Who saw the Japanese version as a kid?

[Hellspawn28]

For the people who grew up with DBZ on Cartoon Network, did anyone saw the Japanese version while new episodes was airing on Toonami? I notice most people I talk who grew up with DBZ on Toonami didn't know that DBZ was from Japan as a kid or didn't see anything subbed until Youtube. DBZ was not my first anime, so I knew it was from Japan and I was a fan of Anime & Manga before I became a fan of Dragon Ball in 2001 (better late than never)

I did watch episodes of DBZ in Japanese while it was airing on Toonami as a kid and I finished the Buu saga nearly two years before it finished on CN. I knew a collector's shop that still had DBZ fan subbed tapes back in the early 2000's before DVD and Internet bittorrents completely take over. My older cousin give me his old collection of tapes as well. There was a kid in my 5th grade class that was like "You can watch DBZ in Japanese you know right?! I know a place to go too" and he would also show some episodes of DBZ in Japanese after school ended. People in my school believe that DBZ was a dark and edgy show for adults and people told rumors that GT would air on HBO for being darker than DBZ .

[TheBlackPaladin]

I didn't.....really....see the Japanese version as a kid.

The reason I phrase it that way was because, when the Pioneer/Ocean-dubbed versions of the first three movies aired on TV, they didn't dub the insert songs, so I, along with many others, technically heard Masako Nozawa's voice for the first time that way. I didn't know DBZ was from Japan either, so when a Japanese voice started singing out of nowhere, I remember as a kid being like, "Wait, whaaaaaa...?"

[MasenkoHA]

Yeah I didn't initially know Dragon Ball Z was from Japan just like I didn't know a lot of the shows I watched at that time were from Japan like: Sailor Moon, Pokemon, and half of Power Rangers.

I learned Dragon Ball Z was Japanese animation the same time I found out about anime in around 2nd or 3rd grade. Actually bothering to read stuff and seeing that it was by a guy named Akira Toriyama gives it away.

Also remember going online around the time I was 9 to read spoilers of episodes that hadn't aired yet like the Buu saga and GT.

Never once saw GT outside some clips on Youtube and a few minutes of one episode but knew pretty much all the significant plot points and sagas from reading episode summaries of the Japanese version online.

[successoroffate]

I saw clips of it back in the 2000's via Kazaa
Gohan turning SSJ2 (because of Tamashii tai Tamashii I felt in love with the japanese version)
Gogeta SSJ4 transformation (which I later found out thanks to the DVDs, that it was the preview for the following episode)

[Hellspawn28]

When I hear Goku's voice for the first time in Japanese back in 2001 (I hear it first in DBZ Legends for the PS1), I was like "That's sounds different than I thought". I didn't care and seeing something in it's original language to me as a kid seem so cool. With this day of age, we have Cruchyroll and other websites that can upload subs before they get dubbed, so nothing special now. But as a kid, seeing something from Japan not dubbed and edited was really cool. It felt like I was watching a different show and it was also cool that you can see things before anyone else does.

You did had fan websites with episode summaries and pictures, so I remember I told kids at my school that you can find things on Google. One kid got mad at me because I told him that Goku defeats Buu and it won't be Goten & Trunks or Gohan. He was like "You are so wrong!!! Gohan is going to return back with the Z Sword and defeat Majin Buu".

[Gaffer Tape]

I mean, I was 12 when I first got into DB, so I could immediately tell it was from Japan. I admit I didn't really care at first. In fact, in 1999, when FUNimation was all geared up to release a first-ever uncut version tape with Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle, I wrote them an e-mail, expressing my hope that that designation didn't mean it was in Japanese. I still consider that my most shameful moment as a Dragon Ball fan, although the real concern was simply that I wouldn't be able to understand it. I don't know why I didn't think of subtitles. Of course, then season 3 came along, and it was so bad that even I had to question what the hell was going on with this show I loved.

Ahem, anyway. That was around the same time we got the Internet, and while, at first, I had only stumbled across fairly generic fansites, by 2000, when I was 14, I had found sites like Planet Namek, DaizenshuuEX, and Dragon Ball Z Uncensored. And those sites really piqued my interest in the Japanese version, learning through text just what a different experience it was. I had seen a small clip of Goku versus Majin Vegeta earlier than that. However, my first real exposure came through my exposure to those sites. I just had to know more, but at the time, there was little available. So I ran to my local Suncoast and got the subtitled tape of DBZ movie 3.

The big question is always Nozawa's Goku and if that was off-putting. But honestly, I don't remember. Aside from that Goku versus Majin Vegeta clip, I think I went into the experience already knowing that Goku was voiced a woman. I vaguely remember being perhaps mildly surprised by it. But it couldn't have been a very big deal considering how little I remember it. It was just Goku's voice.

