U.S. Renditions, Pioneer, Viz, AnimEigo, ADV, hell even Central Park Media to some degree, all of these companies and others of the time would've torn one another's heads off and drank the blood to get at a license as lucrative and widely beloved as Dragon Ball was at that point in time. Anyone who was at all even ankle deep into anime fandom of the time knew damn well that it wasn't a matter if "if" but "when" one of the licensing companies would get their hands on Dragon Ball, particularly after Ranma took off.VegettoEX wrote:FUNimation was hardly the only company in the running for the series at the time. We have ancient anecdotal evidence from other companies actively pursuing it, and it seems like U.S. Renditions may have actually already had it at some point prior to FUNimation.
This idea that all of anime as a medium was this unknown, niche, undiscovered, completely invisible entity until Cartoon Network/Toonami came around with Dragon Ball and Pokemon in the late 90s is a complete and utter myth that is in NO way accurate to reality.
What all of the people in this thread (and tons of others on this site) are missing when they talk about Dragon Ball "not being able to have taken off without a company like FUNimation doing what they did to it" is that they're only focusing on one single market: children's broadcast television. This market was not only hardly the only market out there that anime played to, it wasn't even at all in any way the main primary focus of the anime industry at the time. Had Dragon Ball been picked up by ANY of the above companies I just mentioned, it in all likelihood may very well have NEVER seen the light of day on children's television, and instead been sold to a MUCH older audience on home video (meaning that a TON of people on this forum may very well have NEVER been exposed to it). And it very likely would've been a major success in its own right within that venue and among a completely different sect of fandom. I'm not just pulling that out of my ass: this was the way of the anime industry at the time for roughly 15 years prior to the Toonami era.
The problem with this entire community's outlook on this subject and other topics related to it is that most people who post here (and on a lot of other Dragon Ball/Shonen anime-focused communities) have an INCREDIBLY narrow scope of media as a whole, beyond just anime and Dragon Ball. There is, and long has been, a myopic over-fixation on children's television, children's animation, and children's media in general, at the direct expense of any kind of awareness or interest or knowledge of ANY form of media for any kind of older, adult audience.
This has long been an EXTREMELY problematic and glaring as all hell blind-spot that this entire community, that most of Dragon Ball and Shonen anime fandom overall in the U.S. has, for the most part, been exceedingly guilty of and almost NO ONE ever acknowledges or talks about it. Often times because the realm of non-children-centric media is so subconsciously walled off from the minds of most fans here that they don't even know or think to acknowledge or talk about it. Its THAT deeply, deeply ingrained of an issue within the core fabric of the general Dragon Ball and mainstream U.S. anime fanbases.
This fanbase has a hyper-awareness and laser-focused interest and knowledge of any form of media that is primarily (oftentimes solely) within the realm and confines of things like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Power Rangers, Naruto, Kids WB, Toonami, Jetix, Nickelodeon, Digimon, Ben 10, One Piece, Gargoyles, Batman: TAS, Teen Titans, Adventure Time, Powerpuff Girls, the overall oeuvre of Weekly Shonen Jump from circa 1997 to now, and on and on and on like that.
Anything that's the slightest bit outside of that specific realm of media (that wasn't maybe briefly shown on Adult Swim or something like that at one point), particularly if it was something sold and marketed to an over 18 audience outside of the realm of broadcast children's television, has traditionally all too often and with EXCEEDINGLY few exceptions, been a complete and utter blind spot to large swathes of this community. That's the giant elephant in the room that no one ever acknowledges whenever these kinds of discussions come up, and I know it'll get a ton of pushback and denial from plenty of people here who don't like to hear this. But its 1000% true.
No, this is NOT the case of course for every single solitary individual that's on here. Of course not. There's people, on an individual, micro level around here to whom none of this much applies to. Absolutely. But on an overall, macro level? This isn't even up for questioning: yes, its a MASSIVE problem when attempting to discuss anything among most people here that's from within almost any kind of wider sphere of media and creative works that exists outside the boundaries of 90s and 2000s kids' action cartoons and TV shows.
Its also one of the reasons unfortunately as to why the topic of martial arts fantasy fiction is often such a complete unknown to most people in this fanbase today as well, despite it having a sizable presence in Western pop culture at various point and to varying degrees for decades now: a lot of it is comprised of stuff that most children's stations don't generally air, nor would you find in the Disney section of a video store.
Whether people here want to admit to this or not, there is undeniably and unmistakably an "Overton Window" of sorts of discussion on creative works of media within this particular community and within communities related/similar to it, and that Overton Window skews HEAVILY and unremittingly towards children's action, toy-selling mega-franchises, particularly ones that have heavy broadcast TV exposure. And this Overton Window of discussion all but completely edges out most anything that doesn't fall within that realm of media, no matter how otherwise widely visible or of cultural importance it might be. And that kind of MASSIVE media blindness overall leads to insane, ridiculous discussions, like the complete and utter ignorance of there being ANY kind of anime industry, marketplace, and fanbase in North America prior to 1998/1999 or so.
Of fucking COURSE there was. Not only was it plenty visible: in video stores, on non-children's cable TV channels, in magazines, in films, and so on, but it was written about and referenced and discussed publicly by massively mainstream pop culture figures throughout much of the latter end of the 80s and early half of the 90s from Roger Ebert, to Steven Spielberg, to Quentin Tarantino, to fucking Michael Jackson even. The Matrix, released in 1999 and in the works since at least 1995/1996 or so, was as most people know heavily influenced by anime. Does ANYONE here think that the kind of anime the Wachowskis were influenced by was your typical 4Kids 'Mon-esque "gotta collect 'em all!" anime? Does anyone here seriously think that the debut of Pokemon in late-1998 suddenly inspired two up and coming Hollywood directors to then suddenly shit out one of the most singularly important and influential mind bending sci fi/cyberpunk action movies of the last 25/30 years within the span of six months?
Where do people think that the long-held lofty reputations of Akira and Ghost in the Shell originally come from initially? Who do people think that the ancient, old fansub VHS tapes for DBZ and other anime of the time (from Cowboy Bebop to Yu Yu Hakusho to Evangelion to Kenshin and on down the list) that they might've come across in 1999/2000 were originally made for? Do people here genuinely think that all those fansub tapes, all that information about the Japanese version of DBZ, about other popular anime of the time that you'd all found on the internet of the late 90s/early 2000s, all those "spoilers" as people here often would call them.... do people here genuinely think that those had up till that point existed in a complete and utter vacuum?
Do people here seriously think that some lone, random guy - maybe Curtis Hoffman or Steve Simmons - out in the middle of nowhere somewhere out in the void of nothingness just put ALL of that info and content out into the world solely for their own personal amusement? Or that all that content and info somehow just majicked themselves into existence out of thin fucking air purely for the whole lot of you as kids to stumble across? Or do you think its more than likely that these artifacts were catering to an entire fanbase that was out there following and consuming and spreading around all this stuff for years beforehand, and most of you just came to the party way too late and way too young to be cognizant of any of it?
How is it that no one here in this fanbase has EVER gotten the sense after ALL these years, all that initial evidence above coupled together with the modern information gathering and archiving age of Youtube, Wikipedia, Google, BitTorrent, etc. (where virtually ANYTHING about anything, no matter how obscure, is fully capable of being found and read up on within five minutes and a few mouse clicks) that ALL of these works of media and the (North America) fanbases for them have a vast, long, dense history that clearly predates them by a good number of years?
The sheer, palpable degree of obtuseness and lack of awareness it takes to continually wall oneself off from THAT much glaringly obvious and more than readily findable information for ALL these years on a set of topics (Dragon Ball, anime, etc) that are of ridiculously obsessive interest to them is just... unreal. There is simply no good excuse for it at this point. Not in 20-goddamned-17, where everything that you can possibly think of in almost all of pop culture history has been largely cataloged and archived onto any number of blogs and websites and Wiki articles online for anyone and everyone to find within moments, should they simply take a few minutes out of their day to actually look at something that isn't the latest news updates on what the latest Nickelodeon cartoon lineup is, what Pixar is doing, who the next Power Rangers cast is gonna be, how well the new revamped Toonami is doing, what new Yu Gi Oh merch is coming, what the next Pokemon game is gonna be like, what new console gimmick Nintendo's cooking up, whether anyone has dug up another lost early 2000s Toonami promo, what the next Smash roster is gonna be like, what someone's latest Zelda timeline theory is, updates on whatever new mega-franchise Shonen Jump is shitting out, what shitty 4kids anime is some Youtube group abridging, anything ever to do with ANY anime 4Kids has ever dubbed, what TeamFourStar is up to, which minor Youtube celebrity of a reviewer is saying what about DB Super, who reviewed what new DC Animated film or show on Toonzone or Kotaku, and on and on and on down that exact same, specific rabbit hole of fanatically loyal fealty to childhood nostalgia on an almost Peter Pan level of dedication.
If you're looking at that above paragraph and are unable to see or comprehend how that list of stuff can be seen as in any way a stiflingly narrower than all hell, heavily askew and slanted intake of media and pop culture that leaves out a GIGANTIC boatload of incredibly major kinds of works from a person's periphery of awareness (with age demographics being one of the key factors at play)... then your inability to see the wider picture here only proves my point about how deeply ingrained and internalized this mindset is.
Again, a lot of this is unfortunately, sadly is because generally speaking, if its not something that was heavily marketed (often with a crapton of merch) to 10 year old boys at any point from around 1998 to today, most people in this community (again, NOT ALL, but a great deal most) often don't acknowledge it, don't know much about it, don't have any intellectual curiosity towards it, nor many times are they often even aware that it exists: oftentimes despite how incredibly well known and mainstream it was to gigantic swathes of pop culture at the time.