Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

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Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by mecha3000 » Tue Sep 17, 2019 4:25 am

Let me start this by saying I was born in 1997, which makes me 22 years old as of this posting. That being said, I never grew up during the heyday of DB. At least, not exactly. My experience from DB comes from my older cousin introducing it to me along with my grandmother getting me and my brother Dragon Ball Z: Budokai in like '04 or something like that. Budokai and the following DB games were my first exposure to DB games (Budokai 2 was so jarring for me as a kid because I didn't know Goku had a second son or about fusions, which blew my kid self's mind). It wasn't until '06 that my brother got Fusion Reborn and A Hero's Legacy for our 9th birthday and from there, I started getting the DVD's periodically whenever I was able to. I also caught some of the Ultimate Uncut episodes on Cartoon Network in '05 and was hyped when the episodes reached Super Saiyan Goku. However, my mother saw some questionable scenes from the original Dragon Ball and I was forbidden from watching Dragon Ball for a while. It was during this time I migrated to the Naruto and Reborn! anime to fill the void while still being allowed to play the DB video games.

Then, 2010 came and Kai was announced to be dubbed by Funimation (maybe I'll make a post about that next year as a ten-year perspective sorta thing on the recasts, Nicktoons airing, the terrible Blue Popo Toonzai airing with the stupid TOONZAI! yelling every two seconds - kinda looking forward to that now). By this time, I was 13 and old enough to watch Dragon Ball again and Kai was airing on Nicktoons where it would be edited anyway. Kai rejuvenated my love for Dragon Ball (giving me a Toonami-like experience) and was really the first time I got to watch the entire series accurately. (I even got to relive the Super Saiyan Goku moment through Kai was a teen this time) Remember, unlike many of you guys - I didn't really grow up too much with what Kanzenshuu purists deem the terrible OG Funimation dub airing on Toonami - or even the Ocean dub because I was so young when it aired. Kai was really my first time watching the entire DBZ story from the start and after watching it on Nicktoons, I bought the Kai DVDS and continued playing the games.

To get to my main point, I sorta miss that period from when I first got exposed to DB in 2004/2005 all the way up to 2012 when BoG was announced and DBS became a thing. My reasoning: Dragon Ball was surviving on the fandom and merchandise alone, and I enjoyed it. Sure, I was so young so the whole "Every game is Saiyan to Buu Saga!" argument didn't bother me. It was like returning to a fable every year in the games and we got new bits every once in a while (like Tarble and Hatchiyack in RB2, which I found awesome that new stuff like that was added even though I admit they were reaching) and even the 2008 special. Channels like MsDBZbabe and TeamFourStar as well as fanfics/manga/videos kept the fandom alive in a way. And most of all, I miss when Dragon Ball was a complete canon. Now, it's sort of all over the place with the god forms and what not. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE that we have a new series and hope we get past the EoZ soon somehow even though Toei seems to be afraid of that. Still, I kinda preferred the old days in a weird way. Thoughts?
Last edited by mecha3000 on Tue Sep 17, 2019 4:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Xeogran » Tue Sep 17, 2019 4:34 am

I agree, most importantly was looking forward to every new Hironobu Kageyama opening in the yearly games. Never been disappointed :thumbup:

Also we got some gems too, such as Dragon Ball Origins 1-2 or Ultimate Butouden for Nintendo DS. Oh and also I was playing DB Online back then, which was fun to hang around with.

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by mecha3000 » Tue Sep 17, 2019 4:39 am

Xeogran wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 4:34 am I agree, most importantly was looking forward to every new Hironobu Kageyama opening in the yearly games. Never been disappointed :thumbup:

Also we got some gems too, such as Dragon Ball Origins 1-2 or Ultimate Butouden for Nintendo DS. Oh and also I was playing DB Online back then, which was fun to hang around with.
Damn, I always wish we got DBO in the states. I know there's the whole relaunch project, but I don't even know if that's still a thing. That should be the next video game after DBZ Kakarot imo. But glad you agree. Yeah, everyone acts like absolutely nothing was going on with the franchise during these years, but like you said - We got some gems. And Funimation sure wanted fans to know the franchise still existed with their various home releases from the Remastered DVD's to Kai to Dragon Boxes to Level Sets to Blu-rays, etc.

