What Does Dragon Ball Mean to You?

[DerekPadula]

Hey everybody. I searched for this question elsewhere on the forum and could not find it, so I'm asking it here.

What does Dragon Ball mean to you?

This is an open ended question and whatever answer you provide is perfectly legitimate. You can even alter the question and ask, "Is Dragon Ball meaningful?" or reply with the statement, "It's just a cartoon show." Anything goes.

I asked the same question on The Dao of Dragon Ball Blog, so you can go there to see other people's responses, but be sure to reply here in the forum, not on the blog.

Maybe it means nothing, maybe it means everything, or perhaps somewhere in between. What do you think?

[InfernalVegito]

I associate some good old child and preadolescent memories with it. You know watching it with friends and stuff.
It just reminds me of a time when I didn't have to worry about reallife aspects like money and jobs all by myself.
And furthermore it opened me to all sorts of anime. Dragonball kinda took my virginity in that sense and that's why I love it no matter what.

[Perfect]

I'm pretty sure I learned a lot of lessons from it. Goku was probably my inspiration as a kid to always stay in shape and exercise. I guess that still comes into play. More or less, I could probably write a decent essay on what I've gained from the series and how it's themes worked genuinely. Eventually after seeing it so much, I really stopped looking at the hatred in the world and saw the good in people. There were also a few other things, like life's not always fair so don't let that cause you into a spiraling life of misery and woe.

[EnmaDaiou]

A great work.
I don't think it's the best anime/manga I ever see.
But it's probably the must influent anime/manga for me.

I first came to japan in december of 1986.
I was 9.
There was dragonball everywhere. Tv, outdoors, toys, machines...
I saw a db movie in cinema at this time.
Don't remember anything about the story.
But I remember I was surrounded by db stuff...

Long time after that, db would be one of the first manga to be published in brazil.
So, it was the first manga I collected.
Before that I bought just usa comics(marvel).

So, I don't think db is "all" or "perfect".
Far away from that.
But it was very important for me to be introduced in the world of anime and manga.
And the japanese culture.

Even that db is not my favourite manga/anime, I created db site in portuguese.
Because it's very difficult, almost impossible, to find good and trustable information of db in brazillian portuguese.
People here always says db wiki is terrible.
Portuguese db wiki is even worse.

Sorry about my english.
I don't know if I was clear in what I wanted to say.

[DerekPadula]

I don't know if I was clear in what I wanted to say.

Very clear. Thank you. And to everyone as well.

I would love to hear from other people too, especially the people at Daizex, Kanzentai and the forum regulars. It has evidently played a role in peoples lives, whether small or large.

[Ahiru77]

Then: Childhood.
Watching together with my brother and sister, everyday at 5:10. Good times.

Now: After my favorite anime got ruined, I kind of loathed anime for a while.
Then Dragon Ball Z came back and saved the day. ....sort of.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

What a question to ask, huh? I guess Dragon Ball has a very special meaning to me. You see, Dragon Ball is the only series that I still like and enjoy to this very day. I got into Anime in general around three years ago, but I've liked Dragon Ball ever since I was a little kid. It certainly hasn't changed my life in a big way, but the fact that I haven't lost interest in it after all these years, shows that it really can have a lasting impression on you. Not many series can do that to someone.

[SuperSaiyan3Goku]

Seeing Dragon Ball on TV, playing the games, hell even reading the Beckett Magazines have done so much for me.

Well, it led me to Daizenshuu EX, one of the best damn Dragon Ball sites on the 'net. And, which such a great community here on the forum, and the chatroom, this place is great! If not for Dragon Ball, I would never of found out of Anime coming from Japan, I shudder to think of how much money I've spent on DVDs, Manga, Video Games.

Who knew that such a small series would blow up to be such a success?

[Keamy]

It played as a good interest during childhood, and it was worth being teased for liking it too.
Loved it growing up but eh...it just went downhill for me after the Cell arc personally.
Still love it to this day, but nothing beats being a little kid rushing home after to school to see how the battle with Freeza pans out and how everyone gets off of Namek. Fillers/long dragged out sequences or not that was the SHIT when you were like 7 years old and dying to know what happened next.