That summer, I started buying fansubs off the Internet, focusing largely on early Dragon Ball stuff I'd never seen before and Great Saiyaman stuff that, by description, I figured I'd enjoy. Then I went back and got Saiyan Arc fansubs so I could see stuff I already knew but the way it was supposed to have been. I even begged my mom to get us a DVD player for Christmas that year, for no other reason than that I could get bilingual DVDs of Dragon Ball (which started coming out that year) and Tenchi Muyo!

I stumbled through season 4 (the Cell Arc) of the dub that fall, but my heart already wasn't in it anymore. I could barely stomach it. And after that, I didn't come back for the Boo Arc. It was preferable to me not to see the episodes at all than it was to suffer through the dub any longer.

So, yeah, long story short, it didn't take me very long in my fandom to switch over to the Japanese version, and I was definitely younger than an adult when I did so.

[Gokuman1993]

I am sad to say I never saw the Japanese version of Dragon Ball/Z when I was younger. Much like most of my peers of the time, whenever I caught the occasional episode of DBZ on Cartoon Network, it was always the dub. But then again, I wasn't as big a fan of Dragon Ball as I am now, so I never really thought about watching the original Japanese dub.

In fact, I mostly became a bigger DB fan after reading the manga in it's entirety (and of course watching the much more accurate dub of DBZ Kai) and I'm currently watching some clips of the japanese version and it's making real interested in see all the episodes of the OG version (though, I'm not sure handle all 300-something episodes of DBZ....)

[Kojiro Sasaki]

I did! It was year 2001 when they switched from the French dub to the original Japanese one, somewhere around half of the GT series. The first thing that has drawn my attention was, of course, Goku's voice. It was a kind of shocking at the very beginning, but I started to appreciate it very quickly, ended up considering it to be perfect and irreplaceable.

Actually, we weren't completely unfamiliar with the original voices, because the French dub RTL7 broadcasted in Poland was a strange edit containing some grunts, shouts, screams, Kamehameha's, Dodonpa's, Taiyō-ken's, Kikōhō's, Makankōsappō's, Kienzan's, Kaiō-ken's and Masenkō's from the original Japanese dub.

We knew that Dragon Ball is a Japanese anime since it debuted in 1999 on RTL7 channel. We were able to recognize that, because of... how Gokū's house looked and because of familiarity with other anime shows we watched since 1994 on Polonia 1 channel. That included: Himitsu no Akko-chan, Tōshō Daimos, Captain Tsubasa, Sally the Witch, Tiger Mask, Yattaman and other shows (most or all of them with Italian dubs). Also, RTL7 broadcasted Saint Seiya around 1997 (French dub + Polish voice-over)

[Hellspawn28]

Even before I watch DB at all, I knew it was from Japan since I already seen anime and read manga. I can tell going by how the animation looked and was drawn. My love for Godzilla at nearly 3 years old open a gate way for me for Anime, Manga, Toku, Sci-Fi movies, Horror movies and many other things. I even got into Ultraman as a kid before I saw Power Rangers thanks to Ultraseven being on TNT very early in the morning (My dad would awake us up super early when I was 3-6 years old).

I never got into DBZ until 2001 because I found the show annoying at first until I saw the SSj2 Gohan vs. Cell fight on the Midnight Run. So I end up going on Dragon Ball Z Uncensored on Google and was amazed how much edited on TV. It made me want to check out the original versions, but I was stuck until September 2001 when I found how to watch the episodes in Japanese. I didn't have everything, but I was happy on what I was able to get my hands on at the time.

[Saikyo no Senshi]

I did. I was 10 when I got into the franchise through the 2008 special. My first reaction was the music is awesome and I want to watch more. I didn't care for the voices, I didn't care about the story of the special, I just wanted to watch more of it cause of Kikuchi Shunsuke's music.

And, thanks to my brother who was already a fan guided me how to view the series in the correct order. Two episodes in it - I became a fan of Son Gokuu and rest is history.

[sintzu]

The Japanese version was my introduction to the franchise. I watched all of Z in Japanese, then I saw GT in English and finally I saw DB in Japanese.

Z wasn't subbed though so I had to guess what was happening and more or less I did.

[Bajosexto]

I didn't. I didn't even know Dragon Ball z was a Japanese cartoon until I was in middle school. And I had been watching Dbz since I was six years old. The first time I watched a complete episode/movie in Japanese and not just some random 3 minute clip on YouTube was when I watched Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans that came with my Raging Blast 2 copy. Now that I think about it, the only reason I bought that game was to watch that OVA. I was kinda dissapointed that it was only in Japanese but I still watched it because I love Dragon Ball. By then I was already a sophomore in highschool.

Anyways to answer your question, while I didn't watched the Japanese version as a kid, I do know someone who currently is. That person is my....my brother.

A couple of weeks ago I decided that it was time for me to watch the original Dragon Ball for the first time(long story short: I never watched it because by the time I started watching Dbz, Dragon Ball had already aired on tv and it was never aired again). So I ordered all five blue bricks. When the DVD's arrived I begged my brother to watch the first episode with me. If he didn't like it after two episodes, I wasn't going to force him to keep watching. Luckily he did like it . After the first couple of episodes we were instantly hooked. We just finished watching the 21st Tenkaichi Budoukai.

The reason he's watching it in Japanese is because I basically made him. Let me explain. Basically I made him watch it in Japanese with me because I was not going to watch it in English. I don't like the FUNimation dub. Don't get me wrong. I got nothing against it. It's just that I didn't grow up with it. Also, since watching Super I've gotten to really enjoy the Japanese "dub" and I wanted to hear the Japanese VA's at their prime. He had no choice. If he was going to watch Dragon Ball with me, he was going to watch it in Japanese . Yesterday I asked him if he was liking the Japanese version and to my surprise he said yes. Like I said, I wasn't going to force him to watch it if he didn't liked it. But If after 30 episodes he hasn't quit watching Dragon Ball in Japanese, then I would guess that he somewhat likes it subbed.

[JulieYBM]

I caught a couple episodes of the Afterlife Tournament and early Majin Buu arc on International Channel. Now that was some good shit. Unfortunately, I didn't have taste back then and didn't keep up with that broadcast very well.

[KorgDTR2000]

Only bits and pieces of fansubs I would download off the internet. I remember watching the big Vegito fight episode in Japanese before the dub ever got to that point and thought it was so awesome that there was so much swearing. I also downloaded and watched fansubs of Movies 8 and 10, again before they were localized, and was memorized. There was a very different vibe in the audio production.

And for whatever reason I never took issue with Goku being voiced by a woman. To be honest I never found it to be a particularly feminine voice. Sometimes Nancy Cartwright voices an adult version of Bart Simpson and that doesn't sound like a woman to me either, nor does it sound inappropriate for a woman to voice a man with a young boy's voice.

[dario03]

It always seems odd to me when somebody was a big fan of DB but says they didn't know it was Japanese until they were a teenager or older. When they're really little sure, but once your old enough to read... IIRC the credits usually had something like "original Japanese version", "Toei Animation Co., LTD., Japan" or at least "Akira Toriyama" in them. The first two make it obvious and the last one should at least make you think about it. Yeah I know most people don't really read credits but unless you just never looked at them I would think you would have spotted it at least once. And if you didn't then what about when talking to others? I recall whenever talking to somebody about DB, there was always talk about how in Japan this or in the original version that, got brought up all the time. Maybe that happened less once everything was dubbed, but by then almost everybody had the internet. And If you ever look up DB online, the fact that its from Japan is hard to miss.

[Cipher]

Did I see most of the series in Japanese as a kid? No.

I did see a handful of episodes in Japanese during its U.S. airing via bilingual DVD releases and bootlegs though. I didn't own many of either, but I did own a few.

I guess this all depends on how you'd define "kid" too. I followed the series during its Toonami run and original FUNimation releases in fifth-seventh or eighth grade (2000-2003 or 2004).

[Cure Dragon 255]

Does this apply to kids nowadays? Because there's nothing stopping a kid from popping a DVD and watching the Japanese version if they desire.

[simtek34]

I have a very different story to tell. It was March 2011, I was 7, I, before watched the series on 4Kids (Ther were at the early Freeza arc then) but while on Spring break, I was at a cousins house when I turned the TV on and saw this old robot guy with a brain jar for a head. Being Chased by Piccolo. I wanted to know more! Thanks to Nicktoons.com, I was caught up to episode 63, the last english Yamamoto episode, then for some reason, Nicktoons put the show on hiatus till May, Now, I epithet think it was for the end on "Season 3" or to replace the Yamamoto score. So I wanted to know what happened next. So my mom got me some manga from Borders (Remember that place?) and I went to the internet. I started to watch the rest of Kai to #97 in Japanese fansubs. According to Wikipedia, there was a #98. So I watched the Z equivalent (dubbed). But while disocering these places, I found the Dragon Ball Wikia, and Daizenshuu EX. Or as I called it: Doznsoo EX! That how I found it out. From a different generation, found it very quickly.

[ABED]

I was born in 1985. I lived in Japan from the ages of 5-8 and I saw Dragon Ball a few times, but it was more of a show that I knew of than I knew. Then I saw DBZ movies 1-3 when they were released on DVD, I saw a few fansubs when I was in my early teens, and finally I bought all of the single releases starting in 2000.

[Gyt Kaliba]

I didn't see a good chunk of it in Japanese until a good time later, but I saw a few scattered bits and pieces in my younger days, yeah. The main things I remember definitely seeing then were the Android 13 and Broly movies, and the last couple off episodes of DBZ (as I had the last single on DVD despite most of my other collection being VHS).

I don't really remember much of what I thought on the voices, other than the customary 'Huh, Goku really IS voiced by a woman in Japanese...'. I don't think I particularly disliked it or anything, or really liked it, either - it just was what it was, a curious fact for my mind to absorb instead of whatever they were trying to teach me at school that day. What I do remember impressing me quite a bit was the musical score though, specifically the BGM. That was one of my first and most primary interests in wanting to see more of the original version 'someday'.