Your fondest memories related to DB?

[Boo Machine]

1. Going into the first grade and seeing this kid with a binder that had Kid gohan on it. This was the first time I had seen a cartoon that looked like this and it had my attention all day and I just wanted to know where it was from.

2. Sitting in front of the tv rewinding the episode where Goku and vegeta had their famous beam clash. I could not stop watching it. My mother had to tell me to go do something else because she was tired of hearing "KAMEHAMEHA!, GALICK GUN FIRE!"

3. Finding the VHS of the androids appearing when the Freeza fight was still happening on tv. I didn't know what Super saiyan was called at this point so I just called it Golden hair mode. So when I went to walmart and found this VHS tape with a golden haired vegeta (whom I thought was dead) on the back of the tape cover, I lost my mind. "VEGETA HAS GOLD HAIR! HOW!!??" I begged my dad for this tape. And it was so cool seeing what would eventually be shown on tv. This was also my introduction to trunks. I didn't know who he was but the trailer funimation put together for him got me so excited.

4. Watching Gohan Destroy Cell with my dad. At first my dad only saw the show with me just because he wanted to spend time with me. But This moment is what sealed it for him to become a legit fan of the franchise who still watches it on toonami to this day. His favorite character is Vegeta but Gohans beam struggle with Cell is his favorite moment.

5. Getting my first ever Dragon Ball z game. "DragonBall z Budokai. The first one for the Playstation 2. To todays standards its not great but back then a DBZ game is all I ever wanted and I finally had it. I'm unsure if there were othera that came out in america before this one, but Budokai is the first one I got.

6. Picking up the much anticipated Broly movie and planning to watch it on my own only for half the neighborhood kids to show up and watch it with me. We had all wanted to see this movie and it was just a fun experience. I think there were 11 of us stuffed into my room.

7. Waiting for the Ressurection of F movie. Not the actual movie, just the hype. Me and my friends would were drinking one night and that happened to be the day The trailer reveling Freezas golden form came out. We all saw it then before we knew it we spent the whole night talking Dragonball. How hype we were for the movie, what we loved about the whole franchise. It was nice because even though they like the shows, they aren't as super into it as I am, so I can't always bring it up without seeming annoying. So I just don't. But in this moment we were all on the same page. Freeza was coming back and we couldn't wait.

[HourglassIndigo]

1.) Watching Dragon Ball Kai for the first time on nicktoons. (it was the vegeta fight)
2.) Seeing Goku go super Saiyan for the first time and begging my mom to wait for the episode to end before we went grocery shopping.
3.)Watching awful quality episodes of Dragon Ball on Youtube up to the red ribbion army.
4.) Piccolo Daimao being killed by Goku
5.)Seeing Goten for the first time (he's my favorite character)

[Hellspawn28]

It feels so weird that people are already feeling nostalgic for Kai and Kai was only a few years ago on American TV. Still cool that Kai did introduced younger fans into the series though.

[Shi_Neko13]

This is a cool topic and it is interesting to read the responses, lots of young folk here aren't there? I'm 31 and have toooons of fond memories of Dragonball.

1. Turning on the WB (remember that??) one Saturday morning in 1996 and seeing this green guy with one arm with electricity building in his fingertips and thinking "holy crap, what is this???" I was instantly hooked, every week I looked forward to seeing the next episode. I remember saying to my younger brother after the episode where Goku finally arrives to fight the Saiyans that Goku's easily gonna beat Nappa and then Vegeta is going down no problem! haha, had no clue that Vegeta would get such a huge role in the series at that point.

2. I was the only kid in middleschool/high school who wore Dragonball Z t-shirts, I had bought all of the Irwin versions of the Bandai action figures around this time too, took so long to collect when you only got $2 allowance every week.

3. Waiting with so much excitement to see the newly dubbed season when DBZ went to Toonami and Funi finished the Frieza saga (I watched those same episodes over and over just hoping they'd eventually show the next one and when I'd see Raditz's ship it was "Aw geez, again????") and was laughing so hard when I heard the new voice actors attempts to mimic the old cast's voices. But there was blood! finally, blood! and the voices did get better during the Android saga and the whole production in general.

