What parts of the franchise evoke nostalgia for you?

[SSJGAffleck]

The entirety of the Buu Saga. I first started watching that when YTV was first airing it in Canada. Also, the second Broly movie as when Limewire was big my brother downloaded it onto our family computer and I watched it so many times.

[Kunzait_83]

Ohhh, that voice acting did NOT age well.

Implying it was in any which way acceptable at the time in 1999. It was not. We actually had examples of good voice acting back then too, and further prior.

Point of reference for myself: up to this point, during the Saban-era run, while I definitely disliked and cringed at the dub from moment one of Raditz landing, I was still somewhat able to vaguely & intermittently follow along with it just out of a sheer morbid curiosity by way of a "rubber necking a car crash" kinda mindset.

By the time the dub switched to in-house and got to these specific Ginyu vs Goku episodes though? That was the point where I couldn't even PRETEND like this was in any which way watchable even on the level of "how are they going to embarrassingly bork the material this time?" It was just anti-fun, anti-enjoyable, anti-pleasing at that point on any possible level, even on a MST3K wavelength and I had to tap out of even the "lightly following along occasionally to see how they fuck with this part" sort of viewing relationship that I had with the dub prior to that point.

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Actually, upon second thought, let me slightly rescind my earlier post on the last page: I have in fact plenty of nostalgia for any time in my life where I DIDN'T know jack shit about the minutia behind the personal lives of the various FUNimation voice actors, nor even what their names were.

Never mind that the late 90s were a time of godawful butt-rock Nu Metal and the revival of shitty teen bubble gum pop princesses in the mainstream: you know what I REALLY miss about 1998? I didn't know from fucking Adam who in the atomic powered fuck Sean Schemmel and Chris Sabat were yet.

Aaaaaaaah. Good times, good times.

And if we can roll back even further to 1995, when I had no fucking inkling who the hell Gen Fukanaga was? Or 1992, when I didn't know shit from shinola about who the hell Haim Saban was yet? Oof. Nostalgia-heaven right there.

If there's anything I'd give up a limb to un-know or un-learn, its the minutia details surrounding shitty, talentless, bottom-rung voice actors and TV executives whose entire professional/public existence is predicated on the taking of foreign media and draining anything the least bit interesting or distinctive out of them and making them resemble more closely things that were already dogshit to begin with.

I shouldn't have to know who ANY of these fucking people are (much less the gross, awful details about the sexual interests of at least one of them ) just because there happened to be this one wonky little Japanese martial arts anime I got deeply into more than 25+ years ago.

[Dbzfan94]

The entirety of the Buu Saga. I first started watching that when YTV was first airing it in Canada. Also, the second Broly movie as when Limewire was big my brother downloaded it onto our family computer and I watched it so many times.

Buu saga for me as well. Namely from after Buu is hatched to around the Buutenks portion. That was the first true experience I had with the series, instead of just seeing it fleetingly in stores or commercials in the past. But to add on, the promos for the Buu saga was great as well. I know talking fondly of the Toonami era is considered blasphemy on this forum, but I don't care.

[TrunksTrevelyan0064]

This is a weird one, because there are various layers and sources at work here.

When I decided to start watching Dragon Ball regularly, the first thing I tuned in to was actually the "ally to good, nightmare to you" episode. I am very happy to say I have no nostalgia whatsoever for that vocal performance. Any nostalgia I used to have for the dub has long been outstripped by an immense, sincere appreciation for the original version. What I do feel some nostalgia for is the subsequent battle as a whole. Two behemoths fighting to the death on an exploding planet? Looney Tunes-obsessed 11-year-old me had never seen anything like that in a cartoon before!

I also have some nostalgia for Dragon Ball Z movies 2, 3, and 4, because I picked those up on VHS back in the day. And although they featured the horrid "Big Green" dub, they also introduced me to Shunsuke Kikuchi and Head Cha-La. Then there were some random online fan games and videos, featuring all sorts of music tracks such as Unmei no Hi, We Gotta Power, and We Were Angels, causing me to develop some nostalgic attachment to those pieces as well.

Last but not least, I have to mention the 23rd Tenka'ichi Budôkai. You know how you have "imagined memories" of what your parents' lives must have been like before you were born? For the longest time, that's how I felt about the pre-Raditz material, especially that final tournament. Going back into the past and familiarizing myself with Goku's old friends and adventures was absolutely magical.

Nowadays I relish in the knowledge that I can always revisit Dragon Ball as it was in its prime, with the manga's phenomenal artwork and the anime's outstanding vocal performances. For me, that material hasn't gotten old yet, and I doubt it ever will.

[The gr]

My history with this Franchise is a bit weird.

I was exposed to DB at 2005 with the merchandise and games like Budokai 2.

As for the anime around that year, I don't remember it that well aside from this Opening, it invoked so much memories, I remember thinking the Great Saiyaman was so cool but I never bother to complete this series when it was airing.

