Dragonball Fangirlism

Scarz · Post by **Scarz** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 10:16 pm

I have to thank Innagadadavida for this idea, after reading his thread about Fanboyism it made me think a lot about Fangirlism. Feel free to skip the story below and read the question at the bottom.

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I mostly spend a lot to time doing nerdy things with other nerdy men. During my time in high school (this was years ago btw) I noticed something really interesting about DBZ fanboys and fangirls. While arguing with the guys about who would win in fight, Vegeta or Goku if they where at the same power level, while playing a quick card game of Magic the Gathering (I know, I know, shut up). We were approached by a girl who wanted to watch us play. Of course we didn’t mind if someone wanted watch and she sat down at our table. When we started talking about DBZ again she gasped and said, “Oh my god! You like Dragonball Z too?” I realized that the question was directed at me and not at the group.

Long story short we became acquaintances. As she talked more and more about DB I realized that the conversations I had with the guys were nothing like the ones I had with her. She told me how she thought Trunks was sexy and how Bulma and Vegeta was a better couple than Goku and Chichi. Suddenly it was like a veil was removed from over my eyes, I never thought about those things before but I suddenly wanted to.

Her girlfriends introduced me to fanfiction, which I now have a love/hate relationship with, they talked about DBZ yaoi (which I honestly don’t hate, I just have don’t care for it), and they drew a bunch of pretty fanart of their favorite DBZ couples. I drew my favorite couples too except it was more R-rated fanart. I’m kidding it was actually full blown hentai. It was funny how girls who talked about BulmaxVegeta boinking for three years called me a pervert.

I loved talking to guys about DBZ stuff but the girls were so weird and cool to talk to as well. The stuff they did was so incredible girly but I indulge in it. Soon I loved talking about Goku and Chichi’s wedding night, or which DBZ character was the sexist (Kirillin is by the way), or just completely making up bullshit OC’s for Sayians to fuck. It was fun, it was girly, and I knew I couldn’t have the same conversation with the guys. Actually I could and I have but it just wasn’t the same.

Are men from planet Vegeta and women are from Namek? Not exactly, in fact both genders are pretty much settled here on Earth but there are some really big differences between both groups. Over the years I noticed that women approach the fandom a little differently then men do. Sure I like to talk/argue about Goku and Superman or if Broli vs. Vegetto, but if a topic suddenly springs up about Vegeta and Bulma's marital life you can bet your pocky that most of the women here on forum will probably dominate that thread.

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And since this is a thread is not a soundboard for my personal opinion, Here’s my question: Asking if fanboys and fangirls are different would be like asking if cats and dogs are different. Yes we can argue that they’re both animals, with fur, tails blah, blah, but they are different in a lot of ways. My real question here is if anyone would like to share there on experiences or belief about the difference between DBZ fanboys and fangirls? Or if you even noticed?

Teclo · Post by **Teclo** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 10:44 pm

I'd actually be really interested to meet a girl that like DBZ just to see how she views it, as you said yourself. Whenever I've watched anime with a girl around, it's always been like "Aw he's watching his cartoons again" in a jokey but openly anti-anime way. There were a few times I watched Naruto with an Italian girl I lived with. I honestly couldn't admit to liking it, I mean she looked like a model or an actress, so I said I was just watching it to help me learn Japanese (which was half true) which she seemed to believe since she'd seen me studying around the house and we'd compare how she learnt English to how I was learning Japanese. Anyway, she politely watched it and didn't show any particularly positive or negative response other than how she found it hilarious how "nani" means "What?" and how they seemed to scream it every 6 seconds. From then on shouting "NANI!!" at each other was a strange in-joke.

As you can probably tell from what I'm talking about, I've never actually met a girl that likes anime in general, never mind DBZ specifically. I've also never met a girl that would admit to being attracted to a cartoon character, the only opinion I've ever got from a girl on an anime character was from an ex-girlfriend who said that "He (Trunks) looks like a chav" which, to be fair, is based soundly on the fact that Trunks does indeed sport the haircut that all chavs had around that time. I realise that everything I've just said has nothing to do with fangirls at all, but it is at least to do with how girls I know have reacted to anime.