Something I wish I added above is that I also have nostalgia for a lot of the game soundtracks like you said from Hironobu Kageyama, who unfortunately doesn't do songs for DB anymore at all. I'm literally listening to the Raging Blast soundtrack - The Warriors, as I'm writing this, which brings me back to precious memories of middle school and my grandmother and what not. Ah, the good 'ol days of not adulting.

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by TheBigBoy » Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:27 am

You mainly miss being a kid. Almost everybody does, it's cool. A few years from now you're going to see 20 something's talking about the "good ol' days" of watching subbed Super eps for free on Crunchyroll.

Speaking personally, my nostalgic wheelhouse for Dragon Ball is getting up at Saturday mornings at 6:00 AM during 1996-1998 to watch episodes of the Saban dub. It was butchered beyond belief, but I didn't know better and didn't care. The show was unlike anything on U.S. TV at the time.

I was in 6th grade in 1996 and was at an age where watching cartoons, wasn't really a socially acceptable thing anymore. Unless you were talking about "adult" cartoons like the Simpsons or Beavis and Butthead. So even though I thought DB was amazing, I didn't talk about it to anyone. We didn't have the internet at the time either. I knew DB was phenomenon in other parts of the world thanks to video game magazines, but at the time I felt like I was probably the only person in the world watching Dragon Ball. It was really cool, it definitely felt like *my* thing and no one else's. That actually is a phenomenon I'm not sure exists anymore as it feels like any piece of media is going to have some sort of easily accessible fanbase online.
Last edited by TheBigBoy on Tue Sep 17, 2019 9:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Yuli Ban » Tue Sep 17, 2019 9:16 am

I feel a similar way. I got into DB the "era" before you, midway through its OG FUNimation dubbing, so I experienced the series as if it were a new thing still happening (as far as I knew). The period after that between 2005 and 2012 was initially disappointing. At first, I didn't really care. I had the Broly movies and Budokai Tenkaichi 2, and I had my mind, several pens, and a bunch of notebooks, so that was all I needed to keep the series going for a while before I really just stopped caring. I remember reading the spiel about Dragon Ball AF as far back as 2002, and even then it had already been an injoke for several years. The only thing that changed by the late 2000s is that we started getting a lot of decent fanart about it rather than poorly redrawn stills from the series and misnamed gifs with one or two images here and there.
If I had the time, I'd love to create one big "Dragon Ball AF" archival thread going over the history of it from 1997 to 2015, filled with all my personal memories of the shit that was used to "prove" it was coming or the nakedly false rumors about why it wasn't (my favorite being that Toriyama was working on another manga with characters extremely similar to the ones in Dragon Ball, and that's why they looked like 'Super Saiyan 5 and 6' and whatnot— that was actually just fanart, but this was the Wild West of the Internet.)
But again, that's for another thread.

As for the Dark Age, I said in another thread that thinking about this era and Infinite World & Burst Limit (and some of the DS games) bizarrely enough keeps conjuring this image of the senshi on Papaya Island, retired and relaxing and often still sparring. Maybe it's rooted in that one panel from Neko Majin Z? Either way, it always fit with what that era was supposed to be: the end of Dragon Ball. The party's over and it's fun to reflect, but it's also time to move on. Let the fans keep it alive.
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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by SHINOBI-03 » Tue Sep 17, 2019 12:41 pm

I'm nostalgic to the time when Dragon Ball was "over" before we had Kai, or even the 2008 Jump Special. That time when everything we had known about the franchise was at hand and weren't bombarded with new content expanding or retconning the canon.

Back then the most toxic debate were canon, power levels and FUNimation's orange bricks. When video games were still interesting and exciting to play even if we were replaying Raditz to Boo for the 10th time.

Simpler times, but the right time to be a fan before Kai, BoG, Super, Xeno and whatever that is new to the point it got too much to keep up with it.
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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Majin Buu » Tue Sep 17, 2019 1:12 pm

SHINOBI-03 wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 12:41 pm Back then the most toxic debate were canon, power levels and FUNimation's orange bricks.
Don't forget sub vs. dub. That one has been around FOREVER to the point where the American fanbase is kind of defined by it (and I would argue more so than other anime fandoms).