4. Recording every episode when it aired on Toonami on my VCR and pausing the tape during the commercial breaks.

5. Getting DBZ Legends and Ultimate Battle 22 for Christmas in 1999, my Dad had to order it off an import site advertised in the back of Electronic Gaming Monthly and the games required this weird hack attachment and spring for the Playstation in order to play it since it was an international game.

6. finally getting to see Dragonball for the first time when Funi got the rights to it and I was seriously surprised at how much I enjoyed it, since I mainly liked all the crazy fighting in DBZ, but the Piccolo Junior saga is so awesome, it feels like early DBZ but before things got super weird, haha.

Really, there's too many to mention. Dragonball changed my life, I was addicted all throughout middle school and high school and I drew the characters in my school notebooks instead of paying attention (I still have these drawing notebooks and I can tell what saga was airing on TV at the time by who I was drawing, my 10th grade notebooks are full of Androids and Cell, 11th grade is all Fat Buu and Saiyaman stuff, and 12th Grade SSJ3 Goku). I had stopped paying much interest in DBZ or anime after I graduated and the show ended on Toonami since I was busy doing the whole parties, girlfriends, and rock band thing. But in 2009 I started buying the VIZBig editions of the Manga and read them for the first time and couldn't believe it took me that long to finally read it.
then of course came that crazy news about Battle of Gods and Resurrection F and now Super so I've been drawn back in! I honestly never believed there'd be more dragonball stories since in the late 90's and early 2000's Toriyama was so adamant about staying away from it, but the Gods have been generous haven't they?

[Hellspawn28]

I always loved AMV's and I still remember downloading AMVs on the web before Youtube was even a thing. I remember a lot of them look like they where ripped from a VHS and I also remember VegettoEX made several AMV's. I remember on the old days of Daizenshuu EX, you could download videos and there was one for Trigun with a song from Simple Plan.

[Bagginses]

Dragon Box release of DBZ in USA, in 2006 i bought DB The Movies, and tried to save money for Dragon Box DBZ, i never imagined Funimation would release DBOX, i was so happy, now, if only they released original Dragon Ball

Not trying to nitpick or anything, but Dragon Box: The Movies never got released in the USA as far as I know. Back in 2006, people had to IMPORT it from Amazon Japan (admin VegettoEX himself has a feature piece on the site that documents his entire pre-ordering process and everything ). Point is, it never got a 'domestic' release, as you Americans like to call it.

[Android 50]

My earliest memory of DBZ was late 99 watching it on toonami after some kids at school were talking about it and telling me to go watch DBZ. My first exposure of it was Super Saiyan Goku vs Frieza toward the end of it so of course when Goku reverts back to base and his hairstyle and color changes you can imagine my surprise. lol After watching that fight I became obsessed with DBZ. I started browsing the internet around this time looking for everything related to DBZ and even knew a few things the kids at school didn't know because they didn't go to fansites yet. I spent summer 2000 watching DBZ in order from the reruns, getting myself really familiar with the series before the new season started in the fall. I don't know why or how but I just KNEW they were going to have a new saga come Sept and they did with the Android and Cell sagas to my delight.

A kid at school brought a japanese dbz mag to school that showed the character designs of goten and kid trunks, I thought goku and trunks turned into kids. I found out about GT over the course of the next year. I think it was early 2001 from browsing fansites. When I looked up GT stuff on the internet I thought Goten either turned into a manlet or became a kid again. I also found out about the movies from a fansite. I drooled over the VHS screenshots taken especially of movies 8 and 12. lol I was impatiently awaiting the next new saga to air in 01' which felt like it took longer than usual and had even LESS eps airing than the android/cell saga did. I was bummed. They even repeated a filler Other World Tournament ep twice(the weakest one, goku vs the water guy). By this point I'd have been spoiled on a lot of dbz by kids at school or the internet. I already knew about SS3 goku and gotenks, gohan's mystic/ultimate form and majin buu.

But that didn't stop me from wondering HOW all of this happened and anticipating toonami to hurry the fuck up and reach those eps. They finally did in late 2002 and boy was it worth the wait. I was hooked again when my interest was slipping but wait...they go on another break after the Vegetto fight and doesn't resume the remainder of the series until may 2003. By this point I was losing interest in DBZ sadly due to Funi constantly stopping the show in the middle of a saga for about 3 years now. I was fed up so I barely remember being THAT invested into the Kid Buu portion of the series like I was with Freeza, the androids, Cell or hell even Super Buu. The point is you don't try the patients of a 14 year old. lol

I always wanted to play Final Bout and the famicom games but didn't get to play Final Bout until it was licensed here and I remember playing one of the famicom games on an emulator in middle school on the school computer. When the budokai games rolled out my interest in DBZ was sparked again. Thinking I was done with the series with how Toonami and Funi dragged out the Buu saga I was hooked again and started scrounging the internet again for info, pictures and AMVs.

1) Playing entirely too much Super Butouden 2, 3, and Hyper Dimension on SNES circa '94/'95/'96 with my then-closest friend (who was also a big Dragon Ball fan). DBZ Legends and Shin Butouden on Sega Saturn were also favorites of ours.

To this day I can still play all those games damn near blindfolded.

2) The above-mentioned friend's older brother was the person who had introduced the two of us to anime in general (by taking us to see Akira at the local art house theater), and Dragon Ball specifically shortly after as well. He was my main source for fansub tapes for a good number of years in the early 90s, and I met a ton of very cool, fascinating people through him at the time.

In my earliest period finding out about DB, I'd read about it in Newsgroup threads, would see it pop up in a few video game and anime magazine articles, but largely I'd hear quite a bit about it via this friend's older brother and his friends' conversations about it, who had all been following it for a little while at that point. It had already been built up quite a bit for me before I'd end up seeing my first episode of the anime (pretty sure it was 142: Piccolo facing down 1st Form Cell after fusing with Kami, or at least right around that point) by somewhere around the tail-end of '92: it certainly didn't disappoint.

To an 8 year old with an MTV-fried brain in '92/'93, seeing raw DBZ for the very first time while it was still fresh was almost like looking at an 80s Ching Siu-Tung movie filtered through a more testosterone-laden Aeon Flux: making it basically one of the all-time coolest things I'd seen in anime up to that point. Granted not quite as cool as something like Fist of the North Star, Manie Manie Labyrinth Tales, Wicked City, or Golgo 13, but still up there.

Also an early favorite: episode 146. Largely filler, but REALLY well directed, atmospheric, and beautifully animated filler. Made Kuririn instantly into a favorite character (I've always been predisposed to the Shaolin, Wudang, or Taoist monk characters in wuxia, and I loved Kuririn's underdog charm: a pint-sized anime Gordon Liu) and the overall episode dripped the horror-atmosphere on mighty thick.

Flesh-devouring giant insect monster versus wulin monk at an airfield, capped off with a wonderful little Twilight Zone: The Movie shout out: yep, I was completely and totally “in” on this one right from the getgo.

And of course, y'know, Trunks special. Kinda self-explanatory there.

3) This had to be around mid-late '94 or so, but I was at a dorm room get together of the above-mentioned group of friends' of my friends' older brother (who were all in college at that point), and we had a pretty rowdy and fun viewing of the big Goku vs Majin Vegeta rematch in the Boo arc. It got... pretty loud. Lots of "Oh shit!"s and "God DAAAAAAAMN!!!"s and such. Pretty sure Movie 8 also ended up getting viewed in there at some point (that particular movie was largely inescapable at that point).

4) The aforementioned then-close friend (same with the older brother) was a pretty huge pen & paper RPG nut. We used to play a ton of them (largely Shadowrun, Heroes Unlimited, Cyberpunk 2020, Vampire: The Masquerade, and some heavily modified D&D: a few other more obscure comics and anime based ones as well) with him, or sometimes his brother, mainly DMing. At one point though, he tried his hand at making his very own pen & paper game from scratch with his own ruleset and scenarios. A few of us, including me, pitched in a few ideas, but it was largely his baby. Again, this had to be around '94/'95 or thereabouts, probably 5th grade.