Ultimate_DB_Fan · Post by **Ultimate_DB_Fan** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 11:06 pm

All I will say is that I commend the both of you for even being able to find women with whom you were able to converse with on some level about anime. Over here in the Bronx, it's practically impossible to a very high degree to come across females who're into the stuff we are.
If you're not down with the latest "music," or don't have hoodlums for friends, you're pretty much ignored in these parts.

Scarz · Post by **Scarz** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 11:18 pm

Ultimate_DB_Fan wrote:All I will say is that I commend the both of you for even being able to find women with whom you were able to converse with on some level about anime. Over here in the Bronx, it's practically impossible to a very high degree to come across females who're into the stuff we are.
If you're not down with the latest "music," or don't have hoodlums for friends, you're pretty much ignored in these parts.

Tell me about it, I'm girl and lately it's been kind of hard trying find other women who are into DBZ as much as I am. Now it seems most fangirls are into those very shounen-ai looking animes and a bunch of other stuff I'm just not into.

Teclo wrote:I realise that everything I've just said has nothing to do with fangirls at all, but it is at least to do with how girls I know have reacted to anime.

I like it a lot when someone mentions how they got their girlfriend/boyfriend/friend into DBZ or any other anime they like or at least tried to. It reminds of the daily struggle I have to deal with at home.

saiyangerl · Post by **saiyangerl** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 11:23 pm

I was probably one of the only girls into DBZ in my high school until I got my best friend into it. So that made 2 girls in the entire school.

I have gotten my fiance into it. We watched all of DBZ and GT. He enjoys the story and watching it but he's not as into it like me. Doesn't go looking up stuff online or posting on messageboards like this.

Velasa · Post by **Velasa** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:55 am

If we're talking about individuals here and not so much places like forums? I've actually really spent very little of my fandom time talking to guys about Dragonball- outside my brothers there's been... Crem, Boch, Tonk and... that's basically it o_O I mean I know they're around but I never had any interest in talking to most of them because they usually had a shallow interest and only talked about the fighting. I honestly care very little about the fighting- I mean it's cool, but if I didn't like the characters it would mean absolutely nothing to me.

I like talking to girls mostly about Dragonball because... we talk about the characters. Not really super-fluffy "who's in love with who?" stuff, but just... deep internal stuff. I guess part of that is because the girls I talked to were primarily authors, we were focused pretty deep in their heads in the first place. The guys I've talked to about Dragonball.... have also been authors <_< except for my brothers. I think I'm sensing a pattern here. But yeah... even with everyone being authors, it was usually more fun talking to the girls. We could, ya know, fangirl about stuff like the kids and the kids' kids, the fluffier interactions of couples and just how much we adored certain green men. And I could get more squealy about the particular slashy things I saw in the show, where I tried to be a little more restrained talking to the guys (even with these being guys who had no problem with the subject, particularly Boch himself being gay).

Compare that to a place like here where most of the people are guys, and.... I have to restrain myself a lot. I have to hold back on a lot of things I'd rather be talking about, I have to regulate myself to not upset/annoy/etc too many people because I know they just aren't the majority interest and no one's interested

It may not be specifically because you're mostly guys, it could just be the big general-fandom setting as opposed to a tight community of Nameccian authors... I don't know. Either way, you guys are still great but something's just missing anymore.

Bussani · Post by **Bussani** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:25 am

You know, in most cases I notice a clear difference, but in my little group of anime fan friends, the guys and gals aren't too different at all. It's rather strange. Neither side ever really talks about the strengths of characters, but when they do, both sides join in. Both sides are complete perverts and...amusing hypocritical ("all you guys ever talk about is yuri!" "All you girls ever talk about is yaoi.")

