Why Dragon Ball Z blew up in America

[Yuli Ban]

A topic I've been meaning to make for a while

People like talking about why DBZ blew up in America and elsewhere, and in regards to the USA, there's often been statements made that "we really needed Faulconer and the rewrites to make it more superhero-y or else it wouldn't have been as successful"



Kids these days get into Dragon Ball because it's still being made, and because it still has that cathartic power fantasy "oomph" that a lot of other battle shonen and action media doesn't or even actively tries to avoid due to DBZ's flaws, and also just because of how much of a cultural juggernaut it is. I'd love to explain that one in depth if given the chance, of why Dragon Ball's action and progression is so addictive and why a lot of action media isn't and in fact often deliberately goes out of its way to NOT follow Dragon Ball Z (since one major reason why DBZ works is tied directly to one of its biggest flaws, i.e. escalation)


But I'm talking more about the American fandom we're stuck with today. Someone getting into it in the 90s and early 2000s in America got into it for much different reasons: it was basically the first of its kind, the first time a typical middle American kid was even seeing animation like this, ever. And since those middle American kids are generally the target audience for most American media, well, here we are 30 years later with the consequences of a confluence of circumstances (say that 5 times fast)



Now personally I'd just ramble about it too much and I'd invariably have to start with how Western fans have almost totally forgotten the kung fu/wuxia/Eastern martial progression fantasy craze that even gave birth to Dragon Ball in the first place to the point loads of fans don't even know that even is Dragon Ball's genre, or fight vigorously against that knowledge because of how badly they want it to still be "Japanese DC/Marvel", but even cultivation/progression media rarely had animated adaptions popular outside East Asia; Fist of the North Star was one of the first big crossover ones, the Street Fighter animated movie counts as well, but even that is kind of proving my point: media about superhuman warriors with amazing strength and supernatural abilities, shooting lasers at each other, fighting so hard that arenas are blowing up, fistfighting demons, monsters, aliens, cyborgs, robots, gods, etc...


Or maybe Hokuto no Ken fans should be thankful we didn't decide to dub it on TV, censor all the violence to turn it into a 2 Kewl 4 Skewl rad-i-tude show, and give it a hair metal soundtrack?

From my memory, and my dad's memory alike (he's an 80s kid in full, he grew up on all the 80s action cartoons we know now and all the kung fu and slasher movies that kids today just don't care about), you couldn't find much of anything else like this in animated form.
If you were a big fan of Hong Kong and Taiwanese kung fu action movies, that's a different story, but those were rarely animated, and the special effects in them could be cheesy or limited even at the time. And considering how few people in America even make the connection that that's where most of Dragon Ball Z's actual lineage comes from considering those are the movies Toriyama and the Toei team were even watching and drawing from when thinking of Dragon Ball (most of the time, in Toriyama's case at least, he was the one most interested in adding American movie influences to Dragon Ball), most kids my age had no clue either way.

Sure, we didn't have kung fu fantasy media in animated form here in the states very often that followed the same sort of progression fantasy that Hong Kong comics and movies often did, but we did have a lot of action shows and superhero shows

And pretty much all of it sucked



There were a few genuinely good ones (Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, arguably Sonic SatAM and Swat Kats), but the majority of shows we had in America were pretty much limited to being either toy commercials or Too Kewl 4 Skewl tryhard action shows that were too afraid to even throw a connecting punch on screen because then mommies and televangelists would get upset that little Timmy was being taught Satanic values apparently (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, renamed Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles in the UK because "ninja" was too violent apparently, got a lot of shit from Christian parents groups because it mentioned "zen" or vague Buddhist concepts or even was about ninjas which meant it was way too violent for kids on principle).

It's hilarious how neutered "ultra testosterone-fueled badass Saturday morning cartoons" really were in the 80s and 90s, probably peaking with GI Joe, a cartoon about WAR where no one actually shot each other and no one died. Or He-Man, where the uber-buff barbarian dude who looks like a DBZ background character himself, always has to solve his problems with wit and clever thinking.

Totally radical, dude! As long as you don't hit anyone and eat your veggies!

I make a joke sometimes about how superhero media in America was dominated by this culture of some Brookyn/mid-Atlantic accent white Jewish boomer guy (totally not Stan Lee, I swear) telling audiences that Underpants Man can leap across galaxies in a single bound and lift whole suns like Hercules, how powerful, what an übermensch, what a hero the people need! Read the comics to see his full suite of astounding abilities!

.... and then afterschool on TV, here comes Carrot Man from the silly kung fu show screaming and the entire landscape lifts and breaks up around him, and then he proceeds to beat up the big buff bald monkey man who had just spent the past 10 episodes KILLING the heroes (to the next dimension), even sending one of the heroes' arm to the next dimension. It's not freeze-frame static shots with "WHAM! POW!" He's fucking punching and kicking people in full motion, and they're doing the same, and it's actually well choreographed no less. People didn't die in cartoons, and they certainly didn't get dismembered, except comically in Loony Tunes or Tom and Jerry slapstick. But no, here people are just taking it so seriously, as an actual drama (which is funny because Dragon Ball in Japan is the equivalent of a Loony Tunes-tier action comedy)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FagOFauxePU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p_SWPZ1_ew
Find a scene in Western animation before this that conveyed the same sense of raw power, and you haven't actually refuted me because the point I'm making is that this was the first one that really stuck with people

