How Did You Discover Dragon Ball?

[Black_Anime_Fan]

By Dragon Ball, I mean the DB series (DB, Z, GT) altogether. Now the question is, how did you discover it? The first time I discovered Dragon Ball was the PS1 game titled "Ultimate Battle 22" (1995). I bought the game back in 2000 when I was 5, loved it (at the time, the game hasn't aged well), and soon later found DBZ on TV and have been a fan of the series since. How about you guys?

[Tyro]

September 13, 1996. Toonami aired Dragon Ball Z episode 1. Been a fan ever since.

[TheGmGoken]

Bootleg tapes from my brother Hyun-Ki

[CashmanX]

Sometime during the endless "Season Two" re-runs in "98.

Suddenly, in '99: "Hey, why did Krillin's voice suddenly change? Did he get older?"

[Hellspawn28]

Back in 1997 when my Dad got me a VHS copy of Dragon Ball Vol. 1 for my birthday.

[DragonBoxZTheMovies]

A blue-haired girl shot me in the head while I was out fishing one day.

Nah, I actually don't remember how I discovered the series. It feels like it's always just been there, but I know for sure that it was my brother who introduced it to me. Fond memories...

[Super Sonic]

Came across Curse of the Blood Rubies playing on tv one day.

[Cursed Lemon]

As a pubescent boy in the late 90s...one does not simply avoid Dragonball.

[Vegard Aune]

Once upon a time, in the year 2004, a company called Schibsted decided to bring over this Japanese comic-series called Dragon Ball, and to help promote it, they packaged a free copy of volume one along with another one of their comic-releases... I tried reading it but didn't really care for it at first, but apparently my sister liked it enough to buy the following volumes as they came out on a monthly basis. Then two months later I decided to read through volume 3 because I had nothing better to do, and found that, hey, this is actually really fun! Before long I was much more into it than said sister was, and I later asked my parents to buy me a subscription for the series, which they did, and I continued getting the volumes each month for the remainder of the series' run. DB was also one of the very few manga released in Norway that they actually finished, although by the end my own interest had also decreased considerably, plus I had long since been made aware of how utterly amateurish the Norwegian release was, which I didn't really notice at first...

But yeah. That is how I discovered Dragon Ball.

[Super 17]

I remember exactly how I discovered it. The very first memory I have of the series is when I lived in Mexico and I was 4 years old. I was at my grandma's house and there I saw it on TV, Tenshinhan vs Yamcha in the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai. That was in late 1994. The second memory I have, which was about 2 months later, is when Goku goes through Piccolo Daimao's stomach and kills him. I was so amazed and I was a fan ever since.

I also remember how DB would go on repeats of and then I finally watched it all. Then DBZ was about to start for the very first time in 1996 in Mexico and I remember not wanting to watch it because I only liked DB. I did not want to watch new things, but my dad was like "there is a big buzz around here about DBZ, you should watch it". I was like nah, but then I somehow got into it.

[Big Green]

GT. The first thing relating to Dragon Ball I ever saw, was GT on Toonami. I'm pretty sure it came on Toonami, at least, 'cause that's how I was introduced! I haaaaaated it. I remember the first scene I saw being when Rildo turned Trunks into stone, to transport, and stuff. I ignored the series for a long time after, until one night, I was bored, saw Dragon Ball Z Kai was on Nicktoons, at the time, and decided to watch. LOVED IT. So, I began to watch/read other things, Z, Dragon Ball, and eventually finishing GT, despite hating it when I was little. XD

[DarkPrince_92]

Ocean Dub, early morning on some basic cable channel. Think I was like 5-6. It was the episode Goku and Piccolo were fighting Raditz. Dad changed the channel after two minutes. Then I forgot about, and watched again when Cell Games saga (Ocean left...or whatever) reruns were on. That was in 3rd grade.

[penguintruth]

It was in the year of the first World's Fair. I was sailing around the horn of Africa in the HMS Hooladoo Hooray, looking for spices and the rare Jeweled Shrew of Aksum. My crew of stout, well-oiled brutes bared the brunt of a howling monsoon, and when the ocean was as calm as a Welshman in a Dutch bakery and the skies as clear as the outcome of the Immortal Game, we moored to a resplendent isle rich with the treasures of the Land of the Berbers.

Amongst the shale ramparts of the shore we found a keen outcropping where we laid camp for a fortnight. By day we grappled, our hardened bodies heaving in the sweaty heat. By night we drank Turkish raki and sang of the stars and the beauty of our manly forms. One day, a timid young deck cadet stumbled upon a heavy chest crafted from obsidian and ebony. Surely, we thought, this was a Barbary corsair bounty, slick with the blood and sweat of slaves. We were keen to return this loot to the hands of good, honorable men, and thus forced the chest open with a metal lever.

Cradled in a cushioned sack within the chest was an object of wonder: a small orange orb, glass-like, like a large marble, about the size of an island coconut. It was translucent. You could see very clearly four red star shapes, at approximately equal distance to each other. It shone in the savage light, the glare of a demon's eye flaring. We beheld it with great wonder and fear and did not know what it was at first, but we knew it was not a trifling object. It was something sacred, perhaps even profanely wicked, and it would change us all forever.

That is when I first discovered Dragon Ball.


Either then or when DBZ aired in syndication on TV.

[Gonstead]

My memory is hazy but I think it was sometime around 1998 or 1999 where I watched the episode on syndicated TV where Goku and Vegeta had their first beam-struggle.

[The Time Traveller]

March 6, 2000, I was 9, and it was the first day Dragon Ball Z had aired in the UK I believe, and the first day ANYTHING Dragon Ball had appeared on TV (Other than the trailers...), then Batman of the Future, and then Toonami was formed. Then came Tenchi Muyo, Gundam Wing, Johnny Quest, X-Men Evolution, and of course Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT.

[rereboy]

1996, first episode of Dragon Ball on Portuguese TV. I was 10 years old.

[dario03]

Bunch of youngins in here. For me it was 1993 Saturday morning cartoon time. It was the first and third or fourth episode of DB and guessing it was re runs of the Harmony Gold dub since Funi hadn't dubbed anything yet. I don't think it came on my normal Saturday morning cartoon channel but I remember really liking the show. For a while I looked for it every Saturday that I was home but never could find it again except once when I think I caught part of that spliced up movie but I don't think that was a Saturday morning. Few years later I saw the show again and then all of a sudden it drastically changed because that's when Funi did their release of DB and then quickly changed to DBZ so I saw a few episodes of Z (mostly Goku training with King Kai and fighting Nappa and Vegeta). But it wasn't until Toonami got DBZ that I actually got to watch it all the time. Now get off my lawn.

[UpFromTheSkies]

The first time I saw Dragon Ball was around 1995, it aired once a week on UPN, but they only showed the first 13 episodes and then skipped to Dragon Ball Z. They would air around 13 episodes of Z at time, and then restart the series, so you would have to wait another 13 weeks for a new episode, it was terrible. I quickly discovered fansubs though, and raw unsubbed VHS tapes for rent at a local Japanese grocery store.

[Shiyonasan]

Back in the late '90s, I heard pretty much every boy talk about it constantly at my elementary school on the playground. I grew tired of hearing of hearing about it for a while, but had watched bits and pieces of episodes just to see what it was all about. Finally, I decided to give it a chance and watch a full episode through. That was Episode 75 which aired on September 21, 1999 on Toonami. After watching that episode, I was hooked.

[TheMightyOzaru]

My dad showed me the Ocean dub of The Worlds Strongest when I was like 2 or 3.