That's in a group, anyway. One on one the girls might be more interested in discussing romance, while the guys are probably more interested in fanservice, robots and stuff. Then again, the guys also go on about stuff like this. Sooo...yeah.

caejones · Post by **caejones** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:32 am

My library of social experiences probably holds less than a 1990s standard 3½Floppy disk (and isn't near full), so I'll just... say general stuff. That's not directly DB-related, wah.

There was at least one incident in Japanese class ( I think in that "Me sitting to the side while everyone else is talking before class actually starts" time) when someone said like, "Ship" or "relationship" or something... at which point one of the two and a half girls in the class said something like "Sorry; that word always makes me think of Naruto...". I ... think this led to a shipping discussion between her and one of the other 2.5 girls in the class. And I have no idea if I was paying attention or not. Which ... for some reason is the scary part.

' Then there was the girl that came to swordfightingness in a bunnysuit regularly at one point who wound up as the girlfriend of the Computer Science jock (who somehow wound up in the CS2 class that only had three people in it for one semester...), which I mostly found out because I heard people saying "Considering the kind of anime she's into, you'd think she'd wind up with someone ten years younger than her...". I think she was 18 or 19 at the time.

But neither of those sounds anything like what Scars and Velossa talked about.

Although there was this one I'm conversation I rearry don't feel like looking up ... On second thought *Alt+s*

SSj_Rambo · Post by **SSj_Rambo** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:46 am

Never really met a girl that was into Dragonball, it's kind of a hard thing for me to picture. I know plenty of girls that are head over heals in love with anime and manga (I'm in a high school Japanese class), and I have always felt like it would be cool to be able to talk about Dragonball with people other than, well, you online people. Not to offend or turn away any of you ladies here, but honestly a Dragonball (or anime in general) fandom is really not something I look for, or desire, in a girl with relationship potential. That's just me. It would be great to one day find a girl (in person) that could give me some insights on the views you women have on Dragonball (seeing as how everything has to be a complicated-as-Hell mystery with you all!!). Don't really know what else I have to add, or how on-topic this really is, but yeah, that's what just came out of my head.

Teclo · Post by **Teclo** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:46 am

Also, just for the record, when me and the only real life friend I have who likes DBZ talk about it, we tend to mainly focus on the characters and when we do talk about the fights, it's in the context of the fighters' personality. So how Piccolo is more strategical or how Vegeta just blasts out ki without really planning ahead. When I talk to people who have only heard of the show, or maybe seen a couple of episodes in the past with me, it would actually make the show sound bad if all I mentioned was the violence. And the people I'm referring to here are all guys. Not in a "Oh no, violence is immoral" way but in a "so remind me why you'd watch a cartoon with hundreds of episodes of nothing but people punching each other?" way.

It might be roughly based on the country you're from. I remember reading that in Japan, they didn't really bother about power levels at all and were instead fairly obsessed with stating the various air dates of each episode on their websites. Of course, American sites tended to be all about power levels (often made up).

Bura · Post by **Bura** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:59 am

Haha, a lot of the first post reminds me of myself and my female friends. Yes, we do discuss mostly other things besides the fighting... I actually like the things going on outside the fights better than the fights themselves! It's fun to speculate about their "personal lives". Maybe we just view them more as persons rather than massive powers battling each other to death?

On my own forum, which seems to be crawling with girls don't ask me how- We do have a lot of topics who are pretty much more meant for girls such as;
- What if ChiChi didn't exist?
- Do you prefer Videl with long hair or short hair?
- Most handsome/pretty boy/girl
- Most romantic moment?
- What if Bulma married Yamcha?

And so on. We do discuss a lot of other topics though, but these are certainly present.

Rory · Post by **Rory** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:51 pm

My girlfriend is hot into Dragonball right now, she's well into the "Z" portion of the manga, and is loving )although she says she misses the constantly humor).
Feels good guys.

saiyangerl · Post by **saiyangerl** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:14 pm

Oh yeah to add, when my friend and I used to talk about DBZ back in the day we didn't really talk about the relationships and fanfiction and all that. We mainly talked about the plot and the characters and stuff. Although I was definitely into the other stuff as well, exploring it on the internet. I read about the whole Bulma/Vegeta thing on the internet before seeing it and was shocked! And then it fascinated me especially since Vegeta is a very interesting/complex character.

