Your Fandom X Years Later

[Ringworm128]

The recent "DBE is 7 years old" thread got me thinking, "Has it really been 7 years already?" Due to realising this I've decided to make a thread for everyone to look back on how they've changed as a fan over the years.


While I had exposure to DB before it wasn't until late 2008 that I started fully watching the series.
I probably joined the fanbase at the perfect time, the Jump special had just come out and Kai was getting ready to Air, to say a revival was coming would not be wrong.

The second faze would be in late 2009 when I discovered this site back when it was Daizenshuu EX through Gaffer Tapes Dragonbox review and people linking here on Twitter. I had a great time listening to my first episode of the podcast, I think it was the Yamcha one. Anyway I've made most of my online friends here and I really do love this forum and all you guys, I've been on many forums and this is still the best one.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I've always had a fondness for the franchise, but it's only been in the last few years I've really embraced it.

I think the main thing is that there's so many ways to experience and enjoy Dragon Ball. It means so much to so many different people, it is really a franchise that you can look at beyond being merely another toyetic kids show. It's transcended what a cartoon can be.

I grew up on the Ocean group dubs, and enjoyed them for what they were, but in recent times I've read the manga, watched Funimation's Kai dub and both just allowed me to fall in love with the series all over again by getting Toriyama's tone and artistic vision, and now I'm starting to get into the original Japanese version and seeing what it was like for the initial broadcasts way back when. Also, knowing that Dragon Ball is such a big deal in France makes me think I might even try the French dub someday.

I also seriously intend to read Derek Padula's books sometime soon.

Joining this forum has also been great for the people and the highly intelligent discussions I don't get to this extent with any other animated series.

[samuraix123]

I always loved the series even as a kid I still remember the first time I saw the series It was in the summer time and I was laying on the bed looking at wrestling figures But I would try my hardest to watch it every day it came on Toonami and If I missed it that was the worst thing ever!
The first dub that I grew up with was the ocean dub and that's actually the only way I love to watch the first 3 movies of Z. Now during my highschool days I started slipping on the franchise. I wouldn't say I completely gave up on it but I just didn't care about it all that much anymore. But when the Orange Bricks came out it relighted that fire I had for the series and I have been crazy with it ever since.
It really is amazing just how fast time moves when you're not paying attention. I don't think I'll ever stop loving the series though, If something happens and I start to get Eh with the series I wont sell all my stuff (especially my Dragonboxes) I'll just box them up and wait for that next thing to relight my passion for it.
There's moments when I see kids in a store saying something Dragonball related or doing the Kamehameha and I just wanna jump in there and kamehameha them back but it'd look weird. It makes me happy though to see kids who love the series either Kai or the original Z.
All of this just makes me wonder...How long will the series stay relevant? lol If I live to be 70 or 80 will kids still be running around talking about it? Will kanzenshuu still be here!? Will I be watching the series in a nursing home one day!!?? We'll see.

[Soppa Saia People]

I'm not as big fan 5 years ago. I still love the series and will forever be in my cycle of franchise's I love (Pokémon is 1, DB is 2, Mega Man is 3 and Mother/Earthbound is 4), but I dunno I've gotten a bit out of it for past 6 mothes or so.

[Kuririn Fan]

Fan since 2002, when i was 7.
Ultra super hardcore fan since august 2015, when i was 19, and watched it ALL in japanese and read the manga.
Everything in between doesn't matter, only the fact that i ascended to the top does.

[Hellspawn28]

I knew about Dragon Ball since 1997 which was almost 20 years ago. My dad got my a VHS copy of the first few episodes of Dragon Ball and my dad was like "The video store owner said that this is a popular kids cartoon from Japan". I did know about anime about that time thanks to re-runs of My Neighbor Totoro, G-Force, Speed Race and anime on the Sci-Fi channel. I didn't like Dragon Ball at the time because I found it to be kinda odd at the time. In 1998, I saw the episode of Goku being wish back on Toonami and I was like "What is this show?!". In 1999, DBZ started to become more popular and I hated it for being so popular at my school. For a while, I didn't like DBZ because people would not shut up about it. I did finally became a fan around early 2001 when I saw SSj2 Gohan vs. Cell. While waiting for new episodes on Toonami, I catch up on re-runs and doing my own Dragon Ball research. I wanted to get as many DB stuff that I find when I was 10 years old.

