I was bored today, and still trying to hold onto my usual short-lived once-a-year Dragonball kick before it vanishes once again into obscurity until next November, I decided to browse through good ol' DBZ Uncensored..I actually think I was looking for something in particular, but I ended up getting caught up in my nostalgia and reading through each and every episode comparison and remembering back so many years ago, maybe memories of sitting at this same ancient piece of crap computer (well...the big-ass monitor that barely fits on my desk is the same, at least), and just marveling in disbelief that it's been this long.
I remember when Cartoon Network's Boomerang announced that they were airing the original seasons of Pokemon a few years back and thinking to myself, 'God, am I really that old that my childhood is already on BOOMERANG?'...and somehow, this little exercise in reliving my old fandom evoked the same feelings.
Once I finished the episode comparisons I started reading Chris' editorials. I was thoroughly amused in how often he'd predict the future correctly, and just how many times he'd also be dead wrong. In so many ways, FUNimation has come far with their handling of the series, but at the same time, things haven't really changed all that much. Overall it was a fun little diversion from real life (given that we're in the middle of some heavy snowstorms right now, the only other 'constructive' way I could have spent my day would have been cleaning my room...and Lord knows I couldn't allow that to happen), but I felt a particularly strong pang of 'oh my God, it's really been that long?!' when I read this editorial.
It reminded me that I, like many others did (and still do, for some!!) once worshiped the ground these webmasters walked on, completely disregarding the notion of 'internet celebrity' (this phenomenon sadly continues to this day, whether inside the DBZ community or not; the names LittleKuriboh and moot in particular come to mind
). Back then I would have never dared to imagine the webmaster of this community as a human being I could freely refer to as Mike; Dear Lord, no, he was the almighty VegettoEX and I was far too inferior to ever be in his presence (I felt 'I'm not worthy' back in the old days when I got into Ask VegettoEX twice, and even more recently a few years back when Lemmy first told me that he was friends with this digital god among men)!! So yeah...I totally got hit with the nostalgia bug over the concept of 'elites' Psaros discusses in that editorial, to say nothing of 'oh God, Mr. E?! Castor Troy?! Names I haven't heard in years are taking me back in time!!'.Aaaanyways...I decided I could make a thread out of this, and find out who else would get a kick out of this. I mean, everyone here has still somehow remained faithful to the DBZ community over these many years, and I know most of us older fans especially remember how, as much as we complain nowadays, things were so much worse back then - and little things like a Live Action Movie really aren't that much to be concerned with anymore. There were days when many of us didn't believe we'd see the day when American DBZ would ever come this far, and at the end of the day, the things we do find to complain about these days are far less...how shall I say... 'urgent', as they were back then, when the fandom literally consumed every fiber of our beings. You know, back when we'd run to all of the old DBZ message boards and write page-long rants about how everything holy was being violated and that the world would stop turning if FUNimation mispronounced another attack name. Ah...the good ol' days.
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Personally, for me, the oldest days of my DBZ fandom were back before the series took hold and became insanely popular with the fanboys, albeit not terribly long before. By the time it did, I was well aware of the original Japanese version thanks to Psaros and others convincing me to hunt down 'the original' (which were pretty much the AnimeLabs fansubs back in the days before everyone's rock, YouTube, existed
), and spend my time watching those during my computer 'SWAP' (a thing we had in middle school where we'd sign up for a club-type activity to spend the last 45 minutes of the school day and be stuck with for the remainder of the semester; computer SWAP was basically just going to the computer lab and doing whatever the Hell you wanted to in the Golden Age of the internet...you remember, back when we were all n00bs), going home and printing out DBZ pictures to hang on my wall or reference (IE: trace) to make my own awesome DBZ fanart, and to start frequently writing in mangled Japanese on all my school notebooks and calling everyone 'baka' and other Japanese words I thought were swears back then, because it just made me sound so amazingly cool. Other kids still thought all there was to Japanese animation was Pokemon, but come on, man...I was into Dragonball Zeeee. It was graphic and violent and everyone said all these hardcore swears and there were dirty jokes and it was all just so wicked sweet, and I was totally cool for liking it because unlike stupid smelly Pokemon DBZ wasn't a well-known or popular fad (yet). Hell, I even remember one day on the school bus I was drawing (read: tracing) a picture of MEE RAI NO TRORANSKU and some kid called me lame for drawing James from Pokemon, and I considered to - in an ultra-cool way - educate him on how this was actually someone way cooler from a way more violent show and that this guy actually sliced people in half with his sword, and even went so far as to show him screencaps (that I had printed and conveniently on my person at all times, of course) of the dream sequence in which #17 impales him with his own sword. I was all like, Pokemon? Shit. DBZ is so much more hard core, for realz, yo.
Eventually as time went by and DBZ became a fad, I got a little more quiet about how 'cool' I was, but still exuded that holy superiority - non-fans knew of the show readily by then (no more mistaking Trunks for James), but due to the atrocity of the dub, most couldn't take it seriously and I was branded a loser. So I'm all like 'whatever, man, you don't know the truth, you don't know why the English version is so bad'. Then I'd sit in class and draw horrifically bad (no seriously...I still have my old notebooks laying around, I cringe at the caricatures I once thought were good) DeeBeeZee characters until it was time for Computer SWAP again, wherein I could lose myself in the world of PlanetNamek.com and Temple O' Trunks, and then go home and wait for DBZ to be on Toonami so I could sit in the middle of the livingroom floor and watch it - making sure that my mom and brother knew full well that while I was watching this it was for the sole purpose of ranting about what was wrong with it while it was on, for all to hear, even though no one cared about it but me. Because, of course, that made me feel all the more cool about my super special awesome favorite series/hobby/way of life.
So no...I was no webmaster, and no, I had no internet 'elite' status to make my superiority 'official', but man, out there on the playground at recess, me and my DBZ binder, we were the shit. I didn't need other people to acknowledge how cool I was. I knew. And that was enough for me.
As time went by and the dub reached the Buu Saga, and everyone I knew was a fan of the series, I became even more quiet about liking it. I was getting into non-DBZ series' by that point, Anime and Manga...my computer crashed, and I lost all my precious precious DBZ music and pics...the message board that was basically the precursor to my forum (it's where I first formed my internet clique, since I obviously had no real life friends) was shut down in late 2003, and basically my at-the-time brand-new Dragonball fanfic, IGNO, was my last remaining tie to the DB world. Towards the end I was satiating myself almost entirely on Doujinshi and tracking down rare songs I didn't have, anyways...once I felt I cleaned the internet of the last traces of even those, me and DBZ more or less called it quits.
Since then, I've essentially been in the same DB-limbo for the past 5 years...once a year I celebrate my self-created 'holiday' Dragonball Remembrance Week to recapture the nostalgia I ignore the rest of the year 'round (a similar but more unconscious phenomenon seems to happen with Pokemon every year, too; DBR week is kinda forcefully imposed), and then I ride the DB nostalgia train as long as the feeling lingers, only to once again disappear into obscurity and get back to my other interests.
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So...for all my other fellow 'older' DBZ fans, who have followed this crazy, crazy series' journey through the US and been caught up in its amazing fandom, feel free to discuss (or rant, like I did) how far you've come, and all your silly little memories of the good ol' days when Dragonball still felt 'new' to you.