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Kakacarrottop » Tue Sep 17, 2019 5:17 pm

mecha3000 wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 4:25 am Let me start this by saying I was born in 1997, which makes me 22 years old as of this posting. That being said, I never grew up during the heyday of DB. At least, not exactly. My experience from DB comes from my older cousin introducing it to me along with my grandmother getting me and my brother Dragon Ball Z: Budokai in like '04 or something like that. Budokai and the following DB games were my first exposure to DB games (Budokai 2 was so jarring for me as a kid because I didn't know Goku had a second son or about fusions, which blew my kid self's mind). It wasn't until '06 that my brother got Fusion Reborn and A Hero's Legacy for our 9th birthday and from there, I started getting the DVD's periodically whenever I was able to. I also caught some of the Ultimate Uncut episodes on Cartoon Network in '05 and was hyped when the episodes reached Super Saiyan Goku. However, my mother saw some questionable scenes from the original Dragon Ball and I was forbidden from watching Dragon Ball for a while. It was during this time I migrated to the Naruto and Reborn! anime to fill the void while still being allowed to play the DB video games.

Then, 2010 came and Kai was announced to be dubbed by Funimation (maybe I'll make a post about that next year as a ten-year perspective sorta thing on the recasts, Nicktoons airing, the terrible Blue Popo Toonzai airing with the stupid TOONZAI! yelling every two seconds - kinda looking forward to that now). By this time, I was 13 and old enough to watch Dragon Ball again and Kai was airing on Nicktoons where it would be edited anyway. Kai rejuvenated my love for Dragon Ball (giving me a Toonami-like experience) and was really the first time I got to watch the entire series accurately. (I even got to relive the Super Saiyan Goku moment through Kai was a teen this time) Remember, unlike many of you guys - I didn't really grow up too much with what Kanzenshuu purists deem the terrible OG Funimation dub airing on Toonami - or even the Ocean dub because I was so young when it aired. Kai was really my first time watching the entire DBZ story from the start and after watching it on Nicktoons, I bought the Kai DVDS and continued playing the games.

To get to my main point, I sorta miss that period from when I first got exposed to DB in 2004/2005 all the way up to 2012 when BoG was announced and DBS became a thing. My reasoning: Dragon Ball was surviving on the fandom and merchandise alone, and I enjoyed it. Sure, I was so young so the whole "Every game is Saiyan to Buu Saga!" argument didn't bother me. It was like returning to a fable every year in the games and we got new bits every once in a while (like Tarble and Hatchiyack in RB2, which I found awesome that new stuff like that was added even though I admit they were reaching) and even the 2008 special. Channels like MsDBZbabe and TeamFourStar as well as fanfics/manga/videos kept the fandom alive in a way. And most of all, I miss when Dragon Ball was a complete canon. Now, it's sort of all over the place with the god forms and what not. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE that we have a new series and hope we get past the EoZ soon somehow even though Toei seems to be afraid of that. Still, I kinda preferred the old days in a weird way. Thoughts?
I'm also a 22 year old born in 1997, but I remember first getting into Dragon Ball in 2002-2003, when the Buu saga was airing on Toonami, and when it was still at peak levels of popularity in the west. I saw most of the series around that time, before the redub and Kai happened. I guess having an older sibling influenced me getting into it at a younger age than you. If I didn't have an older sibling then I would probably be more nostalgic for the mid to late 2000s era of Dragon Ball rather than the early to mid 2000s era.
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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Desassina » Tue Sep 17, 2019 6:02 pm

Simpler were the times when I didn't know that Dragon Ball was a Japanese show and that it used filler because there was an original publication in the form of grey scale images. I regret having come to the internet to find out that the manga whose copies became available in my country and whose purchase I went after had already been scanned and translated by people who have become hive minded to the point of preventing my enjoyment of the series. I had to be the older brother ruining my sister's first experience with Dragon Ball because I thought that I knew better from having just read arguments over the internet. The chance for me to learn and return to being genuine like a child went by until I found a new kid who was interested in my entertainment: my son. I don't shape him according to me, but I provide company and educate him on more important matters, those which may appear controversial today, which was something that lacked in my growth, because my parents were just telling me to avoid them.