So yeah I've been a fan for 15 years. I remember always scared telling fans that I got into the series more recently back in 2002-2005 because everyone else I knew at the time was fans way longer than me.

[Bansho64]

Man I really feel inferior to you guys 2011 was the year I got into the franchise. I was in 5th grade and the kids at my school were saying that Kai was so cool and that I should check it out. It's actually pretty funny how I got into it. I was searching up Kai on youtube and I forgot to type in Kai and I searched up Dragon Ball Z on accident. I was about to retype it when all these results kept showing up so I decided to watch the videos anyway. I was kinda the weird kid at school because my friends kept asking "What is Dragon Ball Z" and saying "Don't you mean Kai". Long story short- I went through a lot of trial and error to separate which dub was which.

[Dbzfan94]

Fan since 2002, when i was 7.
Ultra super hardcore fan since august 2015, when i was 19, and watched it ALL in japanese and read the manga.
Everything in between doesn't matter, only the fact that i ascended to the top does.

You're not higher than everyone else. Quit it with the holier than thou attitude

Anyway on topic I started in 2002/2003 with the early Buu Saga. Around 2005 I kinda dropped off for a bit but like others have said when the Orange/Blue Bricks came out and I was finally able to see the series in order from the beginning I got into it more than before. Now here I am almost 13 years later

[Lord Beerus]

Well, I'll be blunt, my love and interest in the series nearly dissipated after GT, because of how much of a letdown it was to me after the high I was coming in from Z. After GT, the franchise provided nothing enticing for me. I was sure as hell was not interest in double dipping back into the home releases, the video games at the time, the Tenkaichi series in particularly, just didn't do it for me in the long run and you can only re-watch DBZ and re-read certain parts of the manga so many times before you want something new.

Then I heard a live action Dragon Ball movie was happening, and my first reaction was, "Holy shit! This is gonna be awesome!" Then I saw the trailer... and my heart sank. I still wanted it to be good because at that stage my interest in the franchise was at an all time low. So I watched the movie in vain that I was hoping that it would be so bad, it'd be good. It wasn't. I honestly considered quitting the fandom because there was just nothing fresh or new for me to get into. Then a few days after watching DBE, I heard about Dragon Ball Kai. The premise sounded unique enough that decided to give the show a shot and I watched it. And I loved it. Then I started watching the FUNi dubbed version, and I fell in love with the show even more. Even though I never finished watching all of Kai as my studies and other activities took up most of my free time, I watched enough of Kai to feel refreshed and interested about Dragon Ball again.

Then BOG was announced and I became a Dragon Ball fanatic all over again. And now I watching a new Dragon Ball anime and and getting more and more excited with each episode. It's like I was when I first started watch DBZ for the first time more than 15 years ago.

[voltlunok]

TLDR! Had the passion sense I was a kid, series ended, passion went to bed, got money, bought series, binged it, passion came back, fast forward to now and I'm happy to be here talking with cool people! Ok? Ok!

I remember when I was much younger, probably around 8 or 9 and DBZ was running on toonami, I was very much excited to talk with friends at school about every new episode. Of course we kinda did this for every show toonami ran but I digress. I think after the end of GT, my passion for Dragon Ball kinda went to sleep, much like the franchise itself for a while. My other passions stuck however, like Gundam and Digimon. (Seriously, I will talk gundam for days if allowed to...I will talk it so much your brain will explode from the sheer volume of new information ya just got.) It wasn't until much later when I got my own income and was able to start buying and building a more extensive anime collection that I came back to DB. I bought the orange bricks, binged them all within a week. Then came the blue bricks...I binged those and the orange bricks in two weeks! Then the green GT bricks...ya see where this is going I bet. This greatly reignited my passion for the franchise and I felt like I loved the series again (Seriously...watching everything from the start of DB to the end of GT...its a chore, but its a chore I love doing.)