I was totally into reading fanfiction and writing it. I'd like to get back into it but right now I'm a very busy adult so I don't know when that would happen. My friend has since moved on and can't believe I got back into it. I didn't really get back into it per say, I always liked it, I was just preoccupied with life. But since DBE came out and I checked it out with my fiance for the heck of it I had to show him the real thing to show him DBE is something else entirely. And he ended up liking it.

He always asks me "So what happens next?" After finishing DBZ and DBGT we are starting DB. Let the marathon continue.

x_bulla_x · Post by **x_bulla_x** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:08 pm

Admittedly I do like talking about DB couples (Bulma/Vegeta, Lunch/Ten, and Gohan/Videl are my favorites), but I like to discuss character growth and interaction more than anything. For instance, how an event, meeting, or fight effects a character's perspective and how they might change as a result. (Ex: The destruction of F. Trunks' home, Vegeta's suicide, etc). DB leaves a lot of this up to our imagination, so it's fun to fill in the gaps. I don't mind talking about the fighting, but I prefer talking about the how the fight effected the characters. Even when I discuss "romance," the questions are mostly like:

"What was going through Vegeta's mind as he gradually changed his mind about his family?"
"What was it that F. Bulma saw in Vegeta that made her believe he wasn't a (completely) terrible person?"

From what I've seen, a lot of us like to discuss deeper aspects of the characters and their relationships(platonic or romantic) with other characters(whether it's DB or any other series), even if the manga never actually goes that deep. Again, filling in the gaps.

I also like to discuss other aspects of the series that Toriyama doesn't go into detail about like:

"What is the Demon Relm like and what do it's inhabitants look like?"
"Are there gods in the DB world that have more control and power than the kaioshin? Who decides all of this stuff?"

But maybe that's just me.

Big Momma · Post by **Big Momma** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:12 pm

Scars...the fact that I just found out you were a girl completely shattered by entire universe.

Scarz · Post by **Scarz** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 1:23 am

Big Momma wrote:Scars...the fact that I just found out you were a girl completely shattered by entire universe.

I seem to be doing that a lot around here.

Conan the SSJ · Post by **Conan the SSJ** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:59 am

Scarz is a woman!? Err, yeah, topic! And yeah, posting again.

Sebastian (SB) · Post by **Sebastian (SB)** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 4:52 pm

I've never met a girl with mutual Dragon Ball interest beyond someone I know that like Sean's Goku voice. Said person move on to a lot of the other anime titles popular with female crowd. Death Note, Code Geass, NANA, Vampire Knight, Kuroshitsuji, etc., Aside from that, I've never met any girl with similar tastes as mines. If they happen to like anime, it's never the titles that I watch.

And yeah, Scarz shattered my Freeza Burns impression. Yeah, I'm one of those people that associate forum members with their avatar.

Sunlight & City Night · Post by **Sunlight & City Night** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 8:04 pm

Conan the SSJ wrote:Scarz is a woman!? Err, yeah, topic! And yeah, posting again.

:O Crazy! I always assumed Scarz was a guy too.

I've lurked around Daizex since 2002 but I never really had the guts to post here until recent years.
Before I came here I didn't know any women (besides Meri. (I found Temple O' Trunks first!) liked Dragonball.
I practically live in the woods anyway so I'm not an authority on females.

Well now I know why I relate to Son Goku so much...I guess.

Anyway the more girls that love Dragonball the better!

goku the krump dancer · Post by **goku the krump dancer** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 7:26 am

Conan the SSJ wrote:Scarz is a woman!? Err, yeah, topic! And yeah, posting again.

Breath taking

.......I never thought I'd talk with a female that likes DBZ as much as me.