Discussion regarding the entirety of the franchise in a general (meta) sense, including such aspects as: production, trends, merchandise, fan culture, and more.
Valerius Dover wrote:Saw an ad for one of The Legacy of Goku games in one of the Nintendo Power Advance magazines way back in 2002 and thought it looked stupid. Hey, I was only 6, and was very pacifist compared to most guys my age.
I then started doing research around Fall of 2012, having gained somewhat of an interest in anime. I started watching Dragon Ball Season 1 on the Blue Brick shortly after Christmas.
Was it the ad with the kid who had Super Saiyan hair? I remember that one. Good times.
Too bad that game was terrible.
Last edited by Kamiccolo9 on Mon Dec 15, 2014 8:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Though with DBZ, I was mostly familiar with the Boo Saga and bits of the Namek Saga. I watched all but the first saga of Dragon Ball.
Last edited by DBZAOTA482 on Mon Dec 15, 2014 8:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
fadeddreams5 wrote:
DBZGTKOSDH wrote:... Haven't we already gotten these in GT? Goku dies, the DBs go away, and the Namekian DBs most likely won't be used again because of the Evil Dragons.
Goku didn't die in GT. The show sucked him off so much, it was impossible to keep him in the world of the living, so he ascended beyond mortality.
jjgp1112 wrote: Sat Jul 18, 2020 6:31 am
I'm just about done with the concept of reboots and making shows that were products of their time and impactful "new and sexy" and in line with modern tastes and sensibilities. Let stuff stay in their era and give today's kids their own shit to watch.
I always side eye the people who say "Now my kids/today's kids can experience what I did as a child!" Nigga, who gives a fuck about your childhood? You're an adult now and it was at least 15 years ago. Let the kids have their own experience instead of picking at a corpse.
It all began at the year 2000 when I was in grade 2. A kid on my school bus showed me a dragon ball z card and told me that the show was awesome. That day I went home and watched Dragon Ball Z on ytv back when it came on at 5:30 in the evening. The episode that I watched that was the one when freeza killed Vegeta on namek. After that day I've been hooked on to the series ever since.
It was 2000. I was in 3rd grade, I changed schools at the time. All the kids at my old school watched Pokemon, but the new school kids watched DBZ. I wanted to see what all the hype was, so I watched. I caught it during the Cell Games saga reruns on Toonami. I was instantly hooked. Been a fan ever since.
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It was either when I was 5 or 6 yr old, so around~ 2000/01 still in Korea. Although I did not watch it regularly during that time, I still remember being angry at Goku for not attacking Frieza because he was charging up for genki dama (We all know 5 yr olds aren't really known for long patience plus it took 230823 years in anime to finally use the attack).
Flash forward to 2014, I had forgotten that DBZ existed until recently when I saw DBZA on reddit. Watched all the episodes and started on the DBZ. Now I am loving Dragon Ball more than ever before
Summer of 2000. I was flipping channels looking for something to watch and stumbled upon reruns on Toonami. Landed right around when Gokû arrived on Namek.
Never would've happened nowadays to me because now that the internet is as it is, I barely watch TV or flip channels looking for stuff to watch anymore. I get almost all the shows I watch online and discover new shows while wandering around online.
Making me think of how often I used to watch reruns of shows in general on TV all the time before the internet became fast. I almost never watch reruns anymore.
Actually, I think it just showed the cover art. Looking them up, it seems Legacy of Goku II is the most likely one it was, which I hear is pretty good, actually.
Last edited by Valerius Dover on Tue Dec 16, 2014 3:22 am, edited 2 times in total.
It was whenever the Cell Saga was first airing on Cartoon Network.
I got home from school in the afternoon and was flipping through the TV. When I got to CN, Piccolo was facing down Imperfect Cell, his arm drained and asking Cell to explain who he was. I was hooked instantly.
[i]"I have yet to show you, young warrior, what I'm truly capable of."[/i] - Cell
A Dragon Ball fan circa. 1999 thanks to the exposure of the re-run of the Saiyan arc. Eventually bought Freeza- Fall of the Tyrant VHS tape as my first ever Dragon Ball release.
~late 97 or early '98 via Toonami due to one of their promos. I was 7 or 8 respectively. I can't pinpoint the exact year but I know I wasn't 9.
Since I didn't always have cable I'd beg for the few tapes available. The first one I ever got were the ocean dub of movies 1 and 2.
I remember pleading for them while trying my damnedest to explain what exactly DBZ was and why "Uncut" should not concern my mom
Thankfully it worked and it was the first time I heard the JP score which caused me to search out bootlegs, my first being movies 7 and 8 which I still have. My preference for the JP ver. began here.
I wasn't really open about being a fan though as no kids knew about it. This stopped when I went to art class on the first day back to school and seeing the room filled with DBZ posters. The new art teacher, whose name I've sadly forgotten, was a fan and figured some kids would like her posters. We did! She even made a 4~5ft tall Goku cutout that sat in the hallway to our cafeteria. She sadly left after a few months but that cutout remained until the day I left elementary school. I kind of tear up thinking about it as she really helped me be open about being a fan and opened my school up to Dragon Ball.
Its been 17 years and I'm still a fan despite my criticisms.