[Bura]

It played a major role in most of my life. I wake up with it and go to sleep with it. I think about it and all my activities I do throughout the day is because of DragonBall. Even my profession. And when I was going through puberty and was having a hard time at school and such, DragonBall was there for me! I've been a fan for 11 years and still going strong. I think it will always have a special place in my heart.

[Codarik]

It means a lot to me. Anytime I am in a bad mood I watch Dragon Ball, it makes me feel better.

[Suupaa Gohan 2]

If you want to get technical, my first Anime was Pokemon. But I don't count that, because when I was watching Pokemon, I was watching Pokemon. It would be several years before I learned or cared that it was Japanese (though when I found out, suddenly all those giant heads and tear drops on the sides of peoples' heads made much more sense). I watched it because I got the video game for Christmas the year it came out, and came under its spell like so many children around the world. Watching the cartoon was just a logical extension of that...I liked Pokemon because I liked, well, Pokemon. If I knew nothing about the video game, it would have just been a strange show that probably would not have grabbed me.

Dragonball grabbed me.

TL;DR - Dragonball is nostalgia, it's the series that got me interested in this whole Anime thing to begin with, and that makes it hold a very important and special place in my heart. There you go, now you don't have to read the following example of me getting lost in memories...

I remember the first day I saw it...[hint, nostalgic wall of text coming]. I was probably in 7th grade or so, and one day we dropped by my grandfather's house, which has been like a second home since I was born anyways. My mom and my aunt were chatting, I had been picked up on the way after school, and I remember sitting down with my backpack still on in the second living room...what channels do you check to see if there's anything on when your grandfather's house doesn't have the same fancy satellite dish technology you have at home? Why, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, of course!! Mind you, if we were at my house at this time, my parents would likely be watching the news or something - so I wasn't terribly familiar with what Cartoon Network aired at this hour. Meaning this was my first exposure to Toonami as a whole...and I was still only tenuously familiar with Japanese cartoons (by this point I realized Pokemon was in fact Japanese).

What kills me the most is that it feels like it was destined to happen. The first episode I caught was either the first or second episode (I forget what with how the episodes were smushed together in the Saban era, but Radditz was kidnapping Gohan and demanding bodies from Gokou when I turned on the TV). I figured, logically, the reason I had no idea who these characters were and their relationships was because I was jumping into the series halfway through (which turned out to be humorously half true and half false ), but for some reason I was already hooked...I wanted to know why the green guy wanted to kill the guy with spiky hair, and more importantly, if they could get the spiky haired guy's son back from the crazier spiky haired guy!! I'm pretty sure I managed to see the rest of that episode and part/most of the one that came on immediately after it, before we had to head home. I took note of the time and decided to try tuning into the show at home the next day, and before I knew it I became obsessed and started watching it every day.

Like a lot of the fans in my generation, I got into the dub first. The internet was still pretty 'new' at the time (to me at least), but I was allowed I think a half hour to go on every day after school...and also, we had something called 'SWAP' (School Wide Activity Program) for the last hour and a half period of the day back in middle school, so I eventually joined Computer SWAP and got to use the lab at school to go online as well. These were the days I discovered and spent most of my computer time on sites like Daizenshuu EX (I don't think it was still called Vegetto EX's Homepage at that time, but it was still pretty young), Planet Namek, and of course DBZ Uncensored...which educated me as to the Japanese version of the show...I still watched the dub on CN, and I do believe I came into the fandom right around the time Season 3 came out (I don't remember the endless loop on CN that a lot of fans mention; I just remember one day tuning in and suddenly all the voices changed), but I began hunting for fansubs every SWAP period (I think SWAP was every other day), which were pretty hard to find because back in my day we didn't have streaming video sites like YouTube, like you young whipper-snappers do. I think the furthest back episode I was able to find on the site I got them from was Vegeta vs. Zarbon (the second time)...and I also remember a good chunk of the Cell Saga was missing, so up until like 3 years ago I had never seen/read the entire portion from after Piccolo and Kami-sama merge until the beginning of the Cell Game...'USSJ' confused me so much as a result that I always mentally ignored it in my Super Saiyajin hierarchy.

