How did you get to know the world of dragonball?

[chongjasmine]

How did you get to know the world of dragonball?

For me, when I was a child, my dad would buy me dragonball mangas and I would eagerly wait for each new installment. At that time, the chinese manga publisher Chuang Yi was still around in Singapore, and my father would buy me Chuang Yi mangas. I remembered following the series until volume 32, the part about Vegeta becoming super Vegeta when fighting against cell and Chuang Yi stopped publishing the mangas. There was no internet then, and my young heart was torn at not knowing DB ending. Time had passed, and when I became a teenager, internet became accessible, and I finished reading the rest of DB manga.

I am going to start on Super, soon.

[JulieYBM]

Back in the far-off time of 1998 one of my older friends introduced me to Dragon Ball while it was airing on Toonami. She introuced me to other anime and even games like Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX. On that day that I first saw Dragon Ball, Toonami was airing the episode where Vegeta is slaughtering a village of Namekians, and obviously there was something about it that I hadn't ever seen before—even in Voltron and Pokemon. So, I was pretty hooked and spent the next few years using the internet to learn everything that I could from fan sites. I also collected a few of the old, taller Dragon Ball collected editions that they were publishing at the time.

I also recall even buying some of those old Pojo magazines in the early 2000s when those were a popular way to learn about a franchise in the US. Obviously, those things were always really inaccurate, but it was definitely a way to interact with being a fan at the time.

My next door neighbor had friends with fansubbed VHS tapes some of the later films, so that's how I first saw the first two Broli films, the Bojack film and the Janemba film. Those were really cool to watch when you're ten and it's the day before there were a lot of super clear and accurate details on the internet.

Similarly, this same next door neighbor introduced me the International Channel airing, so that was a way for me to see beyond where Toonami was and also see the series in Japanese regularly. I think I might even still have some VHS recordings of it lying around somewhere? Either way, it's quite a bit different from how things are now lol.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I saw some episodes on Toonami in late 1999 when my dad's job took myself and my family to Arizona. I'll never forget seeing the promos a few months later when I returned home to Ireland and seen Dragon Ball Z from its premier in March 2000.

Aside from broadcasts, we only had a few of the movies on VHS and DVD with the Big Green dub from 2003 to 2012, the manga was in stores around 2005 and from 2002 we've had most of the video games. Since 2012 almost everything has been released in the UK and Ireland thankfully.

I've loved the series ever since. It will always be my favourite anime/manga because of all the great memories I've had with it and how it got me through difficult times.

[Hellspawn28]

Copy & paste from another old thread:

I could have saw some DB related stuff before 1997, but the first time when I actually knew what Dragon Ball was back in 1997 when my Dad got two VHS copies of Dragon Ball for my birthday. I remember my dad was like "The guy at Suncoast said this is a popular kids cartoon from Japan". He knew that I like stuff from Japan like Godzilla as a kid. They were these VHS tapes:





When I was 6, I thought Dragon Ball was pretty boring compare to the anime that I was watching on Sci-Fi. My two sisters (They were 4 and 2 at the time) did like it though. Sometime in 1998, I was waiting for Beast Wars to come on TV and I stumble upon the episode where Goku was being wished back to life. I had no idea what I was watching and I end up turning off the TV. I believe this was the syndication run of DBZ because I was still living at my old house in Columbia, MD before we moved out after July 1998 and DBZ didn't air on CN until August 1998. When I was in the second grade, I remember DBZ blew up and everyone was talking about it. I didn't bother to watch it until 1999 when I watched the episode when Piccolo was fighting Freeza. I remember hating it and I was like "This is so stupid. Why do people like this?". Even as an 8-year-old back in 1999, I can tell that the dub was awful. I was already watching other anime at the time, so I didn't see the point of watching anime on Toonami (I still watched it for some anime like Ronin Warriors).

From 1999-2000, I avoid anything related to Dragon Ball because I thought it was stupid and annoying. It was not until early 2001 when I was bored late at night and I decided to check out the Toonami Midnight Run. When I was a kid, I used to stay up late and did channel surfing to watch whatever I can find on late-night TV. I remember watching the episode where Goku teleported Cell to North Kai's Planet and I was now interested in Dragon Ball. The next day, I used the Internet at home to discover more about Dragon Ball and the first fan website that I went to was DBZ Uncensored. It did me want to check out the uncut episodes of DBZ in Japanese, but I had no idea how to. I was in the tape trading community, but I was mostly watching live-action movies from Japan and Hong Kong at the time.

