For the older fans...

[Shiyonasan]

Saw a thread similar to this on another forum, so I thought I'd post it here.

So, for those of you that are 21 or older, how do you keep your love for Dragon Ball at your age?

If you've revealed to a co-worker that you like Dragon Ball, how did they react? What does your family and, to an extent, your friends (real-life friends included) think of your love of Dragon Ball? Is it hard for you to know that you have a fandom for a Japanese kids show? Also, has Dragon Ball changed your view on certain things in life that, if you had never become a fan Dragon Ball, you would've never thought of before?

These days, it's becoming easier to reveal your fandom of anime, manga, video games, comic books, etc. to people, but there are those few people who would still look down on you if you revealed your fandom of something like Dragon Ball to them. I know even for me at my age (18), it's hard sometimes to tell a friend or peer that I like Dragon Ball. My close friend found out about my love for Dragon Ball a few years ago, and he teased me about it for a while. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to mind my fandom now, but sometimes it seems like my love for Dragon Ball is like a big monkey on my back (no pun intended).

So, that's about it. I'm curious to see what you guys have to say.

(And if there is anyone 30 or older that will reply in this thread...)

[AnimeMaakuo]

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[LeprikanGT]

I keep it alive with constant contact with it. I'm on these forums checkin up on the next game to be released [right now Raging Blast 2], I'm watching Kai all the time as well. I'm 23 now and I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a day in the past.....atleast 7 years I haven't thought of DBZ.

[DBfan4life]

Well I'm not 21...yet. Just another 8 days, but all my friends know that I love anime and manga. I've told them and they really don't do anything like laugh at me for loving a little kids show or anything. Once in a while, when we are in a comic store, they will joke around and start picking out random manga and say how could you like this and why is it backwards, but it is no big deal. I just explain to them and they will laugh and put it back. They are just fine with me liking manga and anime, its not like they hate it, sometimes they actually help me out and find some things for sale and let me know about them. If I never was a fan of dragonball then I would still probably be a fan of anime and manga somehow and then watch dragonball and become a fan for sure.

[omegalucas]

I'm not 21 yet (I'm just 16), but I have no problem with it.
Most of my friends love manga and anime, only one or two makes fun of it a little (only the immature ones do that ).

[linkdude20002001]

I'm 21, and some of my friends also like Dragon Ball, but not to a huge degree. One friend (she's 18) owns the Dragon Ball comics by Viz. Another friend (he's 19) likes it enough to want to go watch the premier of Kai with with. My friends that are closer to my age (22), are into anime, so they obviously (?) like Dragon Ball. They even went as far as to watch the show in Japanese on the International Channel. As a kid, I remember watching an episode at one of their houses, and I remember Gokuh and Vegeta being with the old Kaiohshin. I remember us talking about how surprised we were about Gokuh and Vegeta's voices. For some reason (thanks to the English dub?), we thought it odd that Vegeta had a deeper voice than Gokuh. Lol.

[Rory]

I'm 21, and currently studying at university.
My love of Dragon Ball has not diminished since the day I first watched it, infact, it still grows stronger.
Sure, I'm not always on about Dragon Ball to my friends here, but it'll be rare to go throughout an entire day without thinking, or mentioning it. I have the entire manga, which I lend to friends here at my halls of residence, because they know I'm a huge fan, and some are genuinely curious. On quiet nights we often play either Smash Bros Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, or Burst Limit.
Dragon Ball is a huge of my life, and in no way am I ashamed of it. It doesn't interfere with my social life, but I guess you could say it plays a part in it. There's no reason age should interfere with your likes and dislikes. Be your own person, and others will respect you for it.
I fucking love Dragon Ball.
2000th post! I live here baby!

[jpdbzrulz4sure]

How am I able to maintain my love for Dragon Ball at my age (22)? Well, what can I say? I just can't distance myself from my childhood. But you know what? All of my friends and family know that and they have no problem with it (though my parents think I'm a bit of an oddball for watching the show in Japanese). I've even revealed it to co-workers on occasion, and they had no problem with it. Some have even told me that they liked it too.

It was Dragon Ball that got me into anime/manga, and it also inspired me to learn Japanese.

[Suupaa Gohan 2]

So, for those of you that are 21 and older, how do you keep your love for Dragon Ball at your age?

I'm 22; 23 in November. Been a fan of the series since middle school, so 12-13 I'd estimate. I stopped being obsessed and 'grew out of' it about halfway through high school. As I've mentioned in several other threads, I actually was afraid of growing out of it for good, and invented a failsafe to make sure I wouldn't called 'Dragonball Remembrance Week'. Every year in late November (just because that's when I originally made it up, and wanted to keep it annual), I...well, originally the 'rule' was that I was to watch no other Anime but DB, read no other Manga, listen to no other music, draw no other fanart, etc...basically reimmerse myself in the DB fandom and put my others on hold so that I would never forget why I loved the series. I didn't want to push it aside when I started getting into more and more Anime and Manga and having those fandoms grow, so this was my way of keeping my Dragonball fandom intact, knowing I'd otherwise pretty much ignore the series for the rest of the year. Since I started college the 'rules' have become looser and looser; I don't 'restrict' myself to nothing but DB, I just try to focus on it more by watching some episodes, doing some fanart of the characters, working on some stuff for my fic, digging out the ol' DB music library...and just kinda sprinkling it throughout the month until I get too busy or bored with it and it peters out. That's usually when I make my (grand?) annual reappearance on this board, though I...I kinda returned early this year, first for a little 'Kai just premiered on Nicktoons' posts during the summer, but more and more devotedly since I've been sick for two months now and have spent much of my time watching Nicktoons when I can't get out of bed...and they like to rerun Kai...a lot...soooo, it kinda reinvigorated my mood before DBR Week...which is good, too, because in recent years I've been putting that off until Christmas Break due to midterms and finals and registering for spring classes and all the shit that happens in mid-November.

If you've revealed to a co-worker that you like Dragon Ball, how did they react? What does your family and, to an extent, your friends (real-life friends included) think of your love of Dragon Ball? Is it hard for you to know that you have a fandom for a Japanese kids show?

Most of my friends, real life and internet, are Anime fans. I met a majority of them because they were Anime fans. Most of them have had some experience with/exposure to Dragonball, but largely among my group, I'm the only DB fan (for most of my friends, Yu-Gi-Oh! was their 'first' that got them into Anime, rather than DB). It doesn't come up all that often between the fact that most of them don't know it so well, and as mentioned above, I don't really spend much time focusing on the series or the fandom. As far as coworkers or classmates, I don't randomly go up to people and say 'hey, I'm a Dragonball fan'. People don't know I'm an Anime fan in general, or my other hobbies, unless it somehow specifically comes up in conversation. How would they react if they knew? I hardly think they'd react at all. If they knew what it was, they wouldn't care. If they didn't, then...they wouldn't know what it was, and thus have no opinion. It's not like it was 5 years ago; yes, Kai is causing a bit of a resurgence, but not enough to where we have a 'Dragonball fad' anymore. I can't imagine anyone in this day and age being made fun of for liking Dragonball, at least not in my part of the country. o_O My brother and mother have seen me watching Kai on Nicktoons recently, they know what it is, and they know it was once my obsession. I sometimes wonder if they realize that I haven't been obsessed or terribly interested in the series for about 5 years, because to my mom, 'all those shows look the same', and my brother, I dunno, the only Anime he ever really had interest in were Trigun and Detective Conan. So yeah, I don't think anyone really cares; Dragonball is no nerdier than things like (and dare I say less nerdy than) Star Trek, Magic: The Gathering, D&D, Transformers, Marvel and DC Comics...and I've got more friends interested in one or more of those things than not, so, yeah.

Also, has Dragon Ball changed your view on certain things in life that, if you had never become a fan Dragon Ball, you would've never thought of before?

I was hugely involved in the worldwide Pokemon Fad because that was my childhood, that was me growing up. DBZ was when Pokemon stopped being cool and became mock-worthy, and was my vehicle with which to be rebellious and think I was cool for watching a Japanese cartoon with violence and blood instead of cuddly monsters KO'ing each other. Pokemon was just Pokemon to me, and I was always more about the games than the Anime or cards or other stuff. I never considered Pokemon as being 'a Japanese cartoon' when I watched it. So with Dragonball, it was something new and cool, foreign and violent, a cartoon that wasn't like other cartoons. If it weren't for Dragonball, I wouldn't have gotten into Anime and Manga as a whole - it's what lead me to watching other shows on before or after it on Toonami, and checking out the other titles on the shelves when I went to buy DB Manga at the bookstore. My Anime fandom was a huge part of my teenage years, my 'thing' when I was growing up and shaping who I was as a person. Everyone has some fandom, some hobby, some thing that's theirs. That whole crazy world of Japanese cartoons, comics, video games, visual novels, and other such 'otaku' stuff is mine. It's also the reason (though the fandom in general naturally extended it) I originally sought to memorize the Katakana and Hiragana alphabets, as well as the Kanji for Gokou/Gohan/Goten and such; I used to write character names, Dragonball stuff, and other generally Japanese things on my binders at school, because it made me feel like I was totally awesome. ...thinking back on it, I remember finding some of said binders in my closet when we moved last year, and it made me feel like a sad, sad nerd. But, on the whole, I think I'd call all of that a pretty important impact on my life.