And on that note, the fact that Dragon Ball Z was even a cartoon that told a long running story like one of those dramas or telenovelas! That wasn't how it worked!! Sure, Gargoyles did that too, but OJ Simpson decided to kill that show along with his wife before it really took hold. You only had a scant few American animated shows said middle American kid would have seen that dared to tell a long-running, cohesive storyline. Otherwise, the only times you got multi-episode stories was for that rare dramatic two-parter or even the legendary three-parter season finale, or just vague references to past events in future episodes, since animation was still so heavily syndicated. You didn't do long-running stories because the networks needed to air any episode they wanted without worrying about if it was out of order


Like if people don't get why everyone's so sure Goku is the strongest ever, remember that this is the dynamic of how he was sold to people for years: impossibly strong bad guys come, Goku is off somewhere either training or dead but is on his way back, the bad guys start wreaking havoc, very strong heroes try to stop them but their efforts are no-sold, Goku then comes in and humiliates at least one of the bad guys (always the one that had caused the most damage to the dragon team), and only faces a proper challenge against the stronger enemy
And he'd do it with ridiculously hard-hitting brutal action.



The reason why Dragon Ball fans, to this day, are so obnoxious in power scaling discussions and debates is literally BECAUSE of how badly Western action media before it dropped the ball with conveying "power." Son Goku in the Saiyan arc is, as far as the Western DBZ fan who ignores the OG is concerned, his second weakest portrayal. Yet he still comes off as the kind of guy who could effortlessly punch out Superman, because Superman before the 2000s only showed off his amazing feats in the comics; in animation and the movies, he rarely did anything that felt a thousandth as powerful as Goku raising his ki, even if he actually was doing something absurd. And on that note, the general effects of raising one's ki in Dragon Ball hits differently. Normally, "rocks and buildings break apart into chunky updrafts" is usually a sign of some sort of gravity manipulation or some powerhouse hitting the ground and this is the earthquaking after effects; someone charged to the head with crackling lightning is probably Tesla Man or Elektro Girl, that's their superpower, but no, here, it's just the visual representation of how absurdly and generally powerful they are


My thesis: even if we had gotten the show so unchanged that it was subbed in America, as long as it was on some major channel like Cartoon Network where kids could see it, it would have been just as popular just because of how different it was from the norm on top of the structure and choreography of the action. Voices and OST are so peripheral to the matter as to be almost irrelevant, but they're almost always the things people bring up as to why "it needed to be changed to succeed". The ONLY overly Americanized aspect that may have played a role in our lot is that the aesthetic, including the "Z" (which fit into the X-tremely Kool Wykked LetterZ of the 90s) it did fit with the more "Attitude Era" mentality of the late 90s/early 2000s, but even then "Dragon Ball Z" is a Japanese title already

Pokemon reached higher highs than Dragon Ball ever could at the time, but it's not without justification to say that Dragon Ball Z hit American children's media like a tsunami. Like the closest comparison I can even give to it might be the effect Nirvana had on rock music, except in this case, glam metal resisted vigorously and reoriented itself. The Western TV cartoon industry has never quite recovered from the sheer shock to the system DBZ delivered to it, and the industry leaders have been grappling with it ever since because literally every single thing it championed was so diametrically opposite of everything cartoons were "supposed" to be, and yet the kids loved it more than almost anything.

A lot of network executives and traditionalists still push the idea animation = for kids, must be funny, must be episodic, must be focused on slapstick and moral lessons (or if it's for adults, then must be for douchebros and wine-aunts), even if the creators themselves wish for more synthesis with anime-style conventions. If not for SpongeBob and early 2000s Cartoon Network, anime essentially would have been completely over-dominant in Western children's media. You can basically argue Avatar: The Last Airbender, Teen Titans 2003, Ben 10, the wave of "loreshow" cartoons of the 2010s, and the success of shows like Invincible today have to credit Dragon Ball Z pioneering all this in America in the 90s


__________

Finally got that off my chest. Do with this as you will. Refute it, challenge it, praise it, not read it, get married behind it, but that's my peace

TLDR: Dragon Ball Z in the USA specifically blew up because of a bunch of cultural coincidences that allowed for it to come in at the perfect possible time and completely challenge the traditional "animated action show" formula (on top of the show's fundamental design being endlessly rewatchable and addictive). Dragon Ball Z literally cannot happen again because we've already learned the language of its style of action and the taboo about television animation being either too violent or telling a season-long/series long story no longer exist, and that is partially/greatly due to the success of Dragon Ball Z itself.

[Saiya6Cit]

It is good you took it off your chest. Most of my Devianart content is created with that purpose.


AI says this:

• • • Dragon Ball Z's success in America can be attributed to several factors:
      Cultural Appeal: The series' action-packed battles and epic story arcs resonated with audiences, creating an enduring legacy.
      
      Toonami Block: The show's placement on Cartoon Network's Toonami block helped it reach a wider audience, especially among younger viewers.
      
      Merchandise and Pop Culture References7Fandom: The franchise's merchandise, including action figures, video games, and clothing, flooded markets, further solidifying its presence. The fandom's passion for the series drove the demand for merchandise and contributed to its sustained popularity.
      
      Global Impact: Dragon Ball Z played a pivotal role in introducing countless individuals to anime, acting as a gateway to a broader spectrum of Japanese animation.
      
      These elements combined to make Dragon Ball Z a cultural phenomenon that transcended language barriers and became a global phenomenon.

