DBZ / Web Community: Happy Experiences

[VegettoEX]

Through a long series of following link referrals and Googling, I just had the utterly disgusting experience of randomly coming across a thread where a major point was to throw insults at people involved in the DBZ / web community that haven't been a PART of the community for years, now.

Needless to say, it nearly frustrates me (not quite, but close) to see that people who call themselves "fans" can still harbor such hatred and ill-feelings, especially for individuals that they've never actually met. Regardless of what these people did in the past, how they conducted themselves in the past, etc... it's in the past, and things in the past cannot be changed. They can only be looked at, reflected upon, and hopefully learned from.

It was these kinds of tensions that the fans threw at us that really drove most of us apart. Quite frankly, I'm willing to bet that most of us "old-school" people don't even really remember why we started getting upset with each other; it was as if the fans were controlling our emotions and thoughts!

Hell, Ramza... do you have an idea? I'm at a COMPLETE loss as to what happened between us, but I'm such it was trivial and not even our own fault. Whatever it is, I'm glad it's gone

So here's my request:

I want all active members to share some kind of happy experience from their DBZ / web past. Whether it be the first time you found your favorite site, the first time you downloaded "CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA," the first time you saw your editorial posted... whatever.

I want to hear about the positive things. I think we really need to show these people what FANDOM is all about. It's not about complaining, it's not about holding grudges, it's not about bothering people... it's about showing your LOVE in constructive ways.

So please... show your love.

[VegettoEX]

I'll even start it off. The day that Wuken changed his homepage over to Suushinchuu was an incredible day. Far ahead of his time with image design and page layout, I can remember browsing through the images for hours while I listened to the MP2s available.

Wuken originally wanted to create a database of all the DBZ CDs available. He abandoned that wish, and I'm glad I was able to take over for him in that kind of niche market. Knowing that I continued something from my favorite 1st-generation site means more to me than I think any of you can imagine.

[PsyLiam]

Actually, you've already picked my one. One of my friends had stumbled on to the original Japanese openings for Pokemon, and they were really cool. So I thought to myself, "Hey, that crazy program I watch which involves lots of staring and occasional plot it Japanese. I wonder what it's original opening is like?"

So I looked. And I found it, at Planet Namek (I think). I downloaded it. And I wept. Wept for it's greatness. Wept at it's style. Wept at the the fact that, damnit, it made me want to fly and sing incrediblely 80s rock anthem type things!

I then spend two years hovering between Planet Namek and that DaizenshuuBigEgo place (ha! wit!). And they were good. And I liked them.

(If it helps, I never thought you were a twat. Not much, at any rate. The "Gokuu" thing did annoy me though, but it was hardly on DBZOA levels and we're not talking about bad stuff so I love everyone.)

[Meri]

Fond memory #1: Going on Wuken's site and saving nearly every one of his scans on my compy.

Fond memory #2: Going to "VegettoEX's Home Page," reading his editorials, hating his guts, but downloaded all of his MP3s for my computer.

Ah, the irony!! How could I hate such a smart young lad!?

[Jerseymilk]

Fondest Memory #1: I think that would be the first time I ever heard any of the original music for DBZ. I had only seen the Saiyajin and Namek sagas, dubbed, of course like most everyone else here, on T.V., but I knew there was more to it and I wanted that "more". I bought my first ever DBZ CD back in 98' I think it was. It seems like ages ago now. It was the Neverending Story CD and I put it on and I'm blasted with the fantastic "Aitsu wa Son Goku". What a great song to hear as your first! I also heard "Head-Cha-La" on the same CD and thought, "What a crazy, funky song! I really like it!" Foolish me didn't even know it was the theme song till a bit later. I was downright estatic when I dicovered this though! I played that double disc non-stop for about 2 months! I couldn't get enough of it! "Aitsu wa Son Goku" is still one of my favourites today, even though I own almost all of the CDs, not including the game ones. Becoming a lover of DB music gave me one more aspect of the series to love.

Fondest Memory #2-Shortly after, of course wanting more still. I purchased the Pioneer release of the subtitled version of "The Tree of Might" movie. It was funny because I remember the guy behind the counter at the comic store where I bought it saying, "Uh, this version is subtitled.", he said it really carefully like he was breaking the news to me that my dog had died. "Yes, I know. This is the version I want." I said. Poor guy, at that point in time I guess the idea of someone wanting to watch DBZ in Japanese with subtitles was crazy! Didn't I just want to see blood spilling and fists flying? What difference did it make what language it was in? Anyway I get it home and watch it that night and as I watch it, it was like a whole new DBZ was unfolding before me! The music, the unforgettable voices, the absence of censorship. This was the DB I wanted and would really fall in love with! That's about it. Sorry that this ended up being so long, but I really wanted to emote what fond memories they are to me and the process of coming to love the series as much as all of we fans here do.