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by mecha3000 » Wed Sep 18, 2019 1:16 am

TheBigBoy wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:27 am You mainly miss being a kid. Almost everybody does, it's cool.
I guess you could call it that, but that's not exactly the point I'm making. Of course, I do miss my childhood to adolescence days of being a DB fan because I do associate them with such fond memories in my life. Still, my point goes beyond that. I'm saying I miss when Dragon Ball felt like a complete canon where it was in the fan's hands to continue the story for themselves.
Yuli Ban wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 9:16 am As for the Dark Age, I said in another thread that thinking about this era and Infinite World & Burst Limit (and some of the DS games) bizarrely enough keeps conjuring this image of the senshi on Papaya Island, retired and relaxing and often still sparring. Maybe it's rooted in that one panel from Neko Majin Z? Either way, it always fit with what that era was supposed to be: the end of Dragon Ball. The party's over and it's fun to reflect, but it's also time to move on. Let the fans keep it alive.
THIS. This was the main point I was making. My nostalgia of my youth aside, the nostalgia of the whole Akira Toriyama manga ending where he states something along the lines of "Now, you'll have to see the story through your own eyes. That'll be more exciting!" is what I'm talking about. Back when the story was closed by the author, but opened by the fans. And honestly, I would've been fine if we had just got new movies every other year starting with BoG while the video games also tackled original storylines a la Xenoverse. At least then, everything would still be similar to the good 'ol days. Still, I'd be lying if I said I'm not still holding out hope for an Uub-centric future DB storyline - and having a Dragon Ball anime ongoing at an age where I can actually knowingly consume it unlike the '90s is pretty cool.

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Yuli Ban » Wed Oct 30, 2019 7:58 pm

mecha3000 wrote: Wed Sep 18, 2019 1:16 am THIS. This was the main point I was making. My nostalgia of my youth aside, the nostalgia of the whole Akira Toriyama manga ending where he states something along the lines of "Now, you'll have to see the story through your own eyes. That'll be more exciting!" is what I'm talking about. Back when the story was closed by the author, but opened by the fans. And honestly, I would've been fine if we had just got new movies every other year starting with BoG while the video games also tackled original storylines a la Xenoverse. At least then, everything would still be similar to the good 'ol days. Still, I'd be lying if I said I'm not still holding out hope for an Uub-centric future DB storyline - and having a Dragon Ball anime ongoing at an age where I can actually knowingly consume it unlike the '90s is pretty cool.
If there's one thing I can give the post-Super era, it's that we probably never would've gotten the likes of Xenoverse or FighterZ without the massive infusion of cash and awareness. I don't know how many more times I need to state this, but maybe just once more will do: Dragon Ball circa 2010-2012 was in a very dire state as an IP, with games that sold ridiculously poorly for such a well-known brand. IIRC, the video game portion was only worth about $25 million. That's pretty good for most series, but it's actually dire for one as well-established and internationally renowned as Dragon Ball.
Imagine Star Wars games, even games that were marketed as part of a main series of titles with big studio backing, were only pushing maybe 300,000 copies total worldwide while non-gaming merchandise sales were at their lowest point since the '80s. And this after the Prequel Trilogy had wrapped up and there were no major TV shows being made either— except there are some remasters being done of the Original Trilogy to make them look shinier and add more CG shit into them, and naturally these open to peak at maybe #4 at most cinemas. We'd be saying that Star Wars as an IP was pretty much on its last legs. That's basically Dragon Ball at the start of the decade. The closest thing we were going to get to Xenoverse was Dragon Ball Online, and that didn't last long (of course, it's possible it was taken down precisely because of plans to develop Xenoverse).


Also, it's become something of a pathetic pet peeve of mine whenever I hear someone say Xenoverse has an original story. Xenoverse having an original story is actually a stretch. FighterZ is the first major console/PC DB game to have its own original story since the SNES days, AFAIK, because Xenoverse's story can be summed up in two ways:

1: "What if [Villain]... but STRONGER and GOFFIK?
2: "My self-insert original character, Donut Steel, is badly jammed into the story of Z, GT, and Super and taken out before the writers have to come up with consequences.

Up until the endgame arcs in Xenoverse 1 and 2 (like Infinite History), it's just the basic Raditz to Boo (+ GT and now Super) storyline we've gotten for decades, but with a fanfiction-tier "what if" twist to it and contrivances that mean there's no actual consequences to meddling with history even in a small way and the rest of the story plays out as normal. They could've turned at least Xenoverse 2 into one big "What If?" festival but didn't.