My answer: DBZ was on the right place at the right time. It used references from Hollywood movies and comics. It was rare and new.

[The Dark Knight]

That was a good read; here are my thoughts (from the perspective of someone who grew up on the Japanese version), which more or less line up with yours:

1- The action and production value: American cartoons looked cheap and were animated even cheaper, but that wasn't the case with Z. Besides a few episodes here and there, Z's art and animation were always top-tier, and I will argue with anyone that they both hold up even today. On the flip side, we had American cartoons that looked like they were on a $10 budget, and that's being generous. As for the action, it was on a whole different level, as most cartoons weren't even allowed to show a punch, much less the insanity that Z displayed on a regular basis. The 90s Spider-Man wasn't allowed to punch anyone, and Batman couldn't hit anyone in the face, so going from that to the first Goku and Vegeta fight was mind blowing. Don't even get me started with the bone breaking, the loss of limbs and impalement, as well as the death of characters, all of which would never be allowed in a kids show. When I first saw the Saiyan arc after being so used to the typical Cartoon Network and Hanna Barbara shows, I honestly couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. What was even more shocking was the realization that there was an entire industry of this, with countless other shows of similar content; this was my gate into anime.

2- The narrative: American cartoons were typically 26-65 episodes depending on the show, with the world remaining exactly the same from the first to the last episode, with plots starting and wrapping up in a single, maybe two episodes if we're lucky. Z was a near 300 episode narrative, with every arc leading into the next arc, and said next arc dealing with the fallout of the previous one. Then there was the arcs themselves, ranging from 38 episodes all the way up to 92 episodes; it was unheard of in American cartoons, and for the most part, it still is. If you were lucky enough to watch the series in order, from DB, to Z, to GT, then that 300 episode count jumps to over 500, which again, is not a thing in American animated media. Then there's the world, it was a fully realized, lived in place that changed as time went on. The world in the 17th episode was very different from the world in the 45th episode, which was different from the world in the 130th, and so on. In American cartoons, the world and its characters, for the most part, remain exactly the same, with 0 changes to the status quo...kind of like what Super became.

3- The characters: Unlike American cartoons where characters are one note and remain exactly the same from the first to the last episodes, the characters in Z progressed as time went on. Kids witnessed characters get introduced in and out of the story, developed relationships with other characters, went through actual character development, etc... This experience was enhanced even more for kids who saw DB & GT, as well as Z's 13 movies and the TV specials. Characters like Vegeta started out as a villain, became a necessary ally, continued to develop into an anti-hero, switched back to becoming a villain, then finally became one of the good guys. By the time we got to GT's TV special, all the characters, with the exception of Pan, who was introduced at the tail end of Z, had passed away. This type of real-time world and character progression was completely absent in American cartoons, as character development was kept to a minimal, and changes to the status quo were very few and extremely far between.

[JulieYBM]

The intentionality of the directing and the break away from theater stage-based staging of the layouts lent Dragon Ball a more cinematic look, which was something that I unconsciously recognized as making it look and feel different from cartoons storyboarded in the United States. The focus on telling plots through tense battle scenes with bursts of choreographed and relentless movement also lent a new sense of storytelling to the series that I hadn’t picked up from an American cartoon before. With American cartoons, you’re basically just driving each episode with a script and dialogue, but with Dragon Ball, there were extended periods of time without trying to push the plot forward with dialogue, which was new for any kid who wasn't familiar with other anime already.

Also, it's gay as hell. Color? Gay. Dialogue? Gay. Character motivations? Gay. Dragon Ball was big, campy and melodramatic, of course kids are going to love it.

[VegettoEX]

AI says this:

With all due respect (and I truly mean all the exactly right amout of due respect), who gives any amount of a shit what a resource-draining, piracy-based, hallucination-prone, DDoS-enabling regurgitation model says about anything anywhere anytime?

My answer: DBZ was on the right place at the right time. It used references from Hollywood movies and comics. It was rare and new.

This is what we care about. Say more.

[Yellow Flower King]

AI says this:

With all due respect (and I truly mean all the exactly right amout of due respect), who gives any amount of a shit what a resource-draining, piracy-based, hallucination-prone, DDoS-enabling regurgitation model says about anything anywhere anytime?

My answer: DBZ was on the right place at the right time. It used references from Hollywood movies and comics. It was rare and new.

This is what we care about. Say more.

I am so glad this forum is anti ai and more about human thought. I like it here.

Also Himitsu no Akko chan did this gem for an ending theme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw7vapAaP0c

Just in case that link goes down: That is the famous ending sequence where Akko does an absolute shitstack of movie references.

[Hellspawn28]

Dragon Ball was already a hit overseas and had a cult following before the dub happen. The show appeals to people for its high speed action and cool characters.

[Yellow Flower King]

To be fair NO ONE has said "IT WAS 2NAMI THAT GAVE THAT JAPANESE CARTOON A CHANCE" people have said what qualities were appealing not just "Oh Toonami did it!"

But I am glad you mentioned it because while Toonami didnt create DBZ's popularity, they did create Funimation's fortunes. Funimation is a nepo baby company and they wouldnt have gotten far without Toonami. DBZ would have but not Funimation.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Dragon Ball was already a hit overseas and had a cult following before the dub happen. The show appeals to people for its high speed action and cool characters.

Nevermind overseas, and Dragon Ball Z was a massive hit in the USA on syndication. The sub may have had a cult following, but the dub was already HUGE before Toonami, so much so it got an hour-long timeslot in its second season, which as I understand it was rare before Pokemon.

