How were you introduced into the franchise?

[Oniman]

I discover it in a EGM magazine back in the day.

[sunsetshimmer]

My brothers were watching DBZ in TV and i just joined them. It was one of the episodes with Goku on snake way, before meeting Princess Snake.

Next of course there was GT. After GT they aired everything once again starting with original DB which i didn't know existed until then since i started with Z.
I must say i was extremely confused and quality gap between GT art and DB art was very noticable.

[Xeogran]

I was literally watching it on my local TV almost since I was born.

Living in Poland , I've heard the (French) DBZ opening since I was like 2-4 years old and I couldn't let go of the franchise since:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ1NcxAZUYk

What, it was catchy for my child ear

Spoiler:

I still find it cute.

[Koitsukai]

Early to Mid 1998, everybody in school and in my football club was talking about Goku and how he could obliterate Pegasus no Seiya and I was like yeah right, sort of trying my best not to watch DBZ and then one day around 7pm when I was about to go to practice, someone left the tv on and Vegeta and Nappa were coming out of a dust cloud created by what later I found out was Krillin's attack. It was almost like when Garth checks out that foxy lady in Wayne's World.
I fell immediately in love and skipped practice, I let Seiya go in a second. The next day in school I was asking all about the previous 160 episodes.

In the next arc, Goku was again out of comission for the most part and I was like is this guy actually part of the show? My first 30, 40 episodes of DBZ had Goku in like 10 of them lol

[zDBZ]

The Toonami block after school in the late 90s.

[FoolsGil]

Waking up in the early morning, catching the last few minutes of an episode before it ends.

[Chuquita]

Weekday Toonami summer of 2000. It was a pre-smartphone, pre-youtube summer so flipping through channels on TV looking for something to watch was a thing I used to do. I also may have initially caught some late saiyan arc episode(s?) on Toonami Midnight Run. Possibly earlier than that I may have seen copies of Final Bout at Blockbuster (I honestly miss video rental stores. I loved renting video games.) and liked Goku's look. Didn't rent the game though because I didn't have a Playstation at the time. I had an N64.

Looking it up it says Final Bout was released in the US in late July of 1997; 3 years before I first watched Z on Toonami.

So yeah, actually maybe this picture was the first Dragon Ball thing I ever saw:

Spoiler:

If I were to go back any earlier than that....I really loved playing Sonic 1/2/3/and Knuckles on Sega Genesis as a kid so it's entirely possible with how many homages to Dragon Ball there are in those games that I could've read a Yuji Naka interview at some point pre-1997 where he talked about having recorded vhs tapes of Z sent to him from Japan to California while working on Sonic 2. Something talking about how Super Sonic is an homage to Super Saiyans or having 7 chaos emeralds/7 dragon balls? That's all speculation though.

[Oniman]

I knew DB since 1993 or 1994, but got into it in 1998. I have been a anime fan since 1994 when I rented Karasu Tengu Kabuto at my local Hollywood video. I later got into The Guyver, Cybernetics Guardian and Urusei Yatsura that year.

[Hellspawn28]

I think I may saw some DB related stuff before 1997 at local collector shops or at my older cousins place. I had three older cousins that were in Dragon Ball before I was born. That's how I got so many tapes of the Cell and Buu saga.

Didn't rent the game though because I didn't have a Playstation at the time. I had an N64.

Off topic, but I notice most people here on Kanzenshuu only had an N64. I had both a PS1 and N64 as a kid. Oddly enough, I never saw any copies of Final Bout at my video stores for rental. I do remember when that game was being sold for a lot of money on the after market.

[Lord Frieza]

Saw the trailer on cartoon network back in the day.

Always felt in a bit of an odd spot for an anime fan. I'm was born in 89, so dragon ball was not around until I was until I was in my later primary school years. I don't know when DB started airing in America but from my understanding it had a small presence their even befor the show took off. I've often got the impression that I'm in the middle of the Old Guard generation who were teens in the 90s and the 90's kids. However I was watching anime from a younger age then most, I remember watching Bio-Booster Armour Guyver and Dominion Tank Police long befor I even saw Pokémon, Sailor Moon and DB or anyone I knew talked about anime.




I take a little bit of pride in the fact I was an anime fan befor anime became main stream.

[Chuquita]

I think I may saw some DB related stuff before 1997 at local collector shops or at my older cousins place. I had three older cousins that were in Dragon Ball before I was born. That's how I got so many tapes of the Cell and Buu saga.

Didn't rent the game though because I didn't have a Playstation at the time. I had an N64.

Off topic, but I notice most people here on Kanzenshuu only had an N64. I had both a PS1 and N64 as a kid. Oddly enough, I never saw any copies of Final Bout at my video stores for rental. I do remember when that game was being sold for a lot of money on the after market.

My guess for why I had an N64 instead of a PlayStation was I was already familiar with Nintendo (inherited an NES, but also had a Sega Genesis. Don't recall how that happened.) and there weren't any PS1 franchises at the time that interested kid!me which is probably why I never had a Sega Saturn either; all those game delays for Sonic ensured the N64 would be my choice. I did get a PS2 when that came out though (probably for the Budoukai games).

I remember my Blockbuster always having a big variety of games. I rented more N64 games than I own. They definitely had Final Bout. I don't know if I ever saw Final Bout selling anywhere back then, but I wouldn't have been looking for it either.

[KBABZ]

Always felt in a bit of an odd spot for an anime fan. I'm was born in 89, so dragon ball was not around until I was until I was in my later primary school years. I don't know when DB started airing in America but from my understanding it had a small presence their even befor the show took off.

I'm not sure about the fanbase at the time, that'd be more a question for Kunzait or Vegetto (I'm sure there was a fanbase on whatever worked as the internet back in that era), but the first English Dragon Ball dub was done in 1989 by Harmony Gold (the one where Krillin is Bongo and Goku is Zero). Next was in 1995 with Funimation's first Dragon Ball dub that most people know about. When that didn't really take off, FUNi cut to the chase and released the original DBZ with the Ocean cast and the rest is incredibly inaccurate history, as they say.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Dragon Ball was the talk of my play ground so it would have been impossible for anyone not to have heard of it in our class. I am sure that's how I got into it as much as I did as you know you'd look forward to discussing episodes next day with friends.

Though I'm not sure if any girls watched or were into DB cuz back in primary school especially early years talking to girls was considered a crime among the boys, I remember one time I didn't want to play football or something and was having a fun time playing duck duck goose with some girls and all the boys were ragging on me all day cuz of it.

[Spider-Man]

My Cousin has a game called Shin Budokai so I decided to played because I saw Future Trunks and he look so cool in that game without him I wouldn't become a huge fan of the series.

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

My earliest memories of DB is from watching a japanes VHS tape of the Metal Cooler movie somewhere like 2002-2003. I later started watching DBZ on Cartoon Network in 2004 (or perhaps it was 2003?) because it was the hot show talked around school.

[ShadowBardock89]

Toonami. I forget when exactly, though. I remember I was in fifth grade and I was talking to my younger brother while riding our bikes to school about Vegeta's death on Namek.
We had to have been watching a little bit before then.
However, I do remember clearly that I had not seen the Saiyan arc until I saw those episodes on the Midnight Run.

[Jackalope89]

Toonami back in the late 90s. Simply channel surfing one day, and came across a guy with spiky hair flying around and shooting lasers out his hands, and I was hooked. Simple as that.

[Soppa Saia People]

honestly I think I just wanted to watch anime at the time and was like eh dragon Ball seems popular I'll start with that.

[Robo4900]

UK Toonami. My brother was a massive fan of it, so I ended up catching tons of episodes from across all of DB, Z, and GT on TV. As it was going off the air, I used to constantly watch DVD-Rs my dad recorded of some episodes, aswell as IIRC a couple of VHSes. Since home media for Dragon Ball in the UK was pretty much nonexistent, and Dragon Ball was falling off of TV, my dad torrented a ton of the rest of the run for me at one point, and I watched through basically all of it.

The initial spark that really got me into Dragon Ball was GT's fun pulpy space adventures and clever, varied fights, the intriguing character interaction that built the section of Z episodes from the Androids arc I used to watch a ton of(Episodes 130-135, or 115-120 in edited numbering), and the chilled out fun of the one Saiyaman arc episode my dad had recorded. My brother had watched basically the entire run already when I'd really got into it, and after consulting with him, I decided to try watching from the beginning of the original series all the way through to the end of GT, and what really hooked me on the series was the 21st Tenkaichi and the Red Ribbon Army arc. Some of the most fun I'd ever had watching TV was those two story arcs. I was hooked all the way through to the end, though the voices being wrong really bothered me, as I'd really got used to the Ocean and Blue Water voices. Ocean still remains my favoured cast, though when that's not an option, I go with Japanese. So, I'm really hyped about Wow TV picking up Ocean's Kai dub to air in Canada; gonna watch the crap outta that.

[SuperSaiyanPan]

Back in 1999 or early 2000 my brother would watch Dragon Ball Z when he'd get home from school. I eventually noticed the show and they were in the Cell Games arc. I started watching then and I was about 6 or 7 and I am now 25.