Dragonball and your social circle

[sumpter360]

The majority of my friends watched DBZ at some point or another, likely back in it's WB and Cartoon Network days, but only the FUNi Dub, not the manga nor the JPN dub. Most of them don't appreciate anime enough (if at all) to give the latter two a chance, but that's their loss.

I do have one really good friend that's into anime and we talk quite a bit about DB/Z/GT quite seriously sometimes. The only times my other friends talk about it is when they hear me say something, then they just make fun of it. It's probably because they're just embarrassed about having enjoyed it as a kid. I tend to simply ignore them or walk away when this happens, because they don't realize how much the series means to me. The only ones who know that side of me is my good friend who I mentioned earlier, and all of you guys.

[Travis Touchdown]

My friends and I started watching Dragon Ball Z in middle school and have since seen the entire saga throughout highschool. Even though most of us, myself included, have outgrown anime, there's still a special spot for all things Dragon Ball in our hearts. To this day we still have long winded discussions about Dragon Ball, watch the series individually at home, or get together to watch one of the movies or so. We each get various Dragon Ball games and sometimes have intense rivalries with the fighting games.

As far as introducing newbies to Dragon Ball, personally I don't bother. I doubt they'd see it as anything more than a silly cartoon at my age. My friends who are still die-hard into anime don't want Dragon Ball anywhere near their anime nights because they've all seen it so much since Cartoon Network kind of beat it to death in highschool, which sucks because that's the only way I would be able to stand anime night. But it's okay, as stated a select few of us are still loyal Dragon Ball fans and I get enough kicks from them.

[Rory]

I have 2 very close college friends who are also big fans of Dragon Ball, surprisingly we're not a typical nerdy circle either, we can keep our fandom under control when it comes to the social side life.. but we still have our in jokes. We scream "You Fool" on occasion, and have a tendency to "Never forgive you!!".
My girlfriend is going through the manga, and has been doing for sometime, she really enjoys it, but isn't as open about it as my friends (she still makes a reference every now and then though).
Outside that, it's pretty quiet. People know, but don't really care much.

[MCDaveG]

I have a quite different circle. I don't have much casual friends but 2 and people I'm in touch a lot are musicians or artists. Most of them are fans of sci-fi and anime, we share a big imagination and we respect each other.....

It's simmilar to this forum, which is place for DB fans all around the world to discuss with each other. You can't discuss quantum mechanics with professional athlete, same as I for example am not capable of discussing music to depth with someone who will turn radio on in the morning and turn it off after work.....

We have a phrase in our country and I doubt that you don't have something simmilar to say but differently: Every crow sits next to the crow.
Simpletons will have most of their friends simpletons as well, so it's natural that you will debate about dragon ball with another dragon ball fan.

[LilKokuLink]

Well as I was watching Dragon Ball Z as a child, I had plenty of friends at primary school that liked it too, hence we re-enacted scenes at 'play-time', drew them whenever we did drawing etc. Every week after an episode we'd all discuss it and just be amazed at how good it was. It got to a point that all the girls in the class, and the teacher (being a female) disliked that, so the teacher banned it... how fucking annoying is that? Anyway, at secondary school I moved away, I think all my old friends lost interest by then but I'm still as fresh with it as ever.
During secondary school, for the first two years I watched the Buu Arc with my own private self with no one to share it to. Then by the third year I knew who all my friends were, and they shared to me that they like anime. And so I remembered DBZ... and then for the next three years I got back into the groove.
As I go to a different college now, I only recently discovered three people who watch DBZ by chance which is great . I am really good friends with one of them now and she's got a great collection round her house. I'm open about it to a few other new friends too and they're fine with it. My ex-girlfriend used to be okay with it too, and she used to watch some with me (she liked the fillers and I was like.. uhh..?).
Recently, I introduced DB to my cousin (he's a bit younger so he never watched DB/Z/GT on air). I want him to experience the whole thing in order, like I never got to... It's a shame he's been exposed to super saiyan and things through media but there's still a hell of a lot surprises for him in store! After watching the first 13 episodes of DB he found it so good that he doesn't watch/read naruto or bleach anymore lol woops . My reaction to that was like... first 13 episodes? Lol that's nothing! There's soo much more!
So yeah, DB/Z/GT for me socially is now fantastic! I'll always have that longing for my experiences at primary school with it. But now I think it's gotten much better! And the forum helps a bit too!

[GreggMays64]

Some of the kids at my school luckily loves DBZ still. Some of them remembers it at my school. The other day the kids at my table asked this kid about DBZ and these questions, like

"Who is the main character"

and the kid would end up saying

"I don't know"

only for me to say

"SON GOKU!"

I have a friend who watches the dub that prefers Japanese music over the Nathan/Bruce/Mark in his remaster sets. music because it reminds him of Dragonball. He found the Japanese voices goofy at first, because he heard Goku's voice, then his opinion changed when he heard other voices like Super Buu.

[Scarz]

This forum IS my Dragonball circle. I lost contact with my friends who were fans of DB a long time ago.

[Furyus]

My Dragon Ball circle is my wife and 8 year old daughter.
I have always loved the show but through trials of life hadn't stopped to enjoy the things I really enjoy until recently.
It was last year when we rented DB Evolution and found that my 8 year old liked it I decided to look into buying the original DB series for us to watch together. I was happy to find Funimation was releasing the new blue bricks so we basically sitting around eagerly waiting for the next box to release. We probably knock them out at about 3 episodes a night, more on weekends.