These days, it's becoming easier to reveal your fandom of anime, manga, video games, comic books, etc. to people, but there are those few people who would still look down on you if you revealed your fandom of something like Dragon Ball to them. I know even for me at my age (18), it's hard sometimes to tell a friend or peer that I like Dragon Ball. My close friend found out about my love for Dragon Ball a few years ago, and he teased me about it for a while. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to mind my fandom now, but sometimes it seems like my love for Dragon Ball is like a big monkey on my back (no pun intended).

That's really surprising to me. If you don't mind my asking, where do you live? United States, or elsewhere? It might say in the 'Location' box and make my post look stupid, but I'm in the posting box right now, so shut up. Because, like with Pokemon, I haven't seen that sort of thing in ages. I'm in college, though, and people here are immature in other ways. Nerd and niche interests are usually received positively or neutrally, in my experience. When the Pokemon fad died, I went through what you described above (I got my fair share of flack for liking DBZ as well back in the day, but I don't think it affected me as much since it wasn't as explosively popular or well-known at the time). I still loved Pokemon, and was even part of the Pokemon club we had after school in middle school. Most of the people in said club were the iconic, stereotypical nerds. Kids I didn't want to hang out with, much less have people find out I was hanging out with. If you even so much as let the tiniest hint slip that you still liked Pokemon back then, you'd be teased relentlessly. I even remember one time on the bus, shortly after I'd gotten into DBZ, and discovering things on the magical world of the interwebs that I hadn't yet seen on Cartoon Network, like Trunks...I had a picture of him in my binder full of Dragonball pictures, and someone happened to see it and thought it was 'James' from Team Rocket. Despite my defenses and binder full of proof otherwise, he called me a liar, continued to mock me, and I fell back into the 'haha you like Pokemon' bullying even though I was so excited that this new fandom was something that made me look cool by comparison. But that was in middle school, and though I was probably a tad embarrassed about liking DBZ in high school, I...really don't remember anything to the extent of bullying for it. Maybe I just don't remember it well enough after 4 years of college. I dunno.

But I am very surprised to hear that DBZ hasn't come full-circle like Pokemon has now, where it's old enough that kids who were into it are also now mature enough to admit they liked it as kids, feel nostalgic about it, and discuss it friendly...ly. Actually, in my Journalism class last week, we got paired up with another student and had to interview them enough that we could do a profile story on them. Me and the guy I got paired with spent almost the entire class period discussing our common interest in video games, particularly N64-GameCube era games, many of which we shared a common love of and had those nerdy 'oh, remember [x] level? That was awesome!!' conversations. Towards the end, Dragonball came up, and though he seemed to only have been one of the casual 'tune into it because it's on' fans of the heyday who grew out of it, he seemed to remember days of watching it on Cartoon Network fondly, and we had a brief discussion of some basic Dragonball stuff. I guess that might be why I was under the impression it had undergone the same boomerang transformation Pokemon has, but perhaps that attitude in general is more of a college thing.

Edit: Why...why are my posts always so long...especially on these nostalgia threads, I expect to find other people who write as much of a wall as me, but...but... ;_; I need to stop being sick, somehow my intense boredom and overexposure to Kai on Nicktoons is chaining me to this forum lately

[Turtle Marked Stone]

Dragonball is sitting on my shelf right next to the 80's TMNT show. It's a nostalgia thing that I don't bother with all to much anymore. I mean I'll play the old games or maybe pop in a movie every so often but my interest has certainly started to wane over the years. Thanks to Kai I have something to watch whenever I get an itch but besides from that Dragonball is just kinda a fond memory. I met one of my good friends over the show so whenever he's around we'll talk about DB a bit. I still like the show,just the way I like it is different.

I don't really care anymore who has what battle power or who would win in a fight. I'm not sitting around drawing DBZ pictures or obsessing over hot male characters. I just watch it and accept it as a kids show that I can still enjoy. My friends and family know this. I don't really talk about it at work so my coworkers don't know I like old cartoons or anything like that.

I do have a certain longing to be a kid watching the show all over again but, what can you do?

Dragonball has its place in my life that I doubt will vanish. I no longer have ANIME AND MANGA AND ACTION FIGURES crammed into my room and got rid of a lot of it due to space restraints and I just stopped caring about if I have those things or not but Dragonball I'll probably never get rid of.

Edit: I guess I should mention nowadays if anything I'm more into behind the scenes type stuff. What Toriyama was thinking, why he chose to color the way he did. The name puns and translations etc.