To be fair NO ONE has said "IT WAS 2NAMI THAT GAVE THAT JAPANESE CARTOON A CHANCE" people have said what qualities were appealing not just "Oh Toonami did it!"

But I am glad you mentioned it because while Toonami didnt create DBZ's popularity, they did create Funimation's fortunes. Funimation is a nepo baby company and they wouldnt have gotten far without Toonami. DBZ would have but not Funimation.

Funimation and Dragon Ball Z were like a match made in business heaven. They were both going to grow regardless of whether or not Toonami came into the picture. Don't forget the English dub did well even in territories that didn't have Toonami like Canada and Finland. Dragon Ball Z could have easily aired on Nickelodeon or some other major channel in the US, continued to build on the success it already had in syndication and still led to Funimation growing as a company.

Maybe if Funimation were never given the rights to Dragon Ball they would have crashed and burned but because they did get the license they were bound to blow up.

[Yellow Flower King]

While I doubt that Nickelodeon could have picked it up (Back then Nickelodeon had an extreme NO VIOLENCE rule they stuck to until maybe Avatar. Back then the only violence allowed was Grimm's Fairy Tales. There is a reason why Fox Kids/KidsWB/Toonami went with violent cartoons and thrived at them, Nickelodeon refused to join in. It wasnt until Cyma Zarghami that they got Power Rangers and DBZKai. Something completely UNTHINKABLE for Geraldine Laybourne or Herb Scannel who insisted Nickelodeon was not to partake in violence) I do have to admit someone would have picked it up.

[Yuli Ban]

To be fair NO ONE has said "IT WAS 2NAMI THAT GAVE THAT JAPANESE CARTOON A CHANCE"

Lol not only have plenty of people said that Toonami was responsible for Dragon Ball's success in America, many have stated that it Toonami that responsible for the success and mainstreamization of anime in general.
In general. Now hold on a second there. I'm not saying "anime became mainstream in America because of Toonami."
I mean "before Toonami, anime was just a niche thing only some of the Japanese really knew about, but after Toonami, it became a global mainstream medium."

The fact that anime had already been mainstream, enough even to have multiple blocks on other channels and already inspire a bunch of American animation before Toonami ever debuted, let alone that Dragon Ball had already become a runaway success in places like France nearly a decade before the American blow up, well that's completely lost on a lot of post-Toonami faithful.
You would absolutely be surprised how insulated some of the Western anime fandom really is to these things. A not insignificant number of Dragon Ball Z fans will credit it for singlehandedly inventing shonen, then the American dub for making anime popular. Admittedly the more weeby Otaku one gets (or simply does the bare minimum of actual research into the history of the medium), the less this sentiment lingers. But I mean, there's a not insignificant number of DBZ fans who couldn't even tell you which kung fu movie Toriyama watched that directly inspired the creation of the show (This wouldn't bother me terribly much if it wasn't for the fact a lot of these same types take pride in how much they know about Dragon Ball and will proudly state how much Superman, Star Wars, and Terminator influenced the series, but the moment you bring stuff like that up, "it's a simple show, you're overthinking it," which is the most ass-backwards logic I've ever heard, and I've heard it plenty)


Also, just because I felt it necessary to mention at least somewhere in here since I kept teasing it

My take for why Dragon Ball is so endlessly addictive to watch.... starts with a toy card game anime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfqNH3FoGi0
I've never been too deep into the Yu-Gi-Oh! fandom, but there was a time when I was obsessed with it as a kid, and it was literally because of this one scene hooking me instantly (well, at the time I was also deep into Pokemon, so that probably helped, but this intro to the series was what really hooked me)

What I eventually realized was this scene actually does the same thing that makes DBZ so cathartic: "reversal of fortune + overwhelming power against a smug powerful asshole" = catharsis and schadenfreude.

Many anime and other media try their hardest to avoid "overpowered beatdown" and people wonder why Dragon Ball Z still has such a die hard fanbase. Some of the coolest moments in any show is when one character is just freakishly too strong and shuts up the bully/douchebag/cocky smartass who could actually walk the walk (it's not the same if the other guy was just talking smack but was actually a wimp; their fists have to be able to cash the checks their mouth writes, that's what makes them getting crushed cathartic)

Yu-Gi-Oh never really had that many more moments like this

But the show OPENS with one of the best examples ever

Escalation is part of how it works, but I maintain that "catharsis" is the killer key and any work that really wants to capture a slice of Dragon Ball HAS to follow that route

"American Cartoons Weren’t Allowed to Escalate"
I wrote this line a while back writing overlong notes to myself (lol, imagine all this rambling, now realize there's probably a hundred times more like it lost on private logs)
Western shows were deliberately structured to avoid death, reset the status quo every episode, keep characters consistent for toy merchandising, never show long pain, grief, or consequence, and maintain relatively balanced power scaling.

DBZ shattered all of that. When Nappa killed the characters, they were just dead.

(Well ignoring Funimation/Saban randomly jamming the Tree of Might movie in the Namek arc)

This directly plays right into the escalation.

Spoiler:

This is something that is totally lost to people who grew up in an era where this was all normalized. A lot of cartoons (ironically including the DBZ dub for a time) weren't even allowed to say the word "death" or "kill." Animation as medium was the silly slapstick or corny tryhard action stuff with occasional sightings of animation for adults that was still treated as weird or transgressive or unusual. Most cartoons weren't Heavy Metal or Æon Flux. Even Ren and Stimpy and Courage the Cowardly Dog were pushing it a bit.

