My Dragon Ball journey began in 1995, back when I was in middle school. I was 14 years old, and I was cleaning my room, I decided I needed some good background TV to help motivate me, and turned on to UPN (at the time a brand new network that is now very dead). What I saw would change my life forever, though at the time I didn’t know that. Even back then I was absolutely obsessed with animation, my formative years spent watching a lot of He-Man and Thundercats just to name a few, and I was already nostalgic for 80s cartoons. What I saw, of course, was the first FUNimation dub of Dragon Ball in all its censored glory (though I still am rather fond of their sound track which I do have a CD for, and theme song) which I just assumed was an 80s cartoon on rerun due to its style. So, of course I stopped cleaning my room and watched it.
I kept watching it over and over, even taping some of it off TV when I could. I especially loved Yamcha for some reason, not really being charmed by Goku yet. I was of course aware of anime, but anime was that thing you rented from Blockbuster Video or bought from Suncoast Video, not something you watched on broadcast television. I was already watching things like Project A-KO and the Fatal Fury OVAs, yet unaware of Dragon Ball’s Japanese origins.
That of course would change the following year when the broadcast skipped the entire rest of Dragon Ball and began the Ocean Dub of Dragon Ball Z. This was more clearly advertised as an anime and I definitely caught onto this, though missing so much of the interim material, I was incredibly confused. Not having a good memory, for a good few months I was convinced Piccolo was Pilaf, since Pilaf was the only ‘old enemy’ of Goku’s that I knew of. The only problem with the DBZ airing is that, and I kid you not, it was at 4 in the morning. I taped the first four episodes off TV before forgetting to do so afterwards, and I lost the show for a little while.
This (thankfully) didn’t last long as I started finding the VHS tapes in stores the year afterwards (primarily in a long since dead Borders and Books), though they never had the tapes in chronological order, so I saw Goku fighting Vegeta well before I saw him fight Nappa for example. Around this time I started looking up information about Dragon Ball Z online and found myself first at Chris Psaros’s Dragon Ball Z Uncensored, and eventually to Vegetto EX’s Homepage (which of course, later became Daizenshuu EX, and now Kanzenshuu, but I digress) and I learned of the extensive censoring the dub had received. It was 1998, and I was an angry 17 year old and I raged hard at the injustices done to Dragon Ball Z. But this year also marked Dragon Ball Z’s first appearance on Toonami, a block I was already watching for Thundercats, so I began watching the same dub I decried – primarily because it was there.
Much to my surprise, this little show I had discovered entirely by accident was becoming a phenomenon, and being inspired by many dragon ball sites, I attempted to make my own with some friends in high school… it wasn’t very good. Still, I relished in the fandom and the hope of a better or continued release. My wishes were half answered in 1999 when the dub was resumed for a third season, but this time there were promises of an ‘uncut’ home video release. This excited me greatly, and I bought a bunch of these tapes as they came out as my best option to see the show at the time. I was disheartened to find out ‘uncut’ just meant they would no longer physically edit the picture, but guaranteed nothing of script accuracy.
Somewhere around this time, perhaps a little before, the first Daizenshuu EX forum I joined, Tenkai, came into being and I met many good friends, a few of which I still hold dear today. I don’t usually talk about Tenkai, because honestly a lot of things I’d rather not remember occurred there, including my own sheer stupidity. That said I do have some very fond memories of that time. When Shenmue came out, a good chunk of us basically played through it together and encouraged each other through it, and the amount of Phantasy Star Online playing was over 9000. Eventually the forum imploded for a plethora of reasons, and it would be a little while before this incarnation came into being (with one short lived in between where I met many of the people in the community I call friends today). Whereas the first forum was very much a mixed bag for me personally, this incarnation, and especially the IRC chatroom that came with it has been nothing but a positive experience for me.
