Canon or Delusions?

jpranevich · Post by **jpranevich** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 10:16 pm

Sometimes, I delude myself by thinking that I know a lot about Dragon Ball. I have all the manga (some even in Japanese that I state forlornly at, fruitlessly willing comprehension), I have most of the DVDs. (I'm buing them in order, so I'm still stuck on Cell Games.) I've reached a sad level of obsession, but I'm still working at it.

Now here's my question: On Dragon Ball fansites, and even Daizex, there's information that I can't seem to place. Now, that's expected because I don't know everything-- but there's an awful lot of character and attack names which don't ever seem to be mentioned in the series.

Where do these come from? Are these listed in some Daizenshuu that will never get translated into English? Original names in scripts? Are some of these fan delusions that just get copied from website to website?

I'm thinking of character names like 'Scratch' the cat. Like Freeza's henchmen Raspberry, Blueberry, and Appule. (I know Kewi was named, but I think only on the cover of one of the issues.) And I'm not even going to start with the accack names...

What do you think? I need some old fashioned schoolin'.

Post by **VegettoEX** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 10:21 pm

I believe the cat is named "Tama." Forgot if that was mentioned in the anime, the manga, or just the daizenshuu...

Appule is named in the manga and the anime; Freeza literally calls him "Appule."

As for attacks and other random things, I believe a lot of it comes from extreme analyization and scrutinizing of the sources available (manga/anime), while an awful lot also comes from the daizenshuu, our supposed "books of all-encompassing truth."

jpranevich · Post by **jpranevich** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 10:55 pm

One of my big difficulties as a fan is being able to sift the truth from the bullshit. You find a perfectly good Dragon Ball site with lots of information that you didn't know and it looks like they worked pretty hard on it, but then you find a section about Pan going SSJ2 and Dragon Ball AF and that throws the whole bit out the window. And then you have multiple websites with the same "truths" and it gets harder to tell fact from fiction.

Is this because of the endless desire for sites to have more information than their competition? Is it because we neglect to teach proper truth reporting techniques in middle-school to the 13 year old fanboys with Tripod accounts? Is it because I should just chill out and remember that's it a cartoon that its creator stopped caring about and I should just move on and become obsessed about the Power Rangers or something?

Hey! That turned into a rant instead of a question. Oh well.

Truthfully, for a fan what is the best way to tell fact from fiction? Just finding the same information from multiple sources isn't quite enough because of the copy-and-paste effect. Going to original sources would be great, but the Daizenshuus are well beyond my Japanese comprehension and damned hard to import and there's an awful lot of manga and anime to cover.

Maybe I'll have more specific questions later, but they're probably of the boring type.

Post by **VegettoEX** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:06 pm

I guess that's what we're here for, then

Especially since Julian hopped on with me, that's been our main goal... nothing but completely accurate information, with actual substance (and grammar!) to it. I agree; it's really tough to browse the vast amount of information / misinformation / disinformation available on the internet and try to tell what's-what.

I guess it just boils down to common sense and analysis of the authoritative stance the authors take. If they seem like they know what they're talking about, and present the information in a fashion that backs up their claims, perhaps there's something to it.

If it's on a Geocities account with animated gifs, perhaps they don't know jack ^^.

Dayspring · Post by **Dayspring** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:33 pm

It's true. There are precious few legit sites. This one's trustworthy. Afterall, WE help them on the msg boards.

Adamant · Post by **Adamant** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 5:13 pm

VegettoEX wrote:I believe the cat is named "Tama." Forgot if that was mentioned in the anime, the manga, or just the daizenshuu...

Tama was mentoined in the anime, at least. I remember there being some stupid pun about his/her name when the Briefs were searching for him/her during the evacuation as Daimaou was about to destroy the region.

Jerseymilk · Post by **Jerseymilk** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 8:10 pm

Well, "tama" is actually a slang word for "balls" in Japanese, and I don't mean the kind little kids play with.

Post by **SaiyaJedi** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 8:17 pm

Jerseymilk wrote:Well, "tama" is actually a slang word for "balls" in Japanese, and I don't mean the kind little kids play with.

That's kintama.

"Tama" just means "ball" or "jewel," depending on the circumstance. And no puns, please.

Jerseymilk · Post by **Jerseymilk** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 9:22 pm

Is it really? Of course I take your word for it Julian. I've read a couple of different sources that said it was a slang term for that. I feel misinformed and stupid now.

Post by **SaiyaJedi** » Wed Jul 14, 2004 10:11 pm

Jerseymilk wrote:Is it really? Of course I take your word for it Julian. I've read a couple of different sources that said it was a slang term for that. I feel misinformed and stupid now.

Well... I suppose you could stretch and make it work, like Toriyama did in chapter 2 of DB (and I wouldn't put it past the average Japanese person to use the word for "ball" the same way we often do)... but in general terms... not really.

Kanzenshuu

Canon or Delusions?

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