It also gave us Bulma, a character who upon first meeting Goku, a child, tried to shoot him in the head. Roshi's turtle could literally talk and no one treated it like it was the strangest thing ever.
Going further: DBZ introduced aliens into the setting, and then brought in space travel and introduced a galactic empire, and it gave us the super saiyan transformation and the concept of power levels; it gave us androids as a new force within the world, and time travel; it also gave us the fusion technique; it also gave us the afterlife as a new major location within the setting; it introduced the Kais as well. The movies, which were not canon, had such a gigantic and expansive and 'anything goes' setting to work with that they were able to just freely introduce some of the strangest and most fun beings such as Janemba and the giant monster of (can't remember which movie). It also gave us the hyperbolic time chamber.
And DBS showed us the series could suck
Most shows today try to be 'hard' fiction; basically the races are all set, the empires and the locations are all set, everything that happens is reasonable and nothing can go off the rails; even anime that tries to give itself large leeway always inevitably limits itself majorly.
The dragon ball universe is just such a 'everything and the kitchen sink' setting that truly no other show can match it; Jojo's bizarre adventure comes a little close (time travel, inhuman stand users, aliens, ghosts, British people), but even JJBA is very limited.
I think modern fandom is to blame for this shift. Rowling was at one time lauded as an author who was very connected with her fandom - or at least more connected to her fandom than was the norm previously, where Star Trek's creators had once tried to sue fanfiction out of existence and everybody else just pretended that the fans didn't exist.
But connection with the fandom inevitably taints the work that created the fandom in the first place. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but one of the effects is definitely hearing people ask all sorts of lore questions all the time and wanting to answer those questions.
I am going to repeat that this is a market failure. There's nothing wrong with people asking lore questions or theorizing or discussing the implications of things, it can be interesting or at least fun. The issue is trying to pander to them by giving answers to those questions when giving such answers is inappropriate to the work, which can come from many things but I think it's hard to deny that making money by pleasing certain segments of fans and giving them more slop is a major force.
There probably is also something to be said of the personal pathology of wanting to submerge yourself into a fake world to forget the real one, but here I will again blame capitalism, because a democratic society that is oriented toward common benefit and gives people more political agency and education while not squeezing them quite as hard for labor value or treating them like shit for bigoted reasons will naturally reduce people's desire to reject the world and their own lives.