The idea was we'd wanted to do a wuxia/supernatural martial arts-based RPG, since there wasn't much like that available at the time (at least in English) and stuff like horror, cyberpunk, superheroes and the like were already well covered. We only ended up playing through one scenario with it, but it was pretty wacky and out there. A ton of characters from a bunch of other wuxia and wuxia-themed stuff we were into at the time got used, including Dragon Ball. Pretty sure this, combined with our seeing DBZ episode 214 way earlier, lead to our long-standing Piccolo vs Kaioshin debate/rivalry (I was firmly team-Kaioshin, he was a staunch Piccolo fanboy from the getgo).

5) The speculation and “where the fuck is this all going now?” atmosphere surrounding the early Boo arc (especially circa the 25th Budokai and initial attack on Babidi's spaceship) is also always a huge point of fondness when looking back at ye olden days of fandom. So many batshit theories, so many utterly wrong predictions: like others, I was so convinced that Dabura was gonna be a major player throughout the entire arc. Or that Vegeta, after becoming Majin-ized, was ultimately gonna wind up one of the key villains that ended the storyline, bringing him back full circle to how he started the series. Or that Kaioshin would at least get ONE more genuinely awesome fight after getting his ass whipped by Fat Boo.

Also gotta love how many people utterly lost their shit (in a good way mind you) the first time Kuririn was revealed to have grown his hair out. And that he and 18 wound up having a daughter.

Good times.

6) First seeing my sextet of all time favorite DB/Z movies and specials sometime in early-ish '94 maybe I think (possibly late-'93 even): DB movies 2 and 3, DBZ movies 1, 2, and 3, and the Bardock special. Each of those were mind-blowers in their own various ways. DBZ Movie 1 and Bardock are neck and neck tied for my all time favorite singular animated Dragon Ball works.

I've long held that if I had to pin down one single, self-contained thing to introduce Dragon Ball to someone who'd somehow never experienced any of it before, the ultimate taste tester for it, something that perfectly distills everything that is its raw essence down to bite-sized form, as if to say “Here it is: is this something you think you'd want to sit through over 500 some-odd episodes and more than a dozen other animated movies of?” then DBZ Movie 1 would undoubtedly be it.

And the Bardock special is just masterfully executed, no matter one's thoughts on the rest of DB/Z. My non-video game introduction to Freeza: instantly iconic from Nakao's very first droll utterance of “Ooooooh?”

These movies got so. Many. Rewatches, just in that first year alone, its a wonder how I didn't immediately demolish the tapes from wear.

6) Also around '94 was when I took a trip to New York to a black market basement sale of imported, foreign, un-licensed nerd paraphernalia from all over the world. It was a literal basement sale as it was held in an actual basement of this huge, huge church. A LOT of anime, Toku, and other assorted Japanese stuff was there natch, and in terms of Dragon Ball it was a veritable goldmine of DBZ fansub tapes, raw manga tankobon, and imported merch.

I was mainly there for the tapes and the manga: I really struck paydirt by nabbing a tape with episodes 77 through 83 of the Freeza arc, episodes which were NOT at all easy to come by back then. I was never really into toys or anything like that, so when it came to general merch I've always been pretty spartan. But even so, I did also end up snagging this poster...



...along with this wall scroll...



...both of which hung on my wall for the rest of middle school, and the former poster surviving even though most of high school (the latter wall scroll sadly ended up getting lost in a move: I'd only end up replacing it much, much later).

7) Finally getting ahold of and backtracking through original Dragon Ball, also around maybe mid to late-ish '94 I think?

The 23rd Budokai stuff in particular blew some minds at the increasingly large gathered viewings those tapes spurred on (even some friends who weren't much into anime at all couldn't help but get sucked in): pretty sure it was a combination of the 23rd Budokai eps mixed with those earlier-mentioned Freeza arc eps (which covered the entirety of Piccolo's fight with 2nd and 3rd form Freeza) that made my earlier-mentioned close friend into such a die-hard Piccolo fanboy. Not that I could hardly blame him: Piccolo fucking ruled mightily.