January 2013. I was just looking at TV shows on IMDb and it was ranked really high. I've always hated anime, but I figured I give it a shot. I collected the figures, toys, and magazines when I was a kid, because I loved drawing the characters. I started with the English dub and thought the show was pretty bad. I researched and found out about KAI; as soon as I started watching it, I was addicted! I've watched the series around 20 times since then, with the Japanese being my preferred version.
Its actually kind of blurry for me; so like a lot of Americans I first ran into it through Toonami. I know I saw part of the battle with Nappa with the Ocean cast, as well as bits of Goku and Freeza (I do believe I saw the Super Saiyan transformation!), and then Cell here and there. I only started watching the broadcast consistently with Buu and Dragon Ball. I had another friend who was a bigger Dragon Ball fan than I was at the time; it was probably the mid-2000s video games that really cemented my having more than a passing interest... and now I've been DaizEX-Kanzenshuu for three years.
JulieYBM wrote:
Pannaliciour wrote:Reading all the comments and interviews, my conclusion is: nobody knows what the hell is going on.
I feel like I've answered this question a thousand times...but let's do it once more!
To keep it short-ish though, it was back in 1999/2000/2001-ish, I forget what year I was in the 5th grade. Having been a huge fan of Pokemon the same year, I was disappointed when the school began to crack down on Pokemon stuff, and also began clashing slightly with a friend of mine that said this 'DBZ' thing was better. We both made a deal to check out an episode of each others favored show. I don't know what episode of Pokemon he caught, but for me it was the Ocean version of the episode where Bulma fights crabs on Namek...hardly the 'action' I'd been told to look for. Fast forward to the summer off before heading into 6th grade, and while trying to find more to watch on TV, I ended up seeing some more DBZ, only this time it was Goku's transformation into a Super Saiyan and his ensuing battle with Freeza...and I. Was. HOOKED. Then came the Garlic Jr. stuff and I started to lose interest, but luckily I caught an ad for Freeza coming back, so I was hyped again. I was ready for another ten-plus episode extravaganza of a fight between him and Goku! But then this purple haired punk shows up...and takes Freeza down with ease because he's ALSO a Super Saiyan...but warns that people even stronger than Freeza or him are on their way...needless to say, I found this to be 'must see TV'.
And I've been hooked ever since.
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It seems like though that the general consensus so far is that people got into Dragon Ball between the period of 1997 - 2000, which is understandable considering the franchise, and anime as a whole as far as a medium, exploded in popularity that time.
I found one of the bootleg VHS tapes of DBZ subbed when I going through some old box of VHS tapes in the summer of 94 and the tape was unmarked so I thought, "Ah, what the heck? Let's see what it is." It was the first few episode , I was memorized by the mystical and fantasy like elements as well as the drama and intensity. It was unlike any other animated I had seen prior to it. I asked all sorts of people what the name of the show was, but nobody knew. Fast forward four years and through random channel surfing, I stumbled across DBZ again on Cartoon Network and I never looked back.
All BS fed to me by my older sisters as an April Fools Joke.
Last edited by Lord Beerus on Wed May 13, 2015 7:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Spoiler:
Akira Toriyama wrote:My policy is to try and forget things once they’re over. Since if I don’t discard the old and focus on what’s new, I’ll overload my brain capacity. I still haven’t lived down going, “Who the heck is Tao Pai-pai?” that one time I was talking with Ei’ichiro Oda-kun. But the fact that there are still people reading the series after all this time… All I can say is; “thank you.” Really, that’s all.
Akira Toriyama wrote:Drawing Dragon Ball again reminded me of two things--how much I love it, and how much I never want to do it again.
Kunzait_83 wrote:And if you're upset because all this new material completely invalidates the tabletop RPG rulebook-sized statistical system and flowchart for the characters' "canonical Power Levels" that you'd been working on painstakingly for the last bunch of years now... well I don't think there's a kind, non-blunt way of saying this, but that's 100% entirely your own misguided fault for buying so deeply into all this nonsensical garbage in the first place. And that you also have IMMENSELY skewed and comically backwards priorities in what you think is most important and needed to make a good Dragon Ball story.
Zephyr wrote:Goodness, they wrote idiotic drivel in a children's cartoon meant to advertise toys!? Again!? For the ninetieth episode in a row!? Somebody stop the presses! We have to voice our concern over these Super important issues!
Kamiccolo9 wrote:Fair enough, I concede. Sean Schemmel probably has some kind of hidden talent. Maybe he is an expert at Minesweeper. You're right; calling him "talentless" wasn't fair.
Michsi wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 11:29 amIn Super Piccolo got yelled off the stage by Vegeta in the U6 Tournament arc and lost to Jiminy Cricket in the ToP , he deserved 15 new transformations with his theme song played by Metallica in the background.
I don't remember exactly. I sorta got into it around Cells first appearance and when he was absorbing all the humans.
But I really got hooked around the Super Buu fights. And then the Orange Bricks came out in 2007 and I saw the series for the first time from beginning to end. I knew the story from the games (which ended up spoiling me ) but never saw Z until then.
Like a lot of people here, for me, I started watching back in 2000, I was 10. I was at a sleepover at my friends' house, and he and another friend were watching Dragon Ball Z. I remember that it was during the Cell Games... and I remember seeing Mr. Satan and Cell Juniors... so for whatever reason I thought it was some dumb wrestling show for a while, but I kept watching it and have been hooked for almost 15 years.
) but never saw Z until then.