Actual action shows had that understanding that parents/moms groups would raise a fuss of the funny lantern jawed spandex clad cartoon heroes actually punched someone because then what if little Timmy saw that and decided that you solve problems by hitting people? They were already giving video games shit for this for years. Then comes Dragon Ball Z, and no matter how hard Funimation/Saban tried censoring it into the kiddiest cheesiest "kung fu Super Friends" they could, it just opened cold on this glam rock haired dude killing a guy and then your super protagonist fights him and dies heroically, and 20 episodes later half the cast dies. It made all the American and Canadian action shows feel like baby shows, perhaps unfairly. "Sent to the next dimension" We all knew what that meant. It wasn't like the "Shadow Realm" were it was vague enough that it could have been that even if they were both death. These guys were visibly killing each other. And as a snotnosed boy in the late 90s/early 2000s: "That's so cooool!!"


Relating to how Dragon Ball itself came at an exceptionally useful time to boost its success here, American kids either were well immersed in kung fu movies and their tropes or didn't know they existed at all. Most of the modern fandom splintered from the latter branch that never knew

• Shaw Brothers
• Golden Harvest
• Bruce Lee
• Jackie Chan’s 80s era
• Jet Li’s early mainland films
• Sammo Hung choreography logic
• King Hu’s weightless wuxia physics
• Taiwanese mysticism martial arts cinema
• Big Trouble in Little China and all the other high-fantasy martial arts movies that came before and after with the same sort of energy (some of which were literally advertised ON Dragon Ball Z VHSes before the movie started)
• plus a pinch of Journey to the West

American kids didn’t know this lineage existed, sometimes out of pure blindness, sometimes because they just had no way of knowing because of the way the media ecosystem evolved. They absorbed the aesthetic without knowing the source, so it felt like it came from an alien planet and started slaughtering the heroes until Goku arrived.

Dragon Ball is exciting because you see intense powers, you see characters overcoming the odds, you see very satisfying action, you see fun characters doing amazing, epic things

But what makes it addictive is catharsis

Here's the beat
Imagine this situation: you're some up and coming underdog team playing sportsball, and you're very close with your teammates. Some of you aren't friends or anything, but you are comrades in arms and blood, and you've overcome local leagues. Well, you're now playing against the son of the owner of the league and his team. He's a pipsqueak who says you're a poor loser who spends all your days training and working hard while he fucks your girlfriend (and boyfriend, and your mom, and your dad, and your dog). He makes fun of you while speeding through red lights in a Lamborghini while boasting he can give the president a reacharound whenever he wants and have him begging with the nuclear launch codes. He is violently unathletic but just for showing up to the pitch, he is the star and celebrated, where even his ass shots sell for $500,000 a piece, and you and your team are off to the side infesting the peripheral pixels of the photo.
He's every bad guy from an Adam Sandler or John Waters movie

How would YOU write this story?
You show him up and humiliate him, and maybe he tries to fight back and has some talent after all, but you have hard work and pluck and loyalty to one another whereas he sees everyone else as pawns to his ambitions, and he hires some genuinely competent player that fucks you over (or maybe his team are a professional team, who's gotten lazy with a few members who still take it seriously)
The major league showdown is tense, and clearly the failson thinks you can't have possibly gotten this far, but your story ends here and he wins like he always should, but he's still a talentless douchebag carried by teammates he never respected or gave their due worth, and they abandon him, and you almost beat him. You ACTUALLY beat him, but he uses his connections to declare he still wins. Well, in this league, it's a deeply unfair draw, so it comes down to the final ultimate showdown, and you humiliate him one last time and show that he never was anything more than a bully with too much money.

Makes for a good underdog story. Hell, this is basically the Dodgeball: A True Underdog story plot and I didn't even intend for it.

How would DRAGON BALL do it, however?

Maybe it's a major showdown match too, so you and your team did everything, trained, clawed your way to this moment, you are carrying your entire hometown's pride and legacy against this corpo nepo baby and his lazy arrogant ass-clowns.
He crushes you. Completely, utterly, sweepingly, brutally, all the other -ly's. It's so one-sided that not only did he beat your ass until you're wearing your buttcheeks like a hat, but he genuinely is confused why you're taking this warm-up so seriously.
Not only is he better than you, he is so outrageously, so stupefyingly better than you that he's literally broken records that have held since ancient Greece, some of them in this very match, and he STILL thinks this is just the warm-up to the real match. You keep fighting and fighting, and it becomes more and more clear that the differential in skill is actually worse than you thought when he beat you silly in the first round. There is nothing you could have even conceivably done to train and work hard to beat this guy, and the worst part about it is that he's not even respectful about it. The entire time he's slaughtering you and eying your dog, he's also thinking reminding you that you are a pathetic tick, and everyone hates ticks, we literally watch people burn ticks for fun, and that's you.
Then you feel it! It's that second wind. Finally, the full weight of everything is upon you. Through your sweat pores drips the tears and anguish of everyone in your dinky little home that suffered under the weight of assholes like this who buys yachts worth 10x more than every asset in your town and forgets about them next to the other yacht, and you strike back.
He crushes you again.
Like it's not even sad anymore, everyone's already packing up to go home because it's clear this is over and you're breaking your body for nothing.
And as you lay in the dust, weeping and resigning to how totally and absolutely you have failed and admit at last that you are a worthless piece of trash compared to this titanic god, then another player walks in, confused at why you're kowtowing to this dude and says he'll play a round now that he's recovered from a coma and practiced a lot.
The other guy mocks him as some weirdo trashman still in pajamas, serves the match, and gets balls blasted across his face
into the other goal, multiple times, with no way for his team to stop your teammate. Worse, they realize your teammate is the one they feared the most, and through humiliating you, they riled him to show them a lesson. In fact, that teammate doesn't play into that sort of prophetic stuff and just says he's doing this because he wants to.