It was only until 2010 that I fully watched DBZ from Kai to Saiyan all the way to cell while reading the manga portion of DB and Buu saga later on and man what a fun experience that was from remembering the amazing Budokai matches all the way to them Super saiyan transformations, is all thanks to DB that I was exposed to the realm of Mangas/Anime's from Shonen to Seinen.

[ABED]

Sure, anytime I watch the Saiyan and Freeza arcs, it takes me back to the late 90s.

[Shiro97]

For me personally I love reading the early volumes of the manga, really takes me back to when I was younger. I used to get the manga as it was coming out in the UK back in '05 iirc, probably would've been the gollancz edition. I remember my favorite part from the time was the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai, still my favorite arc today coupled with the Piccolo Daimao arc but I can't figure out if that's the nostalgia or personal taste or whatever. I think what drew me to it initially was Toriyama's art 'cause I remember having Dragon Ball, Yugioh and Rurouni Kenshin (pretty sure that was all they sold at the book shop I used to go to - in regards to manga anyway) but I never really liked the art for Yugioh 'cause I thought it looked kinda weird in the earlier volumes and Rurouni Kenshin just looked like every other anime I'd seen at the time. Dragon Ball stood out as being pretty unique though, and I still prefer Toriyama's older cartoonier art.

Don't really remember watching Dragon Ball Z on TV a whole lot, I never really got into it; don't watch the anime all that much now either apart from the movies. So that being said I have no attachment to any of the old dubs, the only exception being the ocean dub movies 1-3 which I do remember having a box set of a long while back. If I remember right they did a pretty good job of those films but I don't know if I'd feel the same today.

Apart from that I think I played a few of the games from around the time like Budokai 3 and whatever, but I grew up on capcom fighting games so I always found them kinda slow and I think if it weren't for the fact it was Dragon Ball I wouldn't have bothered with them. I did play the Sparking games but I never really liked them, all the fighters were too similar. One game I did like though from around the time was Advanced Adventure. Still pop it in every now and then just to stomp though everything as Piccolo Daimao .

[jjgp1112]

Definitely he Cell Games episodes, which is when I first started watching. Oddly enough, the karts that are most nostalgic for me are what was elusive to me in the early phases of my fandom - the movies, Buu saga, and so forth. I used to obsessively watch fabsubs and things like that to get to them, so when I'm watching those parts it's pretty neat to remember the days when I could only watch hem in godawful quality with edgy subtitles.

[Robo4900]

The DBZ episodes starting from Vegeta showing up to kick #19's ass, up to Vegeta getting his ass kicked by #18, and the episode where Gohan teaches Videl to fly, and a couple from the Boo arc tournament. And the GT episodes starting from the encouter with the mole dragon, up to when the ice dragon shows up, and the finalé. And I think the one with the space worms.

I didn't catch a ton of Dragon Ball on the original TV run in any real consistent manner; I'd always watch it whenever I saw it on TV, but I'd essentially end up just seeing random episodes.
However, those Z and GT episodes I mention, my dad recorded off TV back in the day, and I used to watch those recordings a lot as a little kid.
Eventually, I wanted to watch the whole run, and I got ahold of it through some means. The parts that evoke the strongest nostalgic feeling from there are essentially just huge swathes of OG DB. I went on to watch Z and GT after I finished OG DB, but the pre-Raditz stuff was always my favourite even back then, and to this day, the 21st Tenkaichi in particular is just pure joy for me.

I also have a lot of nostalgic love for the Legacy Of Goku 2 and 3.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

I find my fondest memories of these sorts things are people driven, so playing through Budokai 1 and to a lesser extent Budokai 3 with various friends and following FUNimation's releases of the movies with one of those come to my mind first. We tied Broly 1's American release to a birthday after-party, that was a good time. For the series itself, Toonami's double feature of the Buu arc and early Dragon Ball was when I first watched the TV airings regularly, Buu arc is a ride, though I had been watching in some form since DBZ first hit US TV and even saw the three episode cut of Tree of Might when it aired.

I bring this up only because this realization genuinely did retroactively harm my childhood. There's jokes about "RIP my childhood" but I really do think learning how totally Dragon Ball was changed for the American market makes me feel like I grew up with a lie. Like learning your childhood hero's an asshole and always was.

It is funny, my experience went in reverse. It was clear as day FUNi dubs, both Canadian and Texan, were off simply for how some of the things it wrote in clashed with the material it was adapting: "Why is my Asian cartoon alien name dropping David and Goliath?", Freeza being "lethal Skeletor", Goku being an out-spoken villain thrasher only to make all the shakey, oft-selfish decisions he does, etc. But I had never really made a point see just how far off until not long before I joined DaizEX. And wouldn't you know it, there are some people out there who want to make that process as enjoyable (and quite through) as possible, and real Dragon Ball was a very pleasant surprise.