[SSJHitch]

I remember flicking through Cartoon Network one time to see this guy in hospital sneak out and then fly off to the desert somewhere and start moving pyramids about! It kept me entertained so I started watching. After a few days worth of viewing I decided to see what this programme was all about, so I lept on my PC and started looking. This was when I found Planet Namek, and I very quickly starting looking over every piece of info I could find, and learning it! I loved that site, such a shame it's gone. And I still go through it on the internet archives every now and then!

[tablet the eunuch]

Finding out that finally, region 4 DVDs would have an alternative Japanese audio track and subtitles. I didn't even CARE so much about the Japanese version, I was just happy to be getting it in the face of so many Region 4 releases going wrong.

[omae no kaasan]

Being forced to pay extra for a crappy site that eventually got over 100,000 unique accesses a day at its peak. That was great.

[Commander_Red]

Hmm, the first thing I can ever remember finding on the net about DBZ was an old Quicktime clip of the original with Vegeta chasing after 2nd stage Cell and firing blasts at him. It had that catchy little chase tune playing in the background. That was the first bit of original music I ever heard.
I soon heard Cha-La Head Cha-La for my first time shortly afterwards. It was in Spanish but it was still cool.

[VegettoEX]

Being forced to pay extra for a crappy site that eventually got over 100,000 unique accesses a day at its peak. That was great.

No, c'mon... seriously . I know you've been around a hella long time like I have, but there's gotta be something from the past ^^.

[Jakez04]

Fondest Memory #1: Eating Jello for the first time. Mmmm Jello!


Fondest Memory #2:Was the frist time I mean to a DragonBall Site called Ashok's DragonBallZ Page(really old site). It is still one of my favorite site today tough it an't around any more.

[Dai]

One of my fondest memories... Is from Daizenshuu EX, coincidentally. I was already much a fan of the DBZ Web Community, and to be honest only stumbled over Daizenshuu EX a few times, never actually checking out anything on it. Except for one thing... A Music Video. The very first AMV I ever saw and downloaded. It was 'Live and Let Die'. I downloaded it because I liked the song, and wanted to see how someone would associate DBZ with it... And it was great.

But that isn't all. What was one of the first DBZ sites I ever encountered, was Dragon Ball Angels: The Goten Shrine. I still love that site in all its content, and it was also my gateway to the DBZ Web Community. I've visited many, many sites afterwards, like Savage Z, Seven Stars Dragonball, Dragon Ball Kenkon, Ginga GIRI GIRI, and many more... I loved each and very one of them, but I never ever send them a mail of appreciation or anything of the sort. I kinda regret that now.

I don't really have ANY bad memories of the DBZ Web Community... I was still young when I first got introduced to it, and I liked it throughout the process of quite a few years, in which I sort of grew up. I never really liked Planet Namek, to be honest... It just... didn't grab my interest in the least. I only liked their 'Kaio's Corner' section.

So, that was that... I first got word of Daizenshuu EX's return from Ginga GIRI GIRI, and quickly visited the 'In construction' page. A lot of things happened since then, and here I am! Whew, that was nostalgic. I'd better drug myself before it gets worse.

[TripleRach]

Hmm let's see... I don't know too many old school sites, but the first one I found was Daimao's homepage. After I got into the series, I wanted to know what happened in all the prior episodes, so his site was the best result in a search for a DBZ episode guide. A few months later, I found out about FUNi's DVDs, and that he was this fairly famous person who did the subtitles for them, and that was like...wow. I also remember reading every damned thing on Planetnamek and Greg Werner's site, haha. I didn't visit Daizenshuu EX very often, until that one editorial about how rotten and stuck up the fanboys had gotten. People were mean in my early newbie days on forums, so I could really relate to the stuff in that editorial, and thought, "Hey this VegettoEX seems like a pretty cool guy".

Another fond memory is the first time I discovered Curtis Hoffmann's manga summaries. I found them on a very small site. They made me really want to read the manga, and then when I finally bought all the tankoubon...well, I've often been accused of being a "manga nazi" ever since.

But my fondest memories have to relate to watching the series. I'd heard many people complain about how lame the dub was and everything, so I was determined to see this Japanese version. The first Japanese thing I saw was the Bardock special. It was easy to get used to Masako Nozawa as Bardock, but hearing Gokuu voiced by a woman was a different story. Until Dragon Ball. Hearing Nozawa as Chibi Gokuu was just the greatest thing, and it made me understand why he kept his voice as an adult.

Other anime fans can complain that Dragon Ball/Z is stupid kids stuff with mindless violence, but it has this wonderful charm that keeps me a huge fan, and it still feels nice to watch or read stuff over again.

