Our “From the Past Friday” columns have generally focused on official products and their marketing. Every once in a while, though, we might drag a fun curiosity (or skeleton…) out of our own closet.

Our first podcast episode was released on November 20th back in 2005 — coincidentally on Dragon Ball‘s 21st birthday, and itself now almost 21 years old as well!

It’s a rough listen, but there’s undeniably a lot of heart already there. From the intent to share information and research, providing commentary on contemporary releases… in some ways not much has changed about the show. Rather than actually listening to that first episode (!!!), we instead recommend checking out Episode #0530, which we released on the episode’s 20th anniversary, digging back to the same topics from that first episode and reflecting on how both little has changed and how far we’ve come, all at the same time.

In the normal course of organizing and cleaning my office, I came across this legal pad back in April 2019, which I shared on my own personal Twitter account (and again a few years later on the Kanzenshuu account). The top page here is my hand-written notes for the Dragon Ball Z: Sparking! review portion of that first podcast episode, and the next page outlines other planned and potential topics — most (all?) of which we did indeed go on to tackle!

Many folks have asked what the “556.23” refers to down at the bottom — I have no idea, but if I had to make an educated guess, it was likely a car repair estimate I scribbled down while on the phone with the shop.

We have some other notes and planning documents kicking around, so perhaps some of those will make some future “From the Past Friday” appearances, too!