Did Curtis Hoffmann come up with the USSJ term?

[Ringworm128]

I can't remember so I was wondering if anyone can confirm if he came up with "Ultra Super Saiyan".

[dbboxkaifan]

Who?

I searched for the name and pictures, oh gross.. Wish I hadn't.

[Ringworm128]

As far as I know he's a dude who used to document anime that was airing on Japanese TV in the 90's. Example. http://www.google.com.au/url?q=http://g ... 1K-4JrUcbQ

[VegettoEX]

Yes. He did.

I'm pretty sure he only ever used "Ultra Super Saiya-jin" and did not differentiate between what Vegeta and Trunks did -- for example, he didn't use "USSJ2".

[ABED]

Curtis Hoffmann wrote summaries of the manga: http://www.oocities.org/televisioncity/ ... zanime.htm

This seems like a lifetime ago, but this was the way I read the entire Dragon Ball story. Looking at it now, his writing isn't very good.

[Hujio]

Looking at it now, his writing isn't very good.

But at the time it was about the only way to get updated "goings-on" about current Dragon Ball events. Those text files were like pure gold at the time.

[Herms]

I went over Hoffmann's creation of the term, and other terms for the form, in this old thread:

Fan Terms

The earliest fan term for these forms (in the English-speaking fandom, at least) goes back to Curtis Hoffman’s manga summaries. These were some of the earliest in-depth information available on the series in English, and while in retrospect we can see that they really kinda sucked, at the time they served almost like a Bible for many fans. In the introduction to volume 32’s summary (where he recaps events of the previous volumes), Hoffman writes:

With volume 31, comes the introduction of the idea that the heroes can go beyond Super Saiya-jin to become something else. (Ultra Super Saiya-jin, I guess.)

And with that fateful “I guess”, one of the most persistent fan terms was born. “Ultra Super Saiyan” has remained a very common name for the Grade forms, to the point where former Viz editor Jason Thompson matter-of-factly uses the term during his “House of 1,000 Manga” write-up of DB. Now, we should first distinguish between the way Hoffman himself used the term, and the way later fans have. First off, despite using “Ultra Super Saiya-jin” in the quote above, Hoffman seems to have at all other times used simply “Ultra Saiya-jin”. In fact, he talks about “Ultra Saiya-jin” Vegeta and Trunks in his intro to his volume 31 summary, a volume before “Ultra Super Saiya-jin” turns up, but that intro draws on information from later volumes, so it probably was written later than his volume 32 summary for whatever reason (in fact, it’s not really clear why he talks about those forms at all for volume 31, since they don’t debut until 32).

The second thing to note is that Hoffman used “Ultra Saiya-jin” as a catch-all term for the various different upgrades on Super Saiyan that appear before the introduction of Super Saiyan 2. So he calls Full-Power Super Saiyan Goku and Gohan “Ultra Saiya-jin” as well, and doesn’t distinguish between Grade II or Grade III at all (they’re both just “Ultra Saiya-jin”). Many later fans though have taken to calling Grade II “Ultra Super Saiyan” and Grade III “Ultra Super Saiyan 2”. On the other hand, some fans call Grade II “Ascended Super Saiyan” and reserve “Ultra Super Saiyan” for Grade III. The phrase “Ascended Super Saiyan” apparently comes from the Funi dub, which uses “ascend” as a slightly fancy translation of koeru/“to surpass”, which gets tossed around a whole lot in the series when talking about stronger kinds of Super Saiyan. While I hear the dub flat-out calls Grade II “Ascended Super Saiyan”, I’m also pretty sure they use the term to refer to Super Saiyan 2 as well, and call Super Saiyan 3 “double ascended” or something like that. So “Ascended” apparently isn’t tied to any specific kind of Super Saiyan, but gets used for many different forms, the same way “Super” is in Japanese.

[takarajima]

諸行無常・・・・・・・

[DBZGTKOSDH]

Who?

I searched for the name and pictures, oh gross.. Wish I hadn't.

Quite frankly, compared to guys like Curtis, you are way, way, way, way out of your league, and that you can insult him in such a way only reveals your complete ignorance of and lack of respect for your fandom's roots.


Disappointing. I am reminded of why I don't come on here very often.

I think he is talking about a guy with the same name and a guitar... Who doesn't have to do anything with Dragon Ball.

[Gaffer Tape]

Ahhhh... good old Curtis Hoffmann. He so defined my early DB experience, especially as I was getting into the Japanese version. I loved those volume summaries, especially the early DB stuff, and I always wondered what it looked like. I even went so far as to print out every volume, print out the tankobon cover image, and staple each one together as its own volume. I'm sure they're still packed away somewhere. Warm, fuzzy memories...