[laserkid]

There were definatly some good times in the DBZ web community. I remember when I found DBZ Uncensored and Vegetto EX's page, I'd seen random DBZ sites before then that have all long since disappeared, but man when I found these two sites, I was able to see more than a clip of SSJ2 Gohan (I saw SSJ2 Gohans transformation on the web long befoire I even knew what a super saiyan WAS). It was so neat to be able to read and understand the diffrences, and see how people who had found it in its original version viewed things. And then there was the day I started the first of many incarnations of my DB/Z page, me and two real life friends really got hyped up on Dragon Ball Z based on waht we were seeing on these sites, and decided to cover everything we could together, it was a short but fun time for me, where I had two friends to work with, hell back then I didn't know the evils of DBGT, so I remember we went to toeis site to get the DBGT logo to host up a GT site, that never got made. I remember I used to use snappy to get images off of my dub only VHS tapes, and I remember being thrilled finding random sillyness (I was wowed by the star trek ship in the Vegeta Saga heh).

And what I remember the most, was the first time I loged into the original Daizenshuu EX IRC chatroom, man did we build a community in there, and I remember Sir Robin and I would go on quoting Monty Python like mad in there, fun times, fun times.

[Hujio]

I remeber the first time I ever saw DragonBall, it was at a friends house across the street. Later I found it was on Cartoon Network, but at the time I didn't get cable, so it was over to my friends every day after school for about a year. Sometime during that year I decided to see if I could find any info on DragonBall Z on the internet. The first couple of sites I found were poorly constructed and contained almost no relevant info at all. By then my friend had decided to create his own site which I thought was pretty good. And I too wanted to create a site, so I did. I sat down and taught myself HTML and JavaScript, not knowing what I was getting myself into I signed-up at Angelfire.com for my first site. I was there for about 5 or 6 years until about a year and a half ago they shut down my site for unknown reasons. Ever since then I've maintained my website on my hard drive, working on sections. In the long run it's turned into more of place of information for me to refer to than a website. It's like a huge Encyclopedia!! But what I remember were the fun times along the way while I had the site online, talking to all the people. And I must say that I would try to talk to as many people as possible along the way, I remember emailing Mr. E of Planet Namek questions or info, talking to Castor Troy on IRC, and having a good time talking to those that shared a common interest...

I would constantly visit my 4 most favorite sites daily (until some eventual closings): Ginga GIRI GIRI!!, Dragonball Kenkon, Planet Namek, and Daizenshuu EX (I still visit DaizEX daily, sometimes hourly ). These sites introduced me to the love of DragonBall and anime in general. Without great sites like these none of us would be where we are today... I'll admit that this community had it's flaws but I think we're left with the best. This message board is proof enough that the good ones are out there and that we can all come together and talk decently without slamming everyone or everything (and I love the grammar rule, it's the best thing that's happened to the DBZ community in a long time, thanks EX ). And as they say, "In the end... all you have are your friends..."

[Pirate Hunter]

The only web community memories that I have are when I first visited Planet Namek for the first time looking up more info on DBZ. And of course finding Daizex and visiting it like every few hours.

[admin]

Creating and publishing, on the internet, one of the most old school DBZ websites from back in the day with incredible "Frames" or "No Frames" options. Site was known as "Mr. Satan's Dojo." Hosted on Tripod, I believe.

[SDNess]

Researching DragonBall Z immediately after the first episode I saw on Cartoon Network. I stumbled upon three websites that I went to religiously...Planet Namek, Planet Turtle's Picture Page (hosted off of Geocities), and SSJGoku's DBZ Page (hosted off of AOL Hometown).

Also, downloading clips of DBZ movies with my old 56k modem. Actually, I think I downloaded some of VegettoEX's a couple of times.

[johnnyboy]

My fondest memory was when my friend first turned me on to Dragonball Z. I was watching the Freeza saga and had no clue what was going on. I had these little figures of the characters and thought that all of the "blonde haired guys" were totally different people from Goku, Vegeta, etc. I remeber thinking Pikkon and Boujack were different variations of Piccolo, so my friend and I sort of learned together. Those were the times....

[Dayspring]

Question: Who is Wuken? I believe that may actually be before my time.

Memory #1: Finding out that there was a DB community at all. It was small, comprised only of Vegeta Insane, Ultimate DBZ info site, PN, EX and Temple O'Trunks. Ramza was only fansubs at that point still.

Memory #2: Finding a site that had scanslations of practically all the DB volumes. Kicked ass since they were only at volume 24/25 here when I found it.

Memory #3: Kienzan's Edge became hosted by PN. By far one of my fav sites+webmasters. Getting hosted by PN got Kienzan an 00ber recognition in the DB community.