How Did You Discover Dragon Ball?

[90sDBZ]

Saw promos for it back when it first aired on Cartoon Network UK in 2000. Watched bits and pieces of the Saiyan and Namek sagas and then got fully hooked at the Frieza saga.

[tinlunlau]

Ha! You guys are all amateurs! Yes, even you, Mike Lebrie!
My first exposure to Dragon Ball was all the way back in the early 90s. I think I was in Grade 7 when I lived in Thornhill, Ontario. Circa 1992. My father had returned from Hong Kong and brought me some Dragon Ball Z t-shirts. Of course, being oblivious to the franchise, I was disappointed that he brought me Dragonball t-shirts when I had specifically asked for some Street Fighter t-shirts. Then I moved to Scarborough, Ontario and started hanging out with some Hong Kong fobs (that's short for "fresh off the boat" for you gwailo's out there). One particular guy handed me a comic book. It was an ani-manga of the Bardock special. Printed in Chinese. I couldn't read Chinese back then so I kinda struggled at first. I liked what I saw so I went to this corner store near my house and began a habit of renting Hong Kong releases of Japanese manga. Over time, I became good at reading Chinese. (I'll be honest with you guys here. Chinese school never helped. I'd spend an entire year there and come learning only 2 words at most.)

Obtaining a copy of the anime was hard back in the day. I was barely able to find VHS recordings of the Cantonese dub from TVB. Fast forward many years later, I've done translation work for people like Jackie Chan, Celina Jade (from TV's "Arrow"), Andy On and have even worked with the folks at Diskotek Media for their American release of classic HK gorefests like "Ebola Syndrome". This is really all thanks to Dragon Ball!

(Coincidentally, when I worked as a courier, my employee number was "239". Check the anime...that's the number written on Bulma's ship. Talk about how a single comic book series can affect one's life!)

[Black_Anime_Fan]

Ha! You guys are all amateurs! Yes, even you, Mike Lebrie!
My first exposure to Dragon Ball was all the way back in the early 90s. I think I was in Grade 7 when I lived in Thornhill, Ontario. Circa 1992. My father had returned from Hong Kong and brought me some Dragon Ball Z t-shirts. Of course, being oblivious to the franchise, I was disappointed that he brought me Dragonball t-shirts when I had specifically asked for some Street Fighter t-shirts. Then I moved to Scarborough, Ontario and started hanging out with some Hong Kong fobs (that's short for "fresh off the boat" for you gwailo's out there). One particular guy handed me a comic book. It was an ani-manga of the Bardock special. Printed in Chinese. I couldn't read Chinese back then so I kinda struggled at first. I liked what I saw so I went to this corner store near my house and began a habit of renting Hong Kong releases of Japanese manga. Over time, I became good at reading Chinese. (I'll be honest with you guys here. Chinese school never helped. I'd spend an entire year there and come learning only 2 words at most.)

Obtaining a copy of the anime was hard back in the day. I was barely able to find VHS recordings of the Cantonese dub from TVB. Fast forward many years later, I've done translation work for people like Jackie Chan, Celina Jade (from TV's "Arrow"), Andy On and have even worked with the folks at Diskotek Media for their American release of classic HK gorefests like "Ebola Syndrome". This is really all thanks to Dragon Ball!

(Coincidentally, when I worked as a courier, my employee number was "239". Check the anime...that's the number written on Bulma's ship. Talk about how a single comic book series can affect one's life!)

Lol, this isn't a competition.

[Blu-ray_Mistress]

My memory of is quite fuzzy, but I remember one day after school (I was in the 7th grade at the time) I was watching Toonami and after I finished watching Sailor Moon I then decided to give Dragon Ball Z a chance, don't recall which episode it was I first saw I just remember it was somewhere in the Namek Saga.

[Sshadow5001]

Saw promos for it back when it first aired on Cartoon Network UK in 2000. Watched bits and pieces of the Saiyan and Namek sagas and then got fully hooked at the Freeza saga.

Same here. Unfortunately I missed the very first episode but I watched from episode 2 onwards.

[goku the krump dancer]

Suddenly, in '99: "Hey, why did Krillin's voice suddenly change? Did he get older?"