And alas, that's just an after effect of that time Dragon Ball was a finished franchise with only occasional animations and specials coming out ever so often. Not that this excuses it— Lord of the Rings has been finished for over half a century & no one in their right mind is going to try bringing it back, yet we still get fantastic products out of it.

Hmm?

What's that?

There was another book released in that series last year?

Well it's not going to keep happening, is the point. The legend's finished.
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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Dbzfan94 » Wed Oct 30, 2019 8:15 pm

Xeogran wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 4:34 am I agree, most importantly was looking forward to every new Hironobu Kageyama opening in the yearly games. Never been disappointed :thumbup:

Also we got some gems too, such as Dragon Ball Origins 1-2 or Ultimate Butouden for Nintendo DS. Oh and also I was playing DB Online back then, which was fun to hang around with.
That was one of my favorite things about getting a game every year. Granted, the openings over here became just instrumentals until Raging Blast but still.

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Grimlock » Wed Oct 30, 2019 8:18 pm

It all comes down to popularity at the end of the day. Only Dende knows how many times I saw people crediting Xenoverse for a lot of things, including Mira and Towa themselves. And when I went to mention Dragon Ball Online in some cases, very few knew about it. So that's why Xenoverse gets a "free pass" when it comes to original story. Under the "popularity" perspective, it does present an original one for a lot of people.
Yuli Ban wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 7:58 pmAlso, it's become something of a pathetic pet peeve of mine whenever I hear someone say Xenoverse has an original story. Xenoverse having an original story is actually a stretch. FighterZ is the first major console/PC DB game to have its own original story
That is a funny thing to say when the producer of Dragon Ball FighterZ herself says that ArcSys was inspired by Xenoverse to come up with an original story. Which corroborates with what I just said above, it all comes down to popularity.
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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by ABED » Wed Oct 30, 2019 9:09 pm

TheBigBoy wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:27 am You mainly miss being a kid. Almost everybody does, it's cool. A few years from now you're going to see 20 something's talking about the "good ol' days" of watching subbed Super eps for free on Crunchyroll.

Speaking personally, my nostalgic wheelhouse for Dragon Ball is getting up at Saturday mornings at 6:00 AM during 1996-1998 to watch episodes of the Saban dub. It was butchered beyond belief, but I didn't know better and didn't care. The show was unlike anything on U.S. TV at the time.

I was in 6th grade in 1996 and was at an age where watching cartoons, wasn't really a socially acceptable thing anymore. Unless you were talking about "adult" cartoons like the Simpsons or Beavis and Butthead. So even though I thought DB was amazing, I didn't talk about it to anyone. We didn't have the internet at the time either. I knew DB was phenomenon in other parts of the world thanks to video game magazines, but at the time I felt like I was probably the only person in the world watching Dragon Ball. It was really cool, it definitely felt like *my* thing and no one else's. That actually is a phenomenon I'm not sure exists anymore as it feels like any piece of media is going to have some sort of easily accessible fanbase online.
Where'd you go to school? I'm about the same age as you and even back then it was socially acceptable to watch cartoons.

The Simpsons is an adult cartoon. There's no need to couch that in quotes.

Anyway, I enjoyed the show and even the dub, but after finding out about the changes made by the dub, I hated it even though I still watched it. Then the in house dub came out and while I didn't like the dub, I was still excited because it was new DBZ which we didn't have for what felt like forever. When DBZ came to the states, I was one of the first people I knew who was into it, mainly because I lived in Japan when I was younger and knew about it then. It felt like an uphill battle telling people about the show and trying to get them into it. I was so happy when DBZ became popular when I got to high school in 1999. I could have conversations with people I didn't otherwise get along with.

I'm definitely nostalgic for that time. I miss being super excited about when the next DBZ volume would come out.
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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Kunzait_83 » Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:18 am

TheBigBoy wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:27 amYou mainly miss being a kid. Almost everybody does, it's cool.
As I've been hammering on for quite some time now on here: the whole "I miss being a kid" thing is something that's become, broadly and pop culturally at this point, WAY too overwrought and pushed WAY too far into ludicrous extremes by people. There's definitely such a thing as missing being a kid TOO much to an absurdly unhealthy degree, and I certainly think that we (in an overall sense: both in geek subcultures for DAMN sure, and even to a degree within mainstream culture) have long, LONG ago flown past that threshold by many, many, MANY miles.