[Scarz]

I keep my love for Dragon ball growing strong by visiting daizex and coming here to the forum. Just knowing that they're still plenty of people around my age that still love this 10+ year old series really keeps my obsession going.

I'm never embarrassed to tell people that I'm a Dragonball fan and no one I've met so far has made fun of me or even dare to. Maybe it's because I'm surround by people who have their own personal fandom whether it's a sports team that haven't won a single game in god knows how many years or a tv show that is just awful.

Yeah sometimes my boyfriend likes to poke fun at my love for DB but it's all in good fun. My friends never look down on me or lose respect because I like a show about muscled bound men with spiky yellow hair beating the carp out of each other.

[Hellspawn28]

Well I'm 19, and I will be 20 next May. Most people I know are not fans of the series, and they have no problem if I like Dragon Ball. I know a lot of people who still love the G1 Transformers series (Like myself for example), and they don't care if you are adult and you still like kids series.

I still enjoy Animaniacs afterall . What keeps my Dragon Ball fandom alive is the Video Games, and the forums on the Internet like this site for example.

[Bussani]

Gonna be lazy and just post this.

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

I don't think it's becoming easier "these days"; people just tend to be more mature as you get older.

Unless you're on the Internet.

[Shiyonasan]

Thanks to everybody who replied. I was hoping my post was worded correctly. Well, this thread just reinforces the old saying for me:

You're only as old as you feel.

That's really surprising to me. If you don't mind my asking, where do you live? United States, or elsewhere? It might say in the 'Location' box and make my post look stupid, but I'm in the posting box right now, so shut up.

Heh heh, no, I don't have my location in my location box. I do in fact live in the United States (New Mexico to be more specific).

When my friend did tease me, it was back in high school. I'm sure you know how immature kids can act in high school and how a lot of them have to fit into a certain group in order to feel like their excepted, even if it's among a group of the outsiders, nerds, etc. The people at my high school did that and were really weird in that respect...

Like I said though, he doesn't tease me anymore about it. To be honest, he is actually quite nerdy when it comes to Captain America. Actually, he recently started collecting Pokemon cards again because of the group of friends he hangs out with now (I'm not so into Pokemon myself). I guess college makes you do stuff like that...

I keep my love for Dragon ball growing strong by visiting Daizex and coming here to the forum. Just knowing that they're still plenty of people around my age that still love this 10+ year old series really keeps my obsession going.

This above all else keeps my fandom of Dragon Ball alive. If this site didn't exist, I would've probably been out of the fandom for years by now. Since I have no friends in real life who share this fandom with me, it's hard to keep my love for this series alive sometimes. I'm hoping my love for Dragon Ball lasts well into my adulthood.

[Perfect]

I just watch it and read it, oh say, every day.

[Bardo117]

I'm only 10 years old, so I've only seen Kai.

Kai>>>>>Z

[Bussani]

I've only seen Kai.

Kai>>>>>Z

If you've only seen Kai, how can you form such a conclusion?

[dbgtFO]

I'm only 10 years old, so I've only seen Kai.

Kai>>>>>Z

But.. Your profile says you are 16

I have the tankoubons here in my apartment, so every once in a while I will reread them, unfortunately I also have my sister, who doesn't have her own copies of the books, and will come to me, when she wants to reread them.

[Bardo117]

I'm only 10 years old, so I've only seen Kai.

Kai>>>>>Z

But.. Your profile says you are 16

I have the tankoubons here in my apartment, so every once in a while I will reread them, unfortunately I also have my sister, who doesn't have her own copies of the books, and will come to me, when she wants to reread them.

I don't want people to know I'm 10, but it's too late for that....

[BluezaBladeNZ]

I'm not 21 yet (I'm only 18) but some people at course who are over 21 have had no problem with me liking Dragon Ball. One who is a major otaku has gone addicted to DBZ: Abridged since I showed him and they often talk about some of the sagas or mention weird moments like the "5 Minutes till Namek explodes". But none of them don't really have any merchandise, manga, DVDs etc, probably some games though I'm unsure.

But some people I knew at high school did take the mickey out of me whenever I had a wallpaper or pictures on my drive, saying I'm pathetic for liking a kids show and would act very immature about it, they judge their opinions by the broadcast version (with censoring and cut scenes). Maybe I should of shown the Dragon Boxes. lol The weird thing is, they have no problem with Pokemon.

For the show itself, I'd say it has had an impact on me. As well as Pokemon and Cardcaptors, it's opened me towards the world of Anime and introduced more. There were times where I lost interest or was put off Dragon Ball but later on, I eventually got interest in it again.