When I move out of Ellicott City, MD during the summer of 2001, I moved to a new house in another part of Maryland and one of my neighbors was super into Dragon Ball. We became best friends and one of his friends had DBZ Legends on the PS1. This was my first time hearing Goku's voice in Japanese and it didn't bother me. When I started the 5th grade back in late August 2001, one person in the 5th grade had Japanese episodes of DBZ on VHS and he would start playground rumors of the series. He would tell people that DBZ in Japanese is a show for grown-ups and DBZ on Cartoon Network is the baby's version. After school, we sneak inside the TV room (It was a place where the school keeps all of their TVs) and watched uncut episodes of DBZ in Japanese. This was my first time watching Dragon Ball Z in Japanese and it was DBZ Episode 29 (Goku vs. Nappa). I would later buy a VHS fan sub-copy of DBZ Movie 8 and it felt amazing to watch something before it was dubbed.

Later that year in 2001, I found out that one of my cousins had DBZ stuff that he had before the series was dubbed. He had every episode of the Cell saga and Buu saga in Japanese with fansubs along with DBZ Movie 6, DBZ Movie 7, and DBZ Movie 12. I was also able to watch GT on fansubs tapes thanks to a friend of mine and a local Japanese collector's shop. I do admit that it felt cool that I was way head of everyone else when it came to Dragon Ball. The rest is history and I'm still a big fan of Dragon Ball. I never grew out of it or move on from it as I did with many other childhood franchises.

[TechExpert2021]

Although I first heard about the franchise via pop culture osmosis (mostly DBZ) as a 2010s kid, I was first introduced to the franchise via the Funimation English dubs of DBZ Kai and Dragon Ball Super airing on Adult Swim around 2018-2020. I've then become a huge fan of the franchise outright since 2022. The rest for me as a Dragon Ball fan is history.

[Freezer94]

As a 6 or 7 year old I saw a cartoon of a man running down a snake road above clouds on a TV at childcare facility and I didn't pay it much attention. But a little later I started paying attention and I got really invested, this is early during the time on Namek. It became something that my brothers and I would watch every morning before school.

This is all the very early 2000s thanks to Cheez TV showing it in the mornings before school here in Australia. Watched it all the way to GT then wrapped around to DB original.

[FinalForumPodcast]

My story is borderline embarrassing:

A friend turned it on during a sleepover one time when I was in middle school in the mid-90s, saying "This show is pretty good."
I watched a bit, and was like "Eh, whatever." Came back and the main character's hair was a different color. Thought to myself "That's weird. What a weird show."

Then it would occasionally be on TV, and again, sometimes the main character would have black hair, and sometimes blonde and I just thought "Wow. That's pretty dumb. They can't even keep the hair color the same?"

Eventually, when I was in early high school, I would get some free time when the show was airing on Toonami and kinda thought, "Maybe I should see what all this hype is about." and finally understood what was happening in this show, and got hooked.
I only ever saw Z on TV for the longest time, and it wasn't until I hit college and a massive intra-school file sharing service that I saw the OG, and GT and the movies.

[Milton]

Hoo, boy...let's see...

My first exposure to the name "Dragon Ball Z" was through Electronic Gaming Monthly - Mr. EX talks about this in the Akira Toriyama retrospective podcast, but it was very similar for me. Import game shops would advertise in the back of that magazine, and each month I'd see a lineup of action figures from the Super Battle Collection. Over time, there'd be more added - they'd get more odd and varied, but the name always stuck out to me more. It was right in my "Beavis and Butt-Head" phase, so of course I laughed at it.

So fast forward to late summer 1996 - I was raised Catholic and my family would insist on going to the earliest Sunday mass each week. So one morning, I'm up super early to get myself ready; I turn on my TV and shake out the cobwebs. The screen eventually shows a green alien guy with one arm missing, his other hand has two fingers near his forehead and it's shooting sparks - across from him is a dude with Sonic the Hedgehog hair being held onto by a shirtless guy with similarly ridiculous hair. Next thing I know, the alien snaps his arm forward and a corkscrew comes out of his fingertips and it goes right into the other two guys, seemingly killing them. I'm confused, tired and ENRAPTURED.

After grabbing a TV Guide, I realized that THIS was "Dragon Ball Z." And it was amazing.

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

Early 2000's, family visited some friends, because me and brother were kids there was no other kid around, they send us to the living room to watch some movies, among them was an imported Japanese VHS of the Metal Cooler movie, and that's how I started my Dragon Ball fandom.

[nineko]

I don't like to copy and paste, so here is my answer to a previous iteration of the same question.

[jjgp1112]

Shortly after I got into the series, my friend let me have one of his big Pojo magazines that pretty much covered the whole series. This one to be exact: