Discussion regarding the entirety of the franchise in a general (meta) sense, including such aspects as: production, trends, merchandise, fan culture, and more.
I started watching Dragon Ball when the first episode of the Saban dub aired during the Summer holidays in 2000. I was 13 and I was instantly smitten with this strange anime that aired at 8am on Cheez TV. Much like Evangelion the year before, it was unlike anything I'd ever seen but in a different way. We got five episodes a week but I didn't start recording it (on tape) until they were already on Namek as by then I was missing most of the episodes due to traveling to school on the bus. It was HUGE. Everyone talked about it and then during the Freeza saga, it just died of pretty off pretty quickly because of repitition. One by one most of my friends and classmates lost interest, but I never did. I did stop recording the dub before the Cell games as the DVDs were coming out multilingual then. I remember being so disappointed that the early Madman DVDs were dub only for a long time. My first dual-audio DVD was the Bardock special.
I remember buying some of the Viz single issues for my cousin (he was 20 at the time and is one of the few people I personally know who is still into the entire franchise) for a Christmas present in that year and my best friend got a Butta Irwin figure from me, we used to play his burnt Ultimate Battle 22 all the time, until I got Legends--and even after that at sleep overs, we'd rent to the Budokai games to play together even if we stopped watching the series together. My little brother got the Beckett magazines when we were on the gold Coast for the first time in 2001. I used to print out the Planet Namek guides for attacks, and characters and movie guides and read them over and over again.
I have a VHS recording of Episode 269 of DBZ lying around somewhere. It was during the reruns on Cartoon Network. I want to say that it was from 2006 but I'm not 100% sure. It's been really difficult finding archived promo footage of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z on Aussie Cartoon Network.
I found this awesome DBZ chips ad while looking through some Cheez TV archives. A part of me wishes that I grew up watching the show on Channel 10.
Gog wrote:The cell saga/android saga is the worst thing Akira Toriyama ever made. And nothing has ever actually managed to come close to it, after it. Even the terrible asspulls in the FT saga, weren't as bad as that. But of course this is all my opinion.
You've just made a new best friend.
Marz wrote: ↑Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:27 pm
"Well, the chapter was good, the story was good and so were the fights. But a new transformation, in Dragon Ball? And one that's ugly? This is where we draw the line!!! Jump the Shark moment!!"
This forum is so over-dramatic that it's not even funny.
90sDBZ wrote: ↑Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same.
That makes me wish Super would get its own Australian dub.
I personally prefer the Bang Zoom dub to FUNimation's despite that it didn't even reach the third season. Though, it was pretty awesome FUNimation invited the original English Vegeta to play Duplicate Vegeta.