But I’m jumping ahead a bit, I just didn’t want that section to be too negative, but also wanted to be honest. At the end of 2000 I got my very first DVD player for Christmas, and this was just in time for the first DBZ singles volume, Ginyu Assault to come out. It had the Japanese original show on it, and it was translated by Steven J Simmons, someone from within the community and I trusted his work. Seeing the show in Japanese for the first time was absolutely surreal, subverting just about everything I had seen up to that point. Yet, I still watched the dub on Toonami as it was well ahead of the home releases, and I wanted to see the Cell arc more than anything at this point.
I stopped watching the dub after the Cell arc finished, and to this day I’ve never seen the entire Buu arc dubbed, but I kept buying those DVDs. I mean, like all of them. I still have a complete set of single DVD releases, (well I gave away Ginyu Assault and Double Cross when I got the first orange brick for some reason, so besides those), and when I DID complete that collection I was on cloud nine for a good long time.
Before that, though I tried everything to see the show uncut – I didn’t have the international channel so I didn’t get to see it in Japanese there, but I DID have Telumundo and while I don’t understand a lick of Spanish, I taped no less than 5 VHS tapes worth of Spanish DBZ episodes from it JUST to see it uncut.
Somewhere in 2004 the IRC Daizenshuu EX chat channel began, and I attended it regularly back then, and met a lot of close friends. Kaboom, Xyex, Triplerach, B, and many others, I want you guys to know how much your friendship means to me, because I really needed it then. I was just going into College (I graduated high school in 2001, but spent a few years in community college before transferring to a university) and had a rough time of it, and you guys were all there for me when I needed it.
This time in general is probably amongst the darkest in my life, I failed out of college, my childhood dog died, and my father lost his job of 20 years, there was even at one point where I considered suicide (thankfully a friend outside this community talked me out of it), and while none of you knew it, the positive discussions were a boon to me at this time .
Sometime shortly thereafter the current(ish) form of the forums began, and man I loved it. The discussions were all super positive and enlightening. Even if I couldn’t Romanize Butoden 2 correctly as I found out recently seeing my first post on record, or for the fact that I’m directly responsible for part of the rules (I’m the idiot who came up with the ‘big ban attack’ gif), I always felt welcomed here.
Over time though, I went into lurker status, and I’m not sure how to explain why. Outside of the timelines discussions which would pop up from time to time I really didn’t feel like I had a ton left to say. I still loved Dragon Ball, and enjoyed seeing what others had to say, but as time went on I had less and less to say, and I didn’t want to just make token ‘I’m alive’ type posts. Slowly but surely I moved on to other things, though I did get a bunch of you awesome folks on my AIM and/or steam lists, so I tried to stay available.
I certainly was very happy for Battle of Gods and Resurrection F, but for whatever reason I didn’t post anything about them, I don’t really know why. I was certainly still into anime, particularly One Piece, which I have been buying with the same fervor I once bought DBZ single sets (no spoilers please, I’m only up to where the dub is XD), and I’ve had an active FUNimation NOW account since late 2012 (with only a few gaps here and there). My main Dragon Ball experience the last few years has been introducing a longtime friend to the show through Kai on Toonami (the same friend that talked me out of suicide a decade ago incidentally). Seeing Kai’s dub (that’s actually GOOD) has been really enjoyable, and having a friend that had been avoiding the franchise until now digging it has been great.
I was also happy to see it when Super came out, but I didn’t pursue it right away due to a lack of legal venues for me to see it in English (subbed or dubbed), so I didn’t really come back to the community until Super came out on Crunchy Roll and FUNimation NOW.
But, since it has hit those venues, and is due on Toonami next month I’ve been trying to reconnect and add thoughts to discussions where I can.
Man, I had intended for this to be more of a ‘thank you Dragon Ball for all the things I’ve been through with you’ topic but it turned into a more ‘thank you Dragon Ball community for always being there for me’ topic. Oh well, I suppose I needed to say it. This certainly isn’t a perfect list of my time in the community, missing a few notes, but most of it’s there. I am hoping to keep moving forward with you all, if you’ll have me for the ride!
So, yeah, that’s my Dragon Ball journey, feel free to tell me yours, if for nothing else, I’m curious what other people’s stories are.
It's pretty cool to see a veteran member here.
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