It went on like that for years, living it up as a 15-year old DB fan back in the good ol' days...'learning' mediocre Japanese that I wouldn't get right for another several years, always printing out DB pics and taping them to my notebooks, drawing horrible fanart in my agenda, spending 2 hours on dial-up illegally downloading one Dragonball song at a time...ah, man. Good times. Eventually, by which I mean like my Junior year of high school, I discovered the English-language Shounen Jump...I had already been getting into a few more Anime thanks to Toonami and Adult Swim (anyone else remember when Yuu Yuu Hakusho was briefly on AS? No? Aww...), and just started getting into non-DB Manga series' (and realizing that I vastly prefer Manga to Anime as a medium), so I had to subscribe...and getting into that many more new series', I felt myself moving on. Growing out of Dragonball, if you will. It made me sad...I loved all these new series', and they all felt so much more deep and mature (because love it or not, you can't deny the characters and plots in DB are pretty cardboard), but I didn't like the idea of 'outgrowing' DB anymore than I did Pokemon (which in those days you had to keep secret that you still liked or you'd be teased - finally, now that all us Pokeyman kids have grown up, we can embrace our forbidden love for the franchise once more), so I invented 'Dragonball Remembrance Week' to sorta force myself back into the fandom every year, and make sure I never forgot what got me here in the first place.

I'd never have become an Anime and Manga fan without Dragonball. That has been such a huge part of my life since middle school that I can't imagine where I'd be without it; my friends would be different, my hobbies would be different, I probably never would have taken up drawing human beings without that Anime influence, and just...man. It played a huge role in shaping who I was during those years, and every lost teenager needs something to do that (novel series', comic books, whatever). For most of the Anime fan friends in my generation, that 'something' was Yu-Gi-Oh!. For me, it was Dragonball. It was my first series, the one that got me into everything else. It's something I look back on with a mix of both embarrassment and pride. It's something that compels me sometimes to reply to those asinine, misinformed YouTube comments, even though I know I shouldn't bother. It's one of the few things that I can legitimately feel pretty authoritative on (that and Umineko), and that makes me feel good, being able to say 'wow, I probably know more about this cartoon than most people know about their significant others'. And then, after a moment of feeling good about that, I'll curl up in the corner and cry at my incredible nerddom. But then I'll get over that and come back to Dragonball with a smile on my face, knowing that no matter how much I grow up, it'll still be there to remind me of where I started, and bring back that immature teenager inside of me.

Dragonball is nostalgia. Okay sure, I guess I could say Pokemon is older nostalgia, but it's nostalgia of a different sort. I was 10 when I got into Pokemon. I was a little more mature when I got into DB, and it appealed to that 'mature' side of me who thought it was OMG SO COOL to be watching a cartoon with blood and excessive swearing (curse you, old fansubs). Pokemon was a kid's obsession that remains one of those 'for kids of all ages' guilty pleasures, but DB stuck with me on a different level. Pokemon, like the creatures in it, has evolved and changed over time, but Dragonball has and always will be the same Dragonball. It's something I know inside and out, and while that makes it easy and desirable to ignore it and its stale plotpoints and one-dimensional characters 11 months out of the year, there's always that one point where I find myself sliding back into it, smiling, and looking back on almost a decade of fandom.

[DerekPadula]

Thanks, Suupaa Gohan 2. All of these posts have been helpful, but yours was exactly the type I am looking for. A deep and meaningful trip down memory lane. It will definitely inspire my writing.

The funny thing is that your sharing was very relatable to my own experiences. There was a lot of head nodding while I read along.

And I'm also on the lookout for people in the opposite camp. The ones who think it's just a silly martial arts epic in cartoon form.

[Minigt]

Dragonball is like having an alcoholic Uncle. You love to watch him, occassionally laugh and he is always going to be part of your life, no matter what.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

And I'm also on the lookout for people in the opposite camp. The ones who think it's just a silly martial arts epic in cartoon form.

Don't get me wrong, I do think that it's a silly martial arts epic. But as I said in my post, it's a damn good one.

[Bardo117]

People who post here obviously LOVE Dragonball or they'd be in some other random show's forum.


To me, Dragonball is a great part of my childhood. One of the most nostalgic shows in my memory.