90sDBZ wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2024 5:34 pm
Yeah, I was gonna say I'm not so sure OG DB was any more popular here than in the US. It was only on the air here for about a year and a half, and the later episodes got very few reruns. Even GT got more reruns.
Apparently the last time any Dragon Ball aside from the movies and specials (which were shown around May, August and October) was broadcast on Toonami UK was when the final rerun of GT concluded
on July 20th 2000. Can't remember when they stopped showing original Dragon Ball, but I want to say about February or March of that year, and I don't even recall the King Piccolo or Piccolo Junior sagas being rerun around that time, probably just the earlier episodes. Even with Dragon Ball Z Toonami UK was airing nothing but the Imperfect Cell saga for some reason. It's a shame original Dragon Ball didn't get more reruns, even just for more recordings of the Blue Water dub to be made having it run more often would have done wonders, but thankfully good quality recordings of all the episodes
have finally been located,
including the once elusive episode 71.
From what one fan
has been told the reason Toonami UK stopped airing all Dragon Ball content was because the license expired and they believed it would be better to invest in new programming and
Dragon Ball shows became too expensive in the long run. I still think Toonami would have been better off rerunning all the Dragon Ball TV shows rather than picking up shows like Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Life with Derek, Hangin' with Mr Cooper, Backyward Science and Stencil though, as they are not Toonami-type shows, or just becoming a dumping ground for any action shows Cartoon Network didn't want like Xiaolin Showdown and Teen Titans. If the cost of the license was that much of an issue it boggles the mind Cartoon Network gave it so many marathons and it just felt like Toonami UK turned into a poor man's Nickelodeon. Kinda ironic that over in the US only a few years later Kai started airing on Nicktoons and became
a MASSIVE success for them.
90sDBZ wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2024 5:34 pmIf anything it was less known about here. I feel like they waited too long to air it, as DBZ had been in reruns for over 2 years by that point, and was likely well past its peak popularity.
Toonami UK was a cool channel for sure, but for me personally the Cartoon Network days (and later CNX) were the ones I look back on the most fondly. This is largely because it was the first airing of Z. The excitement of waiting for new episodes to come out, and seeing the promos for each new saga could never be replicated.
Yeah, the real peak of Dragon Ball on UK TV was definitely early 2000s on Cartoon Network and to a lesser extent CNX. The Dragon Ball Z Rewind block on weekends, which replayed the week's episodes, Saga Sundays, hell even on regular days both Cartoon Network and CNX had double bills whenever Dragon Ball Z was on in the mornings and afternoons, sometimes the former even aired a bunch of episodes together. Its such a different world nowadays because kids can binge the series anytime they like on Crunchyroll but back when it was on the air consistently it felt like a treat for us fans.
I do wonder if things could have been different for the original Dragon Ball's hype if we could have gotten it around the time the Buu saga started airing like the US. Although maybe it wouldn't have been feasible because aside from the initial runs of the Fusion saga AB Groupe had started purchasing the Westwood dub, which was started in a hurry, but didn't finish recording
until the end of 2002 and Ocean (and Blue Water who began recording
as early as 2000) were super busy at that time recording not only anime but also American cartoons so they probably couldn't have handled dubbing original Dragon Ball concurrently with Dragon Ball Z.
I guess that because original Dragon Ball started airing on Toonami a few months after GT concluded on CNX a lot of fans probably thought what was the point as they had seen the majority of the story until the end and that they understood original Dragon Ball enough from the recaps and references to it. I still think its essential for fans to watch original Dragon Ball or read the relevant manga volumes to have a full understanding of Akira Toriyama's story because Dragon Ball did start off as more of an adventure and as a spoof of
Journey to the West before the action escalated and brought all the spectacle we loved in Dragon Ball Z, but it is kind of a shame that began to overshadow everything that came before Raditz.