Communities like Dragon Ball's - populated by adults who maintain an interest later in life in a children's property - has a way of attracting a LOT of that, unsurprisingly. What's long been surprising though to me is the palpably absurd degrees to which this extends for a lot of folks within this fandom, and how much it also even feeds back into their own view and outlook of Dragon Ball itself in many ways.

Though that's probably something more warranting of its own thread to delve more deeply into.

TheBigBoy wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:27 amSo even though I thought DB was amazing, I didn't talk about it to anyone. We didn't have the internet at the time either.
In 1996? Yes we most certainly did. YOU may not have had it, but PLENTY of other people elsewhere throughout the world absolutely had the internet by 1996. Like HOLY SHIT did a LOT of people have internet by then.

Dragon Ball fansites, during that year, were ABSURDLY commonplace as well. The very site we're speaking on came into existence a mere two years later after that point, and it was HARDLY any remote sort of pioneer in its field. Mike/EX himself will certainly be the first to assure you of as much.

TheBigBoy wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:27 amI knew DB was phenomenon in other parts of the world thanks to video game magazines, but at the time
And websites. And newsgroups. And online chat communities. Lots and LOTS of them. :wink: :wink:

TheBigBoy wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:27 am I felt like I was probably the only person in the world watching Dragon Ball. It was really cool, it definitely felt like *my* thing and no one else's.
"Feels like" isn't in any way the same thing as "actually is". Just be cause you FELT like something like DB was some deeply kept secret/hidden interest of yours that no one else out there was privy to, doesn't in actuality mean that it really was. What you "miss" here is a nebulous feeling that has literally NO basis whatsoever in actual reality: certainly not even back in 1996.

Dragon Ball in 1996 (and LONG well before then as well) was one of the single most widely recognized and ubiquitous Japanese anime/manga properties in existence. If you ventured ANYWHERE that had ANYTHING to do with anime, manga, or Japanese/Eas Asian pop culture in the SLIGHTEST degree (both in 1996 and well before then), you were GOING to come across something to do with Dragon Ball, and it was a matter of "when" not "if".

The opining that people tend to do on here about some magical, far off time when Dragon Ball was some "obscure, unknown, deeply hidden underground" thing is a COMPLETE and utter fantasy/fabrication. Almost literally NO SUCH time has existed in almost its ENTIRE lifespan, certainly none at least that I was alive and cognizant for (and I've been aware of Dragon Ball, in one form or fashion, since at least 1990/1991 or so).

At the time when you were watching the Saban-ified Dragon Ball and fantasizing that you were the only person in the world who was doing so, MILLIONS of people out in the broader world had already seen the WHOLE thing, start to finish, in both its original Japanese language and an assortment of other dubs. Yes, even including right here in the U.S. (myself being but one of them).

I've also been a part of some GENUINELY obscure, underground, super niche fandoms for various things: and Dragon Ball was always (like, from day 1 of my first coming across it) the FARTHEST fucking thing from EVER being one of them. If Dragon Ball was ever supposed to be a "secret, underground" thing, it was without a doubt certainly one of the single worst-kept secrets in all of global pop culture and animation. :P

TheBigBoy wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:27 amThat actually is a phenomenon I'm not sure exists anymore as it feels like any piece of media is going to have some sort of easily accessible fanbase online.
For things as massive and mainstream globally as Dragon Ball, its a "phenomenon" that's NEVER actually existed except in the minds of people like yourself.

This is a 100% made-up thing that people could only convince themselves of when they were A) small children and B) cut off from interacting with a broader swath of culture around them. It was NEVER actually a real thing, thus it hasn't "gone away". You simply grew past the point where you could continue to maintain the illusion.

This extends FAR beyond even just Dragon Ball itself and is really much of the very core surrounding why the whole "Toonami First Introduced Japanese Anime to the Mainstream American Public: I Certainly Never Heard Of It As A Small Kid Before Then!" myth is so heavily persistent and widespread (and is incredibly hobbling to critical discussion regarding the histories of both Dragon Ball and anime as a broader whole).

