...some random DBZ Books I've never heard of on Amazon?

[Takuy]

I've never seen or heard of these, but from the cover of some...they don't look too pleasing. Anyone heard of them or have any info?


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/157243 ... B0034P2JL6


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/031297 ... B0034P2JL6


http://www.amazon.com/Dragonball-Songok ... t_ep_dpt_5


http://www.amazon.com/Dragonball-Comple ... 67&sr=1-29


http://www.amazon.com/Dragonball-Z-Anim ... 893&sr=1-1

[Kiyza]

I know for a fact that the first two are terrible unofficial guides that have been looked into on the site. Needless to say, they're absolutely terrible.

[VegettoEX]

Anything Pojo is laughable. It's from the cash-in era of American fandom almost a decade ago.

The second is the unofficial guide written by the mother-and-son duo. I just opened to a random page (I swear to fucking deity-of-choice, I opened at random), and here is what's written on it:

"Lunch is a funny character in the original Dragon Ball show. I like her because she has brown hair except when she sneezes. Then her hair become blond and she turns psycho and starts killing people. If she sneezes again, then she becomes brown-haired good Lunch again. So there are good Lunches and bad Lunches, just like in the real world."
- School cafeteria worker

Sorry -- I just accidentally made the book seem worthwhile. My apologies. We haven't reviewed that one on the podcast, but we reviewed this one back on Episode #0128 of the podcast. Almost as bad, but not quite.

Third is DragonBall Z: Son Goku Densetsu, one of the TV guide books that came out back in 2003. This is good.

Fourth is DragonBall: Tenka-ichi Densetsu, one of the TV guide books that came out back in 2004 (NOTE: remember that the Dragon Boxes were released out-of-order over there, too, with DBZ coming before DB). This is good.

Fifth is... err... I dunno? Some crappy pen-and-paper game book thing...?

[Herms]

Fifth is... err... I dunno? Some crappy pen-and-paper game book thing...?

That would, I think, be the unofficial pen-and-paper RPG which first used "Bas-jin" as a name for Gurd's race, and which Desire has spent a considerable chunk of his life trying to make an improved version of.

[Perfect]

I wouldn't touch the first two with a 70 yard pole.

[Takuy]

Edit: Nevermind, it was already addressed.

[Budogenkai]

"Lunch is a funny character in the original Dragon Ball show. I like her because she has brown hair except when she sneezes. Then her hair become blond and she turns psycho and starts killing people. If she sneezes again, then she becomes brown-haired good Lunch again. So there are good Lunches and bad Lunches, just like in the real world."
- School cafeteria worker

Oh my god, why did this make me laugh so hard?

[Big Momma]

http://www.amazon.com/Dragonball-Comple ... 67&sr=1-29

I wouldn't mind getting this.

[Akira]

I have all of these except for the Mother & Son or whatever it is book. The Blue and Orange books are in all Japanese, but are very cool nonetheless. The Pojo guide was neat for its day in seeing a bunch of characters that hadn't appeared on television yet, but it is, as others have mentioned, entirely stupid and full of fan-myth error information from that era. The last one is some pen & paper RPG book. I had a couple of classmates in college who were into those kinds of games, and tried to get me into them by getting that Dragonball one for me. I flipped through it once, realized it was a ridiculous waste of time and shelved it somewhere. No idea where it is now, I've moved once since then, but I'm pretty sure I still have it lying around somewhere.

[DBZGokuSaiyan]

Oh, the days of Pojo... I remember being a member on their forums years back; fun times.

And that Lunch "biography" was just filled with all sorts of cheese.

I really miss those magazines that Beckett put out in the early '00s; now those were awesome.

[Goku100xKamehameha]

http://www.amazon.com/Dragonball-Comple ... 67&sr=1-29

I wouldn't mind getting this.

Me too

[Kingdom Heartless]

I read the second one years ago.... probably close to a decade. I don't remember much about it. What I do remember was not good.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

I read the second one years ago.... probably close to a decade. I don't remember much about it. What I do remember was not good.

I'd personally like to buy it just to see how much random shit is in it.

[Ahiru77]

"Lunch is a funny character in the original Dragon Ball show. I like her because she has brown hair except when she sneezes. Then her hair become blond and she turns psycho and starts killing people. If she sneezes again, then she becomes brown-haired good Lunch again. So there are good Lunches and bad Lunches, just like in the real world."
- School cafeteria worker

Oh my god, why did this make me laugh so hard?

Me too.

The third one looks pretty cool to me.

[Goku100xKamehameha]

The third one looks pretty cool to me.

Because it's an official guide book from Japan....

[Tanooki Kuribo]

Funny story about that Pojo book. I bought it on Amazon about a year ago for about 89 cents. I figured yea, it's gonna be bad but that should make it funny right? I thought I'd scan a few pages, make a topic about it, say something funny here and there, and we'd all have a good laugh.

I got it and it was actually so bad that it wasn't funny. You know the expression "(something) is so (something) it's not even funny"? Well, that's what happened with this book. It was just really, really bad.

[desirecampbell]

Fifth is... err... I dunno? Some crappy pen-and-paper game book thing...?

That would, I think, be the unofficial pen-and-paper RPG which first used "Bas-jin" as a name for Gurd's race, and which Desire has spent a considerable chunk of his life trying to make an improved version of.

It is indeed. It had such promise, but it's based on 'Fuzion' (no relation to Dragon Ball 'fusion') which is based on 'Champions'. It's nearly incomprehensible. It's a broken version of a broken version of a broken RPG. </rpg nerd>

I've been trying to make something respectable out of it since 2001, but there's only so much you can do to such a terrible system.

When DB Online was announced I hesitated to continue working on it, and with everything that I've heard coming out of that I just sort of gave up on it (well, I let the domain expire - I still have all the work). I hope to never have to look at it again

[The Tori-bot]

Mike, I've been onto you to do a review of that mother-and-son book for years now. At least do it before 2012 rolls around and we all burn, so I can at least die contentedly.

[gallagtor]

I actually own the Anime Adventure Game book, as well as the second volume that covers the Namek and Freeza arcs. I think there might be a third volume, or at least there were plans for a third volume at one point. The book actually licensed by Funimation according to the back cover. It mostly has traced drawings and screencaps from the anime, but there are a few original drawings like diagrams of the inside of the various spaceships, Karin's tower, etc. There's also a map of "Dragon Ball Earth" which I have no idea if it's accurate or not. Every few pages there's an "in translation" blurb that gives a little insight into that mysterious Japanese version of the show that is often completely inaccurate. For example:

"Called "cultivars" in the Viz translation of the original Dragon Ball Z manga, the term Pcan (sic) also be translated as "cyberman", or using the already established vegetable naming pattern of the Saiyans, be another pun on the word Yasai (i.e: vegetable men)"

If anyone is interested, I can try to dig out my old scanner and provide some pictures.