Me on the other hand, as much as I too was loving Piccolo, I was even more magnetized towards Tenshinhan. Everything about the 22nd Budokai was like mainlining pure, distilled Wuxia awesomeness in animated form, and his confrontation with Tao Pai Pai and rematch with Goku in the 23rd? This shit was everything great about the Hong Kong filmscape of the time cranked up to a hundred and change.

And Daimao of course, in all his egg-barfing glory, was just a boatload of fun. And Goku's filler training journey and the Mutaito/Daimao flashback episode were all basically like watching Zu Warriors: The Anime. Again, I was in my glory with this shit.

8 ) Combing the internet endlessly throughout '93/'94/'95 for anything and everything I could find on the episode/story arc gaps in my viewing: the Saiya-jin and Freeza arcs mainly. What happened, which characters did I not see before or know anything about yet, etc. Out of all of Dragon Ball, those were the arcs that had the longest-held degree of “mystique” surrounding them: both because of how elusive to find they were at that point (as opposed to original DB and all the then-current Cell stuff, which was what everyone was presently obsessing over) and for how much BADLY needed context they provided for the characters in the then-ongoing Cell arc (Vegeta and Gohan especially).

Finally seeing those eps (first scattershot across a few tapes I was able to scrounge up, then finally in their entirety on IC in '96/'97) didn't disappoint in the slightest. Both Vegeta vs Zarbon fights remain, to date, some of my favorite brutal, vicious maulings in the series, and the episode where the three Namekian warriors take on Freeza's henchmen before getting slaughtered by Dodoria is among my single favorite episodes in the entire anime.

Also gotta love the tense aerial chase between Dodoria and Gohan/Kuririn/Dende. And oh the many, many things I can say about my endless love for the Ginyu Tokusentai (and the COUNTLESS inside-jokes that they inspired among my friends at the time). And Vegeta's escape from Freeza's ship.

The early/mid Freeza arc is just a bottomless treasure trove of excellence. The whole damn Saiya-jin arc ain't no slouch either: Rocketman always used to sing the praises more than anyone else around here about how great the final battle against Vegeta is. He ain't wrong at all.

9) First time ever seeing DBZ Movie 12 a short while after it hit video.

11 Year Old Kunzait: “...did Gotenks just Kamikaze Ghost an undead Hitler and the Nazi army? And why are gigantic jellybeans now suddenly a key part of Hell's décor? The FUCK am I watching?”

Even among the people who were completely and utterly on total DBZ burnout by mid-'ish 95, few things were as unifying as the then-collective anime fandom's palpable love for Rebirth of Fusion. Nobody could front on that one: that shit was FAR too lovably weird and loopy to hate.

DBZ Movie 13 also got a ton of love (especially from Kaiju fanatics). So, soooo many early AMVs came out of this movie.

10) Doom Z. Yep, you read that right: Doom Z. Yes, that Doom. Some wonderful, lovely individual out there sometime circa 1995 or so made a DBZ-themed Total Conversion for Doom. Complete with voice samples from the anime and/or other DBZ video game sources.

All the weapons are replaced by either standard Ki attacks or characters' various signature techniques. And yes, the Kienzan is indeed the stand-in for the chainsaw. Enemies take on the form of all kinds of villains from the series, including the various Zombie-fied space marines being subbed out for Saibaimen and Cell Juniors, down to the Cacodemon being replaced by a hover-chair riding, Death Ball-slinging Freeza. Stimpacks and other health items are made into various kinds of senzu beans. The armor powerups look like Saiya-jin/Freeza army armor.

Etc. and so on and so forth.

Steve Simmons helped really disseminate this thing on his original Dragon Ball website back in the day. We're talking Doom and Dragon Ball here: two of my biggest 90s obsessions ever coming together into one, horribly mismatched amalgamized mutant abomination. You'd better believe I gobbled this thing up like a smack addict at the time.

Its certainly far from the best-made Doom Total Conversion that anyone's ever cooked up, and I wouldn't really recommend using it with any modern source ports that aren't Chocolate Doom (otherwise the seams REALLY show): but its still definitely worth a playthrough, especially if you're a hardcore classic Doom fanatic like I am.