I think for me, one of dragon ball's greatest strengths is how you can lose that spark with it for just a bit...but give that spark time and it will explode like a raging inferno and you'll be swept up in that same euphoric delight as a kid! Though to be honest...while I definately rank Dragon Ball as one of my top 3 fandoms I like to actively participate in...its not really number 1 for me. While Dragon Ball slumbered...Gundam was there to fill the void (Digimon too but not to the same degree.) these days I keep a healthly balance of the 3 and it was a couple years ago that I finally joined the forums and really...even with some of the bumps and bruises, I don't regret it! Its been a blast to hang out and discuss things here with a ton of like minded, passionate fans whom some I think I can even call comrades and friends!

All in all, I'm very happy I came back to this fandom and I hope to stick around for a long long while!

[Kuririn Fan]

Fan since 2002, when i was 7.
Ultra super hardcore fan since august 2015, when i was 19, and watched it ALL in japanese and read the manga.
Everything in between doesn't matter, only the fact that i ascended to the top does.

You're not higher than everyone else. Quit it with the holier than thou attitude

Anyway on topic I started in 2002/2003 with the early Buu Saga. Around 2005 I kinda dropped off for a bit but like others have said when the Orange/Blue Bricks came out and I was finally able to see the series in order from the beginning I got into it more than before. Now here I am almost 13 years later

I'm joking, man, holy shit.
You like the dub, i get it, do you feel the need to attack me every time?

[Soppa Saia People]

Fan since 2002, when i was 7.
Ultra super hardcore fan since august 2015, when i was 19, and watched it ALL in japanese and read the manga.
Everything in between doesn't matter, only the fact that i ascended to the top does.

You're not higher than everyone else. Quit it with the holier than thou attitude

Anyway on topic I started in 2002/2003 with the early Buu Saga. Around 2005 I kinda dropped off for a bit but like others have said when the Orange/Blue Bricks came out and I was finally able to see the series in order from the beginning I got into it more than before. Now here I am almost 13 years later

I'm joking, man, holy shit.
You like the dub, i get it, do you feel the need to attack me every time?

And we get it, you like the Sub and dislike the Dub, you don't need to be so pompous about it.
(Also 725 post in 7 months )

[sintzu]

I got into it in 2005 thanks to the 1st Tenkaichi.

Although I prefer the English dub, I 1st saw it uncut in Japanese and it was on a whole other level then anything I'd seen back then.

The team up against Raditz, the battle against nappa, the death of Goku and the Z fighters, Goku's battle with Nappa, the battle with Vegeta, everything about Namek, Vegeta's death, the very very long battle with Freeza and finally Goku's transformation into a Ssj.

Saying that the above made everything else I had seen back then look like a joke was an understatement.

And of course the train kept rolling with the Androids and Buu arcs but I don't need to get into any details about them.

Of course I saw other anime series afterwords and it's sequel but no matter how many more I see, Z will always be in a league of it's own.

[Hellspawn28]

It feels so odd seeing that people got into the series around 2008 or 2009. I remember when we used to have more of these type of threads in the past, we would have people got into the series back in the 80's and 90's. The old school DB fans seem to die out.

[precita]

I took a 10 year break from 2005 to 2015 from the series. I had watched/seen everything before then, and while I still liked the franchise, I didn't watch anything of it in that span besides the Beerus movie and the special with Tarble. I didn't even watch Kai.

I got back into it when the Freeza movie was announced and then Super was confirmed, so marathoned the entire series in the span of about 5-6 months and remembered why I liked it so much in the first place.

[sintzu]

I remember when we used to have more of these type of threads in the past, we would have people got into the series back in the 80's and 90's. The old school DB fans seem to die out.

They're probably at retirement homes.