There's some extra drama with the villain guy deciding to go all out and the hero guy realizes he's taken this too lightly because the villain guy really is skilled after all, but the match ends with the hero guy leaving the villain guy in the dust where you were and also your dog pissed in his ear.
But, oh no, two celestial angels are also into sportsball, and they say they're going to come down to Earth to play, and if Earth loses, it'll be turned into giant data center. They send down a little kid angel to see who the best is, and he effortlessly wipes the floor with your teammate, and even if there's an upset, like a single point gets scored, he says "Oh no, I'm just the towelboy, the actual players are coming in 3 years."

Wasn't that harrowing... and yet so satisfying?

Hubris being humbled

That's essentially the Dragon Ball formula that sold it to us

A lot of people would not even dare try to go that route because of how hopeless that situation sounds. Not only does the other guy think he's better, he IS better, there's no debate whatsoever. I think a lot of storytelling, especially very egalitarian or solidary minded storytelling, really takes intense issue with the idea of the bad guy seriously just being better than the good guy.
Plus, there's a legacy of power balancing.
I've seen no fewer than two dozen proposed "DBZ rewrites" to resolve its biggest glaring issues of storytelling and power escalation, that do the exact same thing:

These two?

The joke is and has always been "what if the smaller guy was stronger?"
Well apparently that's a joke that doesn't always land, because I've seen many proposals that go "Imagine Vegeta was actually extremely weak, and Nappa was the muscle"
This opens the story to a certain possibility: imagine the heroes can't possible beat Nappa, but they spend the fight appealing to his conscience. He still fights and kills them, but Goku arrives and is a perfect match for him, but the mission is already failed because they killed Piccolo, and Goku finally gets through to him that "You don't have to take orders from that guy," even if in Saiyan hierarchy disobeying your ruler is punishable by death, because what Saiyans even are there? Just these four. Vegeta may have some freaky power, but he can't overcome the 3 (or 2 and a half) Saiyans teaming up against him

That'd work for a cape story, or an Avatar: The Last Airbender type story arc
It's not a bad idea at all, in fact Dragon Ball itself uses it with Babidi and Buu

But I argue that if that is how the Saiyan arc resolved, it wouldn't have been as memorable as it was, because a great part of the joy of it beyond just the character dynamics and sense of hopelessness, was also the fact that it all became meaningless because even if the Dragon Team somehow won against Nappa, all they'd have done is focused Vegeta's attention on them, and we see how atrociously overpowered Vegeta was compared to them, that even with a combined effort of the remaining team and the heroes, they still can't put him down. But the fight thus drags out and becomes a brutal bloody sloppy slog where both sides wind up broken and crippled, and it feels tense because the same dynamic of "we're doing everything we can and nothing's working" finally pays off, and part of the pay off IS Vegeta's shattered pride. He IS the strongest Saiyan, and Saiyan philosophy dictates he should be godlike to these low-class trash, but the fact he can't finish them off plays into all this. He defeats Goku handily in actual combat, but it's Goku's Earthling traits that actually wins. If Vegeta didn't kill Nappa, the Dragon Team would have been too scattered and weakened to taken both of them on, but to Vegeta, teamwork is a habit of weaklings he's too far above.



Hubris being humbled

And there's no better example of this in the series than Perfect Cell vs Gohan, which is actually the scene that first gave me this epiphany "Oh THAT'S why I keep coming back to DBZ."


This scene works on a base level of "Wow, what a hardcore punch"
It keeps you coming back for more because of the buildup to it
You see Cell's smug ass flex on everyone
He seems to be pushed to his limits against Goku, until it's revealed he was holding back the entire time and, if he wanted, could have outright killed Goku with ease at any time
He pushes Gohan past the brink, just for his own pride because he believes he's perfect
He might be frustrated at the boy's powers, but that's just validating that now he has a proper challenge

And so he powers up to max
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQFSxBAmbxk
And here we realize not only was he holding back, but him simply powering up feels like the end of the world


Son Goku couldn't have done it after all, and we're just told Gohan is stronger than him, but Cell's pushed it to levels where this could actually still be beyond what this boy can possi—



Oooooh....
You can FEEL that.
He takes down this world-ending threat in TWO punches, he has him literally stumbling and coughing blood and unable to stand up
(which is another thing, this isn't stock "hits the ground and holds arm afterwards" generic action 'injury')
What's more, you can FEEL the shift. Cell had all the power and knew it, only for Gohan to turn it around on him.
What makes it sweeter is Cell did the exact same thing to Vegeta many episodes earlier, and we rooted for Cell to do it because of how much of an asshole Vegeta is, but Cell isn't a good guy (no matter how many fanfics want him to be), so this had to happen too.