This really cannot be stated or stressed enough to pretty much nearly EVERYONE who posts here (and to a great deal of the broader fandom community beyond this site): your personal, fuzzy firsthand memories as a small kid - particularly if you were a notably introverted & insulated kid (as a LOT of people in this fandom often tend to be) - do NOT in any way represent or are in the least bit indicative of the broader, actual lived-in reality of the greater world/society surrounding you back then: up to and including pop culture/nerd culture shit like Dragon Ball and anime as a bigger whole.
Last edited by Kunzait_83 on Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Kunzait's Wuxia Thread
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.

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mute_proxy
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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by mute_proxy » Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:32 am

The dude's reminiscing on his experiences and feelings from long ago, why are you picking on him, Kunzait_83?

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Kunzait_83 » Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:34 am

mute_proxy wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:32 am The dude's reminiscing on his experiences and feelings from long ago, why are you picking on him, Kunzait_83?
I'm... not? :wtf: :wtf: :wtf:
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Kunzait's Wuxia Thread
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by mute_proxy » Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:35 am

Kunzait_83 wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:34 am
mute_proxy wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:32 am The dude's reminiscing on his experiences and feelings from long ago, why are you picking on him, Kunzait_83?
I'm... not? :wtf: :wtf: :wtf:
That's what I got from your comment, a bunch of "you're wrong!"s :lol:

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Kunzait_83 » Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:47 am

mute_proxy wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:35 amThat's what I got from your comment, a bunch of "you're wrong!"s :lol:
A bunch of the emotions he's describing in that post ("it felt to me like no one else in the while wide world knew about this except me!") are actually rooted at the heart of a LOT of still glaring misconceptions and incorrect assumptions that people still make about the Western histories of both DB and anime as a broader whole.

Me going through it and separating reality from vague, nebulous childhood emotions isn't me "picking on" anyone: especially on a site whose main purported goal is to be soberingly factual, in-depth, nuanced, and thorough about this particular franchise's ins and outs. :lol: :lol: :lol:

I think its actually pretty fucked up and unsettling the degree to which a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people on here tend to immediately interpret an "in-depth, thorough response" almost automatically as an assumed aggressive tone of malice and ill-intent up front, even without there being a HINT of such in any of the response itself.
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Kunzait's Wuxia Thread
Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!
Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.
Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.
Rocketman wrote:"Shonen" basically means "stupid sentimental shit" anyway, so it's ok to be anti-shonen.

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Re: Nostalgia for the so-called dark ages of DB

Post by Mister_Popo » Thu Oct 31, 2019 8:59 am

I'm a first generation DB fan, but I mean really first generation, I started watching in 1987, on a TV channel in a language that wasn't my native language. The anime offer that was available in the 1980s was also just much more limited than the massive, perhaps exaggerated offer there is now. Every subniche nowadays needs to be served. A lot of people just didn't know DB either. At least not in my neighbourhood.

All those elements, together with the fact that the internet certainly did not exist at the time, contributed to the special experience of 'DB is my world alone'. So yes, I can recognize the testimonials above.

I did have to wait a very long time between the end of the DBZ / GT and the revival, when new material finally was released. The "dark period" lasted a very long time (almost 20 years). That is why it was a surprise that new material finally came out concerning the official timeline.
The real story had been told a long time ago. I saw this revival as something extra next to the original work (although it is in fact an integral part of the same continuity, as intended by the franchise). You can choose to accept or ignore it, depending whether you are in to it. If Super had come out end 90's, begin 2000's, i probably woud have been (even) more disappointed because i would have thought it should have been more like DBZ. Because of the surprise effect it did return after all those years and therefore i did see it as something different from DBZ, was what ultimately made me see beyond its flaws and watch Super till the end.
I can understand fans who have seen DBZ for the first time more recently, they captivate this effect somehow more differently. Some do see Super as a direct continuation of DBZ and are even more disappointed, because it's obviously a different approach for a different audience.

Various factors contribute to the experience becoming different. These are small things, the more 'childish scenes' (Goten, Trunks) had me mildly irritated when re-watching DBZ as a 35-year old. This while i didn't care as much as a 12-year old. DBS aims at a 'broader audience' nowadays and has become less dark and bloody, this while i myself only get older and would prefer an even darker, grittier and more mature Dragon Ball than it was in back in the days. I think many fans can confirm this 'other experience' in comparison with their childhood. We may get an improved version of DBS someday, but we will never get another DBZ, that's for sure. I guess that's what's called "pure nostalgia".

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