[Nejishiki]

Well as long as the retirement home lets me keep my Dragon Ball merchandise, I'll be happy! I started getting into Dragon Ball in '97, by the way. That's at least new-age old, right?

[MetaMoss]

Oh, this is a fun one for me. I've mentioned this plenty of times before, but I've been a fan of Dragon Ball since 1998, since it first started airing on Cartoon Network in the US. Pretty standard, right? The thing is, I was only a mere toddler then, just shy of two years old. It was my dad who got into watching it during its CN airings, and I just so happened to join him. The rest, as they say, is history.

So, how is my fandom 18 years later? It's still kicking around, and I doubt it'll ever go away. I can barely remember a time before I knew Dragon Ball, so my fandom is a core part of who I am. My enthusiasm for it may ebb and flow, but there's never been a time when I'm absolutely burned out from it (I've gotten pretty close at times). When I started, DBZ was a show I watched with my whole family (just me and my parents for a while, but my sister was around for the action starting with Boo). We kept up with it until GT finished its run, and we even made it an event to watch the original Dragon Ball when it aired on Funimation's block on Colours TV. Meanwhile, as I was growing up, I took great advantage of the various Dragon Ball products that were on shelves: Toys, coloring books, clothing, video games, etc.

As DB's popularity waned in the late 2000's and I was entering secondary education, I began using the internet regularly. Youtube was and is still my most-visited website, and I found plenty of DB stuff there, notably SSJGozar's Alternate Reality DBZ and TFS's DBZ Abridged. My first smatterings of DB community was the TFS forums on their first website. From there, I found other websites, notably the DB Wiki. As much as this community justifiably scorns it for its inaccuracies, it was actually DB Wiki's page on Dragon Ball AF that lead me here. The sources on the page lead to some website called "daizex.com", and when I clicked the links, I found myself in the Rumor Guide. From there, I slowly figured out what the hell a Daizenshuu EX was, and I've been lurking around ever since.

As for my fandom today, it's now a normal part of my life that I get involved with pretty regularly. I'm now in college, sharing my love of the series to folks who've never experienced it (for the most part, they're only interested in DBZ Abridged, which is fine, but...). My family still gets involved with it, with my sister and I watching Battle of Gods together in the theater, then my mom and sister going to see Resurrection F while I had to see it alone due to me working at my school for the summer. To this day, it's the only "nerdy" thing that I'm into that I can actually have a conversation with my mother about, sans Star Wars.

[AnzuMazaki]

I started being a Dragonball fan in 2000, when I was nine years old and it had began airing in NZ.

I was heavilly into DBZ from then up until 2003, that was when my focus shifted to Yu-Gi-Oh! for about four years up until 2007, when I got back into the franchise.
I started watching the original Dragonball anime in 2005 and that threw me right back into the Dragonball fandom over the course of two years, since then I have been mainly a fan of Dragonball for around ten years non-stop.

Since watching the original Dragonball anime, that had been my favourite part out of the Quadology and I enjoyed characters that most people hate (Yamcha, Chichi, Tenshinhan, Chaozu) because of it.
My fandom is still active, and I love to play the video games (mostly as the minor cast).'

I'm sort of a retro fan when it comes to Dragonball (liking the older, less popular characters and liking the first series the most).

[z_cherub]

This thread pisses me off. Mostly because I now feel old. Seems like most of you weren't old enough to actually recall watching the events of 9/11 as you were toddlers... I was a teenager at the time. Get off my lawn, etc...

Back on topic...

Watched the Ocean dub on Toonami in the late 90s, but got tired of the series starting over after the Recoom fight, so I found a local anime shop that had fan sub VHS's & watched the rest of the series that way.

A couple years after that, I picked up the entire db/z/gt series on bootleg VCDs (official release still not entirely available in NA circa 2002).

Still liked the series, but didn't read/watch much for several years.

Picked up all of Z & GT on bluray (DVD for GT) a couple years ago, & recently picked up all of the DB manga, so I've re-watched/read everything over the past year or so. Good times.