When You First Saw Dragon Ball/Z...

[MajinMan]

Did you know that it was a Japanese cartoon? I for one had no idea that it was until I got older. I always saw the Japanese writing and Chinese-esque atmosphere and for whatever reason never realized. I was just like "hey, that's how the show is." Note that I didn't even know what dubbing and voice acting was, I just took everything for granted.

[Hellspawn28]

I knew it was from Japan since I already seen anime before long before DBZ. My first anime was My Neighbor Totoro at three or four and I knew it came from Japan because the Japanese writing. I knew it was from Japan because I was already a big fan of Godzilla and I knew Godzilla was from Japan.

[Akyon]

Pokemon and Digimon debuted on UK TV prior to DBZ (or at least on Cartoon Network) so I'd learnt a bit about it's existence by this point. I wasn't really familiar enough with Kanji to know which part of asia it came from, but due to the Pokemon boom that was going on at that point I guessed correctly.

[Man-Child]

Nope. Watching the english dub back in '96, I had no clue Z was Japanese, as I had little to no knowledge of animes up to that point. It wasnt until a year or two later that my brother explained to me the origins of anime. He downloaded an emulated version of Hyper Dimension, and also showed me a subbed Vhs version of Broly 1. Needless to say, I was a bit shocked.

Thank goodness, though, the next generation doesn't have to deal with the levels of censorship and unfaithfulness that we had to bare with animes back in the day.

[Polyphase Avatron]

I honestly don't remember.

[McDonaldsGuy]

I did know it was Japanese, but thought the English dub was accurate (for example, Goku's dad was a scientist, the afterlife is "the next dimension," etc. etc.).

[FortuneSSJ]

No. I thought it was portuguese because of the dub jokes about our culture.

[Chronic_mcduffin]

I saw Z, in Japanese, when I was a wee bitty child.
Yeah, my father had fansub tapes. Honestly, I don't really remember it, but he told me about many times. So, I knew it was Japanese when i started watching the show again later.

I remember getting heavily into the series around the time Budokai came out. (2001?) My PS2 didn't have memory card. So, I had to start from the beginning every time I played it, but the game is so short that I could easily beat it in one sitting. (Maybe 2 or 3 hours.)

[voltlunok]

Noooooope. I honestly thought it was US made, some crazy cartoonist had developed this crazy cool show. Then again I was rather young back then.

[fadeddreams5]

I was a big fan of Sailor Moon first, and knew what anime was and that it derived from Japan. I also bought a lot of Japanese DBZ bootlegged VHS tapes when I was little.

I actually had a bit of a bias. Thought anime was superior in every way to US cartoons, and the minute I just saw anything with the anime artstyle, I loved it... even if I really didn't. xD

[B]

I never questioned where it was from. I had an inkling in the back of my head it was from somewhere "not here," but I affixed no geographical location to it.

To me, it was just this show that had a story to tell in a sea of episodic comedies. That was its defining, stand-out-from-the-crowd trait.

[BlackCatScott]

When I first seen it I had no idea it was Japanese. I didn't think anything of it. It's difficult to remember exactly what my thought process was at the time because I was only 7, but I did think it looked different to anything I had seen before.

I can't even remember when I first heard the word Anime.

[SuicidalZerg]

This is... basically going to be repeating what I've said in another thread... but the first time I saw DBZ, when I was a kid, I actually thought the show was about a bald person who grew hair and glowed when he got angry...

[Demon of Light]

Yeah, I knew it was from Japan. The kid who let me check out his manga volumes explicitly told me it was a "Japanese comic", and the two Japanese boys in my class were pretty stoked about the rest of us getting into something from their home country that they also loved.

[MCDaveG]

I could tell instantly it was Japanese, as most of the american cartoons had really sucky art and animation besides of series like Batman TAS or Thundercats, that were made by Japanese studios (with western looks tough).
Btw. my approach was pretty close to that of fadeddreams5. Western cartoons were shit and Japanese rocked. Funny thing is, that I didn't cared about Dragon Ball at first and was waiting for Digimon that ran right after when in 3rd grade.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Nope, didn't have the slightest clue that it was of Japanese origin when I was a kid. So you can imagine the bewildered face that I had when I was watching the Ocean/Pioneer dub of Movie 2 on TV, and then...

.....This starts happening.

[FoolsGil]

Yup. No matter how Westernized 4kids made Pokemon, it was obvious by their antics (giant sweat drop, blue lines when squicked, blushing cheeks) that it wasn't an American show. Didn't know what the term anime was at the time, but saw that DBZ had those same animation stylings, put two and two together.

[LordCrumb]

I knew it was from Japan since I already seen anime before long before DBZ. My first anime was My Neighbor Totoro at three or four and I knew it came from Japan because the Japanese writing. I knew it was from Japan because I was already a big fan of Godzilla and I knew Godzilla was from Japan.

Oh please, 3/4 year olds don't know what Japanese writing is.

[Hellspawn28]

I knew it was from Japan since I already seen anime before long before DBZ. My first anime was My Neighbor Totoro at three or four and I knew it came from Japan because the Japanese writing. I knew it was from Japan because I was already a big fan of Godzilla and I knew Godzilla was from Japan.

Oh please, 3/4 year olds don't know what Japanese writing is.

As a little kid I was like "It those letters are from the Godzilla movies!!!" when I saw them on screen. I knew Godzilla was from Japan as a little kid after all.

[Lord Beerus]

I had no idea at all that the show was Japanese when I first watch DBZ. I just took it as a western animated show that tried to be capture more of an oriental nature about it to make it stand out more.