Again when I say this I'm not making a value judgment, because I'm not saying this is a better way to tell a story
I'm just saying: a lot of other shows would hold that back and make it more "clever"
Gohan can't beat Cell in a straight fight, so he finds some secret weak spot or loophole or is just distracting Cell until the rest of the Dragon Team is able to get to Gero's lab and shut him off, and then Cell's realization they've done this is the moment of catharsis.

Dragon Ball Z decides "No, Gohan's just much, much stronger and makes sure Cell pays for believing otherwise."

Hubris being humbled

Also Cell does this to Gohan for taking too long with the fight and taking too much pleasure in it.
Then the final stretch where Cell returns and matches Gohan and there's still peril, so it's not a single straight shot from "You're the Hero Guy, you now humiliate the bad guy, and we win." That only works in the movies (but it does work, to be fair).



Gordon Bennet, that was some rambling...

But I just had to explain this dynamic because it's something that's so often overlooked, but so fundamental to why Dragon Ball Z works.
A lot of anime (and media in general) wants to avoid Dragon Ball's biggest pitfalls (endless escalation), which is valid, but that escalation is also what allows this to work. Power balancing, magic system balancing, or (if it's not a fighting story) limitations to some system or another allows for wildly different dynamics, but you will very rarely have the same sort of catharsis because part of why this catharsis works is fundamentally due to a few things

1. The bad guy has to be hubristic. He/she/they/it/whathaveyou must believe they're better than everyone else, or some group.
B. Their fists can cash the check their mouth writes. This is where a lot of other media stops the buck: from an underdog story perspective, the villain being all flexing allows for a more satisfyingly egalitarian payoff.
Lastly. The Hero Guy has to humiliate them.

It doesn't have to be physical strength. You can do the same narrative with anything as long as there's some sort of differential. Some stories work better at this than others (for example, if that differential is fleeting, like social status or class, it's harder to pull off than if the differential is more material, like intelligence or pure capability)

[Yellow Flower King]

To be fair NO ONE has said "IT WAS 2NAMI THAT GAVE THAT JAPANESE CARTOON A CHANCE"

Lol not only have plenty of people said that Toonami was responsible for Dragon Ball's success in America, many have stated that it Toonami that responsible for the success and mainstreamization of anime in general.
In general. Now hold on a second there. I'm not saying "anime became mainstream in America because of Toonami."
I mean "before Toonami, anime was just a niche thing only some of the Japanese really knew about, but after Toonami, it became a global mainstream medium."

I wasnt saying people didnt say that elsewhere or on Kanzenshuu. I meant in this exact thread. In this thread, no one but the AI made that argument. And I am not giving AI the time of day... Okay I didnt see the AI say it but I will cover my ass and exclude it lol. In this thread people came up with actual arguments as to why it was so appealing. You didnt simply go "Oh it aired on Toonami and then it blew up!" No. There was a major success that predated Toonami both in and out of the USA when DBZ is concerned.

[WittyUsername]

The simplest possible explanation for why it “blew up” in America is because it’s a big flashy action cartoon. I’m not even sure it gets much deeper than that. In terms of it being radically different from Western cartoons, keep in mind that around that time, Western animation was already seeing a rise in serialized TV shows with stuff like X-Men, Spider-Man and Gargoyles, so Dragon Ball wasn’t necessarily unique in that regard.

[Yuli Ban]

keep in mind that around that time, Western animation was already seeing a rise in serialized TV shows with stuff like X-Men, Spider-Man and Gargoyles, so Dragon Ball wasn’t necessarily unique in that regard.

I admit that but here's a counter point:
Why Dragon Ball Z then and not those shows? If it wasn't so different (and on the surface, "a motley crew of muscle-bound heroes clashing against a gallery of muscle-bound villains" was the least original concept in Western animation in that milieu), why is it Dragon Ball Z hit so differently from Thundercats or Gargoyles (which actually also did long form storytelling with darker themes than standard for television animation)? That's my thesis here: the difference is the difference, DBZ was materially different from the Western action cartoons of its day in a way that most Saturday morning kids of the era would have given just as rambly explanations for
(Also a complete tangential aside are you the same WittyUsername from the long lost Sega of America forums?)

[WittyUsername]

keep in mind that around that time, Western animation was already seeing a rise in serialized TV shows with stuff like X-Men, Spider-Man and Gargoyles, so Dragon Ball wasn’t necessarily unique in that regard.

I admit that but here's a counter point
Why Dragon Ball Z then and not those shows?
(Also a complete tangential aside are you the same WittyUsername from the long lost Sega of America forums?)

Nope. I suppose my username isn’t particularly original or “witty.”

Anyway, I’m not certain about how big Gargoyles was with children, but X-Men and Spider-Man were pretty successful.

[Yuli Ban]

AI says this:

With all due respect (and I truly mean all the exactly right amout of due respect), who gives any amount of a shit what a resource-draining, piracy-based, hallucination-prone, DDoS-enabling regurgitation model says about anything anywhere anytime?

My answer: DBZ was on the right place at the right time. It used references from Hollywood movies and comics. It was rare and new.

This is what we care about. Say more.

I am so glad this forum is anti ai and more about human thought. I like it here.

Also Himitsu no Akko chan did this gem for an ending theme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw7vapAaP0c

Just in case that link goes down: That is the famous ending sequence where Akko does an absolute shitstack of movie references.

I wouldn't mind AI-centric posts if it was more substantial than autoregressive attention-based transformer LLM slop. (Whatever happened to the neurosymbolic school?) If only because then at least I'd know, mechanically and probabilistically it's not generating most likely next token based on its weights. Even moreso if the user themselves actually engaged with it instead of using it as a replacement for their own thinking, especially on a topic literally about one's own experiences and memories. Alas, the AI Bros gave up actually researching the technology, in lieu of deciding Elizabeth Holmes fusing with Jim Jones was a great idea
(frustrating because AI and robotics is, like, paramount for socialism to work, and yet the AI Bros are doing everything humanly and inhumanly possible to both turn everyone against the tech and ruin it's potential.... But that's a thread for another day on another forum)

I've tried to see what LLMs know about this subject and it's about as shallow as I expected because it's one of those things you just had to be there to understand, and then looking back in the rearview mirror to see how all the branches brushed into each other. A lot of folks never shared that viewpoint online so there's nothing to steal and scrape from to get such an accurate sense.
Which is related to why I'm so invested in takes on DB that aren't as common. Like how did fans in France or the Philippines experience Dragon Ball? As an American, Funi-faithful And OGDB are the two dominant modes of the Fandom it seems, and that's largely a side effect of the original Funimation dubs and the culture they wrought (DeeBeeZee as heartful manly meatheads glowing gold and posing fabulously vs ADOBENCHA Ball that, allegedly with very little evidence, OG DB was all friendship-focused mystical adventures, to combat said meatheads).
What oddities exist in other countries then? How did France's animation culture lead to different perceptions of DB when it aired on Club Dorothée in the early 90s? (I've heard that because of a quirk of timing and certain trope popularity, Bojack and his gang are way more prominent in the French fandom than they are here, such as with Super Butōden 2 being a major fighting game there— but is that true?? I don't know and I want to know!)
I'm just fascinated by the international fandom and want to see more of what others remember of it all

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

While I doubt that Nickelodeon could have picked it up (Back then Nickelodeon had an extreme NO VIOLENCE rule they stuck to until maybe Avatar. Back then the only violence allowed was Grimm's Fairy Tales. There is a reason why Fox Kids/KidsWB/Toonami went with violent cartoons and thrived at them, Nickelodeon refused to join in. It wasnt until Cyma Zarghami that they got Power Rangers and DBZKai. Something completely UNTHINKABLE for Geraldine Laybourne or Herb Scannel who insisted Nickelodeon was not to partake in violence) I do have to admit someone would have picked it up.

If Nickelodeon were interested they could have had Funimation edit out all the violence. Another territory that had English Dragon Ball Z without Toonami, at least for the first year and a bit, was New Zealand. All the punches, kicks, headbutts, etc were cut out (and TV3 denied they were responsible) but Dragon Ball Z was still a huge success.

Anyway, my point was that any major network could have had success with Dragon Ball Z and Funimation would have still grown without Toonami. Maybe Fox Kids would have been a better example though.

[TheBigBoy]

Only really skimmed the thread but even in it's highly censored "Saban dub" format, there was NOTHING like DBZ on US TV at the time. It made no apologies for being a martial arts show - the characters fight and there were no hand wringing "violence is wrong!" morals. It was great.

[Yellow Flower King]

I was hoping Yuli would comment on my post that said that in everyone in this thread actually made very good arguments without just going to toonami. Which is a level of respect towards the property that I loved to see.

[Yuli Ban]

I was hoping Yuli would comment on my post that said that in everyone in this thread actually made very good arguments without just going to toonami. Which is a level of respect towards the property that I loved to see.

Indeed, and I mean this intending that I'm not picking on Toonami fans or trying to focus everything on Toonami, only that the American dub is inexorably linked to it heavily (and it is where the series really, intensely picked up on ratings in America) so it's often difficult to separate American DBZ from it. But there's way more to what happened here than a single programming block on a single cable channel. There's a reason, after all, why it was such a hot topic with VHS tapes and on early Usenet. People were just always fascinated by the show, no matter how butchered the product wound up once it was on the television.
I feel like Kanzenshuu has been great at learning this over the years, it feels like the website is getting back to being closer to what it had been in the early 2000s (before it took on this name) in some ways. Then again, I'm not on here every single day, so maybe I miss the users who only ever talk about Toonami Z?
But yeah, this is what I wanted to see: more perspectives than just "this slice of TV programming that aired in this cultural milieu"

If Nickelodeon were interested they could have had Funimation edit out all the violence. Another territory that had English Dragon Ball Z without Toonami, at least for the first year and a bit, was New Zealand. All the punches, kicks, headbutts, etc were cut out (and TV3 denied they were responsible) but Dragon Ball Z was still a huge success.

Anyway, my point was that any major network could have had success with Dragon Ball Z and Funimation would have still grown without Toonami. Maybe Fox Kids would have been a better example though.

And you're correct. Many networks could have taken it on, and it'd have been just as big. It was already somewhat well known before it started airing, which is why there was such a desire to dub it in the first place.




Also, if it's a horrifying mess to decipher from my impenetrable walls of rambling, the skimmed version of all this is that I stake my claim on the hill that, while it wasn't singlehandedly the reason, its reception here in the states was boosted by broadcast media quirks that fostered a very particular culture and vibe for the demographic that DBZ was aimed for. "Cartoons = kids" (ignoring cartoons not meant for kids), parents' groups and broadcasters scared of them treat animated characters throwing fists as Satanic corruption, action and cape-toons restrain the power fantasy = DBZ eats our breakfast, lunch, and dinner

Ideally someone is inspired to turn all this into a video essay; those are popular with the youths, right?