11) As much of an overall letdown as it ultimately was, I'll cop to being pretty damned excited for the initial build up for GT throughout early '96. Of all the people at the time who were totally burnt out on, spent, and done with Dragon Ball by that point, I sure as hell wasn't among them and was totally game and willing to take the plunge on the Toriyama-less experiment.

As much as I could, did, and have ripped deeply into its many, many faults, the basic ideas and concepts running throughout so much of GT were really creative and interesting. On paper its SUCH a cool final capper to the main preceding series. In actual practice though...

Its one of the all-time examples of “I love the idea of this more than the actual end result of the thing itself”. And even still, every so often it'd manage to rise to the occasion here or there and live up to its promise. The final episode thankfully being chief among those instances.

12) Among a number of Japan-only games and curios I'd drooled over in game magazines for years and years throughout the 90s were the three DBZ arcade titles. All of them looked immensely interesting (though who was to say at the time, unplayed, if they'd actually be any good or not, since DBZ games were universally as hit and miss as they were experimental and immediately attention-grabbing), but I was lucky in that the very best of three, the 2nd one Super Battle, was imported by one of our local arcades in the late-90s. Playing that on an actual cabinet was an absolute delight, and the game remains easily one of my all time favorite DBZ games.

(Sidenote: I've recently become a hopeless Fightcade addict, and among the very, very many more arcade games that I strongly feel deserve to be added to their selection, DBZ Super Battle is certainly among them).

13) As lousy as the general atmosphere was during the DBZ dub's earlier years on CN at the tail-end of the 90s and early-most 00s, that was right around when I was also going to high school and Dragon Ball weirdly was a major factor that helped bring together me and all my closest friends (little suspecting they'd end up being my lifelong family for years and years and years right on up to this very day).

All of them were first exposed via the dub, but most had already very quickly converted to the Japanese version on their own before we'd even started hanging out: and the couple who hadn't didn't take very long once they started hanging around me since I still had all my old fansubs and raws at that point, along with the IC airings which were still going on.


Anyways, that's all that's coming to mind for the time being. That '92 through '97-ish period was easily the very best of it on a pure fandom level (obvious reasons: it was all still freshly coming out, and the entire fanbase hadn't yet cracked, splintered, and divided like a bi-polar Namekian just yet), but all the same, for as much annoying shit came out of '98/'99 through 2002/03-ish or so, credit where due I can never, ever fully hate on something that's created the kind of enduring friendships I wound up getting out of those particular years.

This doofy, doofy fucking kung fu series man. What the hell?

This is a really, really fucking cool way to experience DB and DBZ. I only wished I were born a little earlier or knew someone who could have exposed me to DBZ in the early 90s while it was airing. I 'd have a very different opinion on things and maybe might not have had to suffer 2 and a half years waiting for the buu saga to finish.

[coola]

Dragon Box release of DBZ in USA, in 2006 i bought DB The Movies, and tried to save money for Dragon Box DBZ, i never imagined Funimation would release DBOX, i was so happy, now, if only they released original Dragon Ball

Not trying to nitpick or anything, but Dragon Box: The Movies never got released in the USA as far as I know. Back in 2006, people had to IMPORT it from Amazon Japan (admin VegettoEX himself has a feature piece on the site that documents his entire pre-ordering process and everything ). Point is, it never got a 'domestic' release, as you Americans like to call it.

Sorry, i meant to say, i bought JPN DBOX The Movies, and start save money for JPN DBOX Z, and then Funimation released it

[Bagginses]

Dragon Box release of DBZ in USA, in 2006 i bought DB The Movies, and tried to save money for Dragon Box DBZ, i never imagined Funimation would release DBOX, i was so happy, now, if only they released original Dragon Ball

Not trying to nitpick or anything, but Dragon Box: The Movies never got released in the USA as far as I know. Back in 2006, people had to IMPORT it from Amazon Japan (admin VegettoEX himself has a feature piece on the site that documents his entire pre-ordering process and everything ). Point is, it never got a 'domestic' release, as you Americans like to call it.

Sorry, i meant to say, i bought JPN DBOX The Movies, and start save money for JPN DBOX Z, and then Funimation released it

Oh ok, that's better now.