What was your first experience with the Japanese version and what was your first impression?

[Forte224]

Inspired by the 'What made you switch over' thread but hopefully dissimilar enough to be a separate thread viewtopic.php?f=7&t=38727

Anyway, my first experience was with the Lord Slug movie. My friend had just gotten a DVD player (I was still using VCR back then ) and he showed me how it sounded in Japanese. We laughed not specifically at Goku's voice but just at how drastically different it was in English.

I still kept watching in English because...I guess I'd never really considered watching things with subtitles back then. I don't remember us or anyone else hating on the Nozawa voice though. The hate didn't start from what I remember until video sites with comment sections got more popular, but maybe that's just where I was first exposed to the hate. Anyway, what was your first experience? Even if it was simply the first version of it you ever heard. How did you come across it?

[VegettoEX]

I really wouldn't be able to say what my first reaction was to seeing it in Japanese, because that was twenty years ago and my mind is empty so I can fill it with dreams. I'm fairly sure I didn't have any "negative" reaction; how could I, when I was finally getting peeks at what seemed like it would never come over to the states?

My experiences were with clips like this (this is the actual file from SonGohan's page back pre-Mike-running-a-website). They could take hours to download, and it was always a sense of unknown wonder opening them up to see what might be inside.

Clearly I fell even more in love with what I found!

[sintzu]

2005's Budokai Tenkaichi was my first real taste of not only the Japanese version but it's what got me into DB as a whole. After that I started with Z in Japanese from start to finish and to this day it's one of the best entertainment experiences I've had. Seeing things like Goku and Vegeta's fight, everyone going Ssj for the first time, the sacrifices, etc. are such great moments and were a blast to sit through.

[MaskedRider]

My first taste of the Japanese actually came from clips and such on a CD way back when in the early 2000s that my older brother had and from what I remember it had Goku teaching Goten and Trunks the fusion dance and it made me curious and want more.

It also featured classics such as Piccolo's I'm a cucumber and World's Collide AMV

[Kinokima]

I don't 100% recall but I think the first DVD I bought of DBZ was the episode where Vegeta died on Namek. I loved the Japanese version right away both the voices and the music. But as I said in that other thread I was already used to watching stuff in foreign language with subtitles so it was pretty easy for me to adjust and I felt no particular attachment to the English dub voices. And I always felt that you should always experience the original of something and I still feel that way today.

But I did continue to watch the show in both Japanese and English. I would watch the episodes on TV in English but I would buy DVDs so I could then watch my favorite episodes again in Japanese.

[Soppa Saia People]

I played Budokai 3 on JPN, just cause I hated "Kayo-Ken", but around 2013 or so, I tried watching the anime (only read the manga beforehand) and I just couldn't get into the English dub, so I tried the Japanese version, which made me appreciate the anime more, but if I want to experience DB again, I'll just read the manga.

[Bardo117]

I've technically only watched the series in Japanese once as a whole, but my first experience was separate from that. After discovering this website sometime about a decade ago, I started developing a curiosity as to why there was such an obsession with the Japanese version on this site. But I was not ready to sit down and watch the entire series in Japanese simply because I didn't want to read the subtitles. So periodically, I'd re-watch episode recommendations from people here in Japanese(about 100/120 episodes)



After I purchased the Dragon Boxes, I watched the entire series in Japanese and it was very very satisfying. I periodically return to watch the show in Japanese almost as often as I watch it in English.

[Esfír Dedragón]

When I first played Super Butouden 2 on SNES, I heard the voices in Japanese. My first impression was wondering why Goku (and maybe Gohan) sounded like an old cat-lady every time he yelled. :/

I liked how Cell's Japanese voice sounded, though.

Since I tend to watch the Japanese version of the show since Super, I got used to it and enjoy it just as much as I still do with the English version.

[MajinMan]

My very first exposure to the Japanese version was Budokai 3. I don't know how it happened, but I somehow turned the Japanese voices on without knowing. When I started up a match and heard the Japanese voices, it made me confused. I didn't think anything of it other than "How did that turn on? Where can I turn it off?"