At the same time I was excited to find the DBox was coming out, allowing myself to renew my interest in DBZ.
I purchased that early from Best Buy (saving using the online Target ad), now foaming at the mouth for Dbox2.
I think I knocked out the first Dbox in about 3 or 4 days all while working my full time job. Watched it two times over since.
My wife watched the entire Dbox with me, she had never followed DBZ in her life.

I let my daughter watch only the first episode as kind of a teaser. I am forcing her to watch the show in order.
She will not get DBZ experience until DB is completed!


The whole thing has kind of been a soul awakening, renewing my interest in both anime & manga -- something that I let fall to the side in the busy world of adult responsibilities. (The last DBZ I owned was a single android saga VHS)
Now I'm reading Bleach, we've watched every Funimation dub of One Piece (all 3 of us sing along to the theme song, every single episode it's kind of hilarious). My wife has read every volume of Claymore & One Piece thanks to online sources.


We have no dub vs sub, original vs US score debates. My daughter doesn't even know a different score exists.
I understand personal preference but find that whole subject annoying. Voice and music are only a part of the show.
I see people rating the Dbox 1 star on Amazon because of the score and it puzzles me, do they only watch the show for the music?? The whole thing 1 star due to one aspect? Clearly they are fans, why would they want to possibly hurt the franchise or selling of the product because it doesn't contain something that it was never advertised to contain! It's like rating a 2.1 speaker set poor because it didn't have a 3rd speaker. Sorry I side ranted!

[Kaboom]

The handful of friends from High School that I still keep in touch with and see pretty often are almost unanimously all anime fans already. One of them likes DragonBall but isn't a huge fan, one of them likes to take jabs at it when we go back-and-forth insulting each other's taste in media for fun, and the rest are at least familiar with it.

Then there's my sister, whom is a big manga/anime nerd and tolerates my obsession with DragonBall.

[UristtheGreat]

There's a kid in my study hall who likes Bleach and Naruto. We can basically do whatever the hell we want on the computers so one day when he was watching Naruto Shippuden, I decided to ask him if he liked Dragonball. He said he had the games, then I asked him about the Japanese version, he said he'd never seen it. Then I asked him about the dub and he said he never really paid attention to it. So we started watching Dragonball Kai together every day, he never asked about Goku's voice, he just said it was really cool.

I met someone else who likes it because I do community service for this group and we got together with this other group to hang out and stuff. I brought 2 volumes of Dragonball to read and then this one kid who I thought was kinda wierd came up to me and asked "You ever watch the anime version?" I said "Yeah, what about it?" and he said "Well, I saw that episode with Bulma and Roshi, the uncut version" so he knew what he was talking about. But anyway, I asked him about Team Four Star and he said he loves it. So, we've become good friends after that. Other than that I really don't know anymore people.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

You guys are so lucky that you have friends who like Dragon Ball, I don't know anyone who currently likes it apart from you guys

[Innagadadavida]

Well things in my life have certainly taken a turn for the better recently. I moved into an apartment/town house with my fellow Dragon Ball fan friend and we have our season sets set up in the living room next to the TV. We also have a Gogeta and Piccolo poster upstairs in the hall. We have had so many people over, mostly friends of friends who I'm meeting for the first time, and they all ask about Dragon Ball. It's great that I have all the DBZ movies because they're short, sweet, and to the point. A lot of times we'll grab some beers or hit a bong, pop one of them in, and just watch some ass kicking. I'm turning our neighbors into fans too.

The downside to this move is that I don't have internet which means I've been spending a lot less time 'round these parts.

[Jon Jon]

My 2 best friends and I absolutely love the series. They're actually coming over to watch my newly acquired green brick season 1 and munch down some pizza and other terrible foods.

[KKZ]

I have a few friends in school who like it. A (at the time) casual friend and I saw Dragonball Evolution on opening day, that was a good laugh. We've been great friends ever since. My girlfriend tolerates it because she played a lot of the games when she was younger (She's actually becoming a Pokemon nerd again currently). She's says she'd like to get into DBZ and Avatar the Last Airbender with me more some time. <3 <3 <3 I'll also hear perfectly stable, un-nerdy people reference it sometimes. But there are also the typical snide remarks about it too, from people who've most likely never even seen it anyway or saw it so long ago that they don't even remember anything about it. So it doesn't really matter to me, I'm not going to adamantly defend it and ruin my last few years of high school, even though I want to sometimes.

My dad will also have parties and their kids will come over and they think my DVDs, figures, etc. are pretty cool. Lucky crowd I guess.

[Gabool The Wild]

Most of my friends enjoy DragonBall just as I do. None of them are huge fans like me, but they enjoy the series, and we all have a blast constantly playing Budokai 3 or Burst Limit against each other non-stop.

[russ869]

He always brings up Freeza though since he watched the Bardock special. For some odd reason he thinks Vegeta is the main character.

What? Are you somehow implying that Vegeta is not the main character? j/k

My two little brothers think that DBZ is hilarious (even in Japanese because that's all I watch) because well... it is hilarious. My mom thinks that for a kids show, it has a little too much excess of swearing (referring to the subtitles of the Saiyan arc where a typical line is "Dammit! That bastard!!")

Wow. You have great friends. My friends who don't like DB would kick me in the crotch, throw me out of their house, and refuse to see me for several days if I talked about Dragonball for more than 20 seconds.

I have to kick my friends in the crotch for at least 20 seconds just to get them to listen to me talk about Dragonball. Well... maybe that's not accurate. But they definitely won't watch/read it.

When I posted the announcement as a fb status update, the only response I got was someone asking me what the fuck a dragon box was.

Ha ha..! What did you expect was going to happen?