Those were my EXACT thoughts back then as well, holy shit . Coulda swore I was the only one who thought like that.

[DarkPrince_92]

Suddenly, in '99: "Hey, why did Krillin's voice suddenly change? Did he get older?"

Those were my EXACT thoughts back then as well, holy shit . Coulda swore I was the only one who thought like that.

Those were my thoughts on Vegeta when I first heard his Android saga voice. Where'd that come from?

[Flame Dragon]

I think i was five or six when i watched the first series of DB Italian Dubbed on our local channel, i was like "this is pretty fun!", i was always eager to come home back from school to watch some more Dragonball goodness.
Then after DB ended, DBZ started airing... and my mind was blown!

I used to watch the episodes daily, bewildered at how much more fast paced the action was compared to the first DB!
DBZ is still extremely popular here, we still have reruns of the entire show at least once a year...

And they kept doing reruns since i was 5... so almost 15 years of costant reruns of DBZ and DBGT (no original DB tho... )
By the time i was 12 i already knew DBZ by the palm of hand, kinda sick of it honestly. Wish they would get new anime and stop the reruns.

[Thanos]

It was 1999. I was 9, and at a friend's house. They were watching Dragon Ball Z, which I had heard of but never had any interest in. I thought it was about wrestling (I saw Mr. Satan's disciples and the Cell Games so that largely painted my perception of the series at first ). I watched a couple of episodes and I was hooked. The rest is history.

[RandomGuy96]

A video game while visiting a friend's house.

[Flamzeron]

When I was really young, I went to Blockbuster and saw the dub of DB Movie 1 on VHS. I rented it and watched it when I got him. It was basically love at first sight.

I only watched Movie 1 and the Oolong episode at that point. I forgot about the series and moved onto other things until DBZ aired on Toonami.

[TheGreatness25]

Saw it on syndicated television between 1994-1996. Caught it right at the end of the first episode when leading into episode 2, Raditz telling Goku who he is, etc. Watched it weekly since. When it moved to Toonami, I was excited, but already knew the series very well at that point.

[tinlunlau]

Ha! You guys are all amateurs! Yes, even you, Mike Lebrie!
My first exposure to Dragon Ball was all the way back in the early 90s. I think I was in Grade 7 when I lived in Thornhill, Ontario. Circa 1992. My father had returned from Hong Kong and brought me some Dragon Ball Z t-shirts. Of course, being oblivious to the franchise, I was disappointed that he brought me Dragonball t-shirts when I had specifically asked for some Street Fighter t-shirts. Then I moved to Scarborough, Ontario and started hanging out with some Hong Kong fobs (that's short for "fresh off the boat" for you gwailo's out there). One particular guy handed me a comic book. It was an ani-manga of the Bardock special. Printed in Chinese. I couldn't read Chinese back then so I kinda struggled at first. I liked what I saw so I went to this corner store near my house and began a habit of renting Hong Kong releases of Japanese manga. Over time, I became good at reading Chinese. (I'll be honest with you guys here. Chinese school never helped. I'd spend an entire year there and come learning only 2 words at most.)

Obtaining a copy of the anime was hard back in the day. I was barely able to find VHS recordings of the Cantonese dub from TVB. Fast forward many years later, I've done translation work for people like Jackie Chan, Celina Jade (from TV's "Arrow"), Andy On and have even worked with the folks at Diskotek Media for their American release of classic HK gorefests like "Ebola Syndrome". This is really all thanks to Dragon Ball!

(Coincidentally, when I worked as a courier, my employee number was "239". Check the anime...that's the number written on Bulma's ship. Talk about how a single comic book series can affect one's life!)

Lol, this isn't a competition.

You can never improve if there is no competition involved.
I also liked belittling people who believed in Dragon Ball AF. Once upon a time, these people actually existed.

[medama_oyaji]

When I was in middle school, before the DBZ had aired on TV in the USA, I was getting into anime and manga. I used to go to my dad's office to use the internet to learn about anime, and even in those early days of the internet DB/Z fandom had a pretty large presence online. The artwork grabbed my attention, and I became a big fan.

I saw the early Saiyan-saga dub on WB, which turned me off, but soon after I saw a fansub of the 10th Anniversary movie at a convention and I was back! It stuck for life!