My first "real" exposure was when I was watching the Cell arc in DB Kai. It was a long time ago, and for whatever reason, I started to watch it in Japanese. Maybe it was because it was ahead of the English, but I really don't know why. I remember finding Goku and Gohan really similar to the point that I got confused as to who was talking. Eventually I got used to it. I also remember really liking Cell's voice. Other than that, I can't really remember much.

[DragonBallKing]

Some Japanese trailer for battle of gods I watched with my brother, I was immediately taken back by the higher pitched Goku but I eventually came to love it.

[Dbzfan94]

I switched to the Japanese out of curiosity when I was watching Z on DVD back in like 2007. Went "what the hell is with Goku's voice" and switched back to dub.

[Bajosexto]

The first time I heard the Japanese voices was back in 2008 when I bought Budokai Tenkaichi 2. I decided to switch the audio to Japanese just to see how it sounded. I don't remember my exact reaction but I do remember being surprised with how high pitched Goku was. He sounded like a little kid. I only heard Bulma's, Chichi's, and Goku's voice on the game's menu and switched back to the English audio. This was also the first time I heard the the FUNimation voices. I also didn't like the English voices. But at least I could understand it.

[Kokonoe]

I can't recall too clearly since it's been over 13 years or so, but my first experience was watching the Buu Saga while the Cell Saga was still airing via the International Channel.

I was still a kid so I'm uncertain if I payed too much attention to the voices outside of Goku's which I didn't care for. I did notice like there was more blood (Babidi being beheaded) than our censored variants. I still enjoyed what I watched cause it was Dragon Ball Z and it was neat I was watching episodes that weren't even out yet. At the same time, it just made me want see the saga in english since I preferred the dub variant.

With that said, it did introduce me to the opening and ending themes, We Gotta Power!, and We Were Angels which I adored as a kid.

[ABED]

I can't recall my very first experience, but the first experience I can recall was that I preferred the JPN version right off the bat, but I was taken aback by Goku's voice. The very first full DBZ episode I saw in Japanese was the one where Zarbon first transforms and headbutts the crap out of Vegeta. Everything was great, but I wasn't expecting Goku to sound high pitched. It was an acquired taste, but one that didn't take me long to love, much like my love of Led Zeppelin.

[TheGreatness25]

My first experience with the Japanese version was getting Final Bout and Greatest Legends on PS1 in 1999. They were Japanese-only and at that point, I knew that it was a Japanese anime, so there was no real shock. I thought it was so cool, that I was almost in this exclusive group that knew what the original sounded like. It's a similar feeling I had when I got the first 13 episodes of Dragon Ball on VHS while my classmates had zero clue that the series even existed. So overall, I liked it. There was that first, "Hm, Goku sounds funny," but I didn't dwell on it and learned to appreciate that "Kamehameha" soundbite very early on.

From there, I saw clips of the series in Japanese on the ultra primitive internet around 1999-2000. I also heard all of the Japanese songs (mostly GT music) and it still strikes up some fond memories.

I saw some downloaded movies in Japanese as per Kazaa (old-school!) around 2003 or so. Maybe earlier.

Then, when I started collecting the series on DVD in 2005, that's when I really started exposing myself to the original Japanese version. I've seen everything in Japanese by 2007.

[8000 Saiyan]

All I can say is that when I first saw Dragon Ball Z in Japanese for the first time, I wasn't bothered at all by Goku's voice.

[Lord Beerus]

My first experience with the Japanese version of Dragon Ball was through Budokai 1. Living in the UK and having the PAL version of the game given the region the game was released in, the Japanese cast was for some reason was used by default, instead of the English cast, and me and friend were best friend were incidentally exposed to the original cast voice of Dragon Ball. We didn't really think much of it when we were playing the game as 10 year olds. We did find some of the expressions of the Japanese cast to quite entertaining and we still use some of the terms and words were heard in the game in an endearing fashion.

[Hellspawn28]

My first experience with the Japanese voices was with DBZ Legends on the PS back during the summer of 2001 and I was like "That's a bit different than what I would imagine". I was getting into DBZ in 2001 and I knew that the Japanese version was consider to be a better version going by what people told me.

Sometime later in 2001, I remember someone at my school was like "You can watch all of DBZ before they air on Toonami. I have some tapes and I know a place that sells Japanese tapes". Later that week, I went to the Arundel Mills mall in the food court and there was a little table that had a lot of cool Japanese stuff. That table had a little TV playing DBZ Movie 8 with no subs and I wanted to see the movie so badly.

Like a week or two later, I went to the Owings Mills to go to my favorite store which also sold a lot of cool Japanese stuff and the TV was playing DBZ Movie 8. They had DBZ movies for sale with fansubs on VHS and I used my money to buy my copy of the film. I rushed home to see it and the movie was totally worth it back then. As a kid, I heard about Broli but I wanted to see if the rumors about him were true or not.

As a 10 year old kid in 2001, the Japanese version didn't bother me. I thought seeing DBZ in Japanese uncut was pretty amazing because DBZ was edited on American TV and they changed a lot of things. I still remember when you had kids that told rumors about how DBZ in Japanese is super edgy and that it's a grown up show in Japan with F bombs. I just remember when we where kids, watching something that was grown up was awesome and kids would like to watch grown up stuff like Starship Troopers, Spawn on HBO, Wishmaster, South Park, 12 Monkeys, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Judge Dredd, The Matrix, Scream, etc.

Not to mention, people in my school knew that DBZ was from Japan and not some American made cartoon. Most of them didn't know how to watch the series in Japanese and only believe in school rumors on how edgy DBZ is in Japanese from a few people that had fan sub tapes.

[Duo]

Became a fan of DBZ (aka the FUNI/Ocean dub) in 1997. Initial exposure to the original Japanese was largely via movie DVD's and Budokai 3 special edition (the version with the JP cast option was a bitch to obtain, as I recall). Somewhere along the line around 2003 somebody (probably on this forum) suggested I fire up Japanese subtitles with the dub on and see what happens. I was a power level fiend back then, so you can figure out how that played in as well.

Anyway, I didn't bother revisiting the English Dub after that until Kai. Not sure I would have even done that if not for my girlfriend at the time wanting to get into the series. It's neat when they do well in English, but it's not particularly relevant. Battle of Gods is the only example I can think of where the FUNImation cast may have excelled beyond the Japanese version.

[DragonBallKing]

My first experience with the Japanese voices was with DBZ Legends on the PS back during the summer of 2001 and I was like "That's a bit different than what I would imagine". I was getting into DBZ in 2001 and I knew that the Japanese version was consider to be a better version going by what people told me.

Sometime later in 2001, I remember someone at my school was like "You can watch all of DBZ before they air on Toonami. I have some tapes and I know a place that sells Japanese tapes". Later that week, I went to the Arundel Mills mall in the food court and there was a little table that had a lot of cool Japanese stuff. That table had a little TV playing DBZ Movie 8 with no subs and I wanted to see the movie so badly.

Like a week or two later, I went to the Owings Mills to go to my favorite store which also sold a lot of cool Japanese stuff and the TV was playing DBZ Movie 8. They had DBZ movies for sale with fansubs on VHS and I used my money to buy my copy of the film. I rushed home to see it and the movie was totally worth it back then. As a kid, I heard about Broli but I wanted to see if the rumors about him were true or not.

As a 10 year old kid in 2001, the Japanese version didn't bother me. I thought seeing DBZ in Japanese uncut was pretty amazing because DBZ was edited on American TV and they changed a lot of things. I still remember when you had kids that told rumors about how DBZ in Japanese is super edgy and that it's a grown up show in Japan with F bombs. I just remember when we where kids, watching something that was grown up was awesome and kids would like to watch grown up stuff like Starship Troopers, Spawn on HBO, Wishmaster, South Park, 12 Monkeys, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Judge Dredd, The Matrix, Scream, etc.

Not to mention, people in my school knew that DBZ was from Japan and not some American made cartoon. Most of them didn't know how to watch the series in Japanese and only believe in school rumors on how edgy DBZ is in Japanese from a few people that had fan sub tapes.

Did the subs look like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbEgVkcSRDA