Your Dragon Ball Origin

[DBZfan29]

I'm applying to colleges, and as part of one of my applications, I had to create a video essay about one of my interests. I chose to tell the story of how I became interested in the Japanese language, and of course, that was because of Dragon Ball!

http://youtu.be/AzGsBUBNYnc

"Ora: A Retrospective" is about an older me in Japan and how everything reminds me of how I got there. Budokai was responsible for my love of the series. I knew about it before I played the game, but I never payed it much attention. Then one day I was bored and fought Raditz and something changed. I was hooked!

So, what is your "origin" story?

[TrunksTrevelyan0064]

In the Netherlands, DBZ appeared on Cartoon Network around the year 2000. I didn't pay much attention to it at first, didn't really care for it, until my cousin suggested I give it a chance. When I did, it was right around the time when Goku went Super for the first time, and holy moly that battle against Freeza. Yes, it lasted for ages, but it felt so epic and awesome. Remember I was about 11 years old, so I wasn't thinking about how ridiculous everything was, I just went along on a great ride. The whole time limit, knowing that the planet was about to frickin' explode and Goku had to somehow defeat this super powerful Freeza guy and get the hell outta there within five minutes - and then him seemingly not making it. It was just super exciting. Then hearing Porunga say that Goku was actually still alive out there, making us wonder what the hell he was doing and where he was ... and then Freeza comes BACK, but ANOTHER Super Saiyan shows up and instantly blows him to shreds, only to tell us that there's more baddies on the way who will KILL EVERYONE and are infinitely more powerful than the frickin' most powerful alien in the universe.

Yeah, that's how I got into it. Crazy times! Good times!

[Ringworm128]

Christmas 08 my brother let me borrow seasons 1-4 of DBZ and gave me a copy of DBZ Super Sonic Warriors 2. The rest is history. Though before that I had watched a couple of the movies when I was 8 and I had watched a few episodes on Cheese TV when I was really little but I was that young I could barely remember them.

[Gyt Kaliba]

I feel like I've told this story a million times over the years, so I'll try to keep this one fairly brief without waxing nostalgic about where it's all lead me.

I got into Pokemon in about the 5th grade, and around the 6th it was already falling out of popularity, at least in my age group. I still clung onto it though, and eventually I got into an argument with a friend of mine about which was better - Pokemon or Dragon Ball Z. I hadn't seen DBZ yet, despite having Cartoon Network, so we made a sort of deal - we would both check out the opposite show and see if it impressed us enough to change our opinions. As fate would have it, the episode of DBZ that was on when I checked it out...was the Bulma and the crabs on Namek one. Hardly the action-packed show I'd been told about. So I figured I'd won the argument, but he still disagreed, and we just kind of moved on (we were still friends, I mean we just moved on from the argument).

During one of the school breaks though, I couldn't find anything on TV to watch. I didn't get Kid's WB so Pokemon was out other than the few tapes I had. I ended up happening across DBZ again and for some reason or another, I gave it another shot. This time, I saw Goku's transformation into a Super Saiyan, and how badly he was smacking Freeza around. Now THIS had me hooked. I watched the rest of the fight play out, with pretty much no idea who anyone was other than when they made obvious statements about it (like Gohan calling Goku his dad), but I loved every minute of it.

After that came the Garlic Jr. saga though, and it lacked a lot of what I'd liked in the Freeza fight, so I was prepared to move on...until I saw the teaser for the next new episode. With Freeza coming back. I eagerly anticipated another amazing Super Saiyan Goku V.S. Freeza fight (I grew up on TMNT, returning villains seemed par for the course), but then some punk kid with purple hair showed up. And then he proceeded to slice and dice Freeza. And then he talks about how two Androids are coming that even he can't beat.

Needless to say, I had to see how that would play out, so I was hooked in good, and have been a fan ever since. This was all when the Trunks material was first starting to play on Toonami, so roughly...2000-ish? 2001 maybe?

[Kaboom]

I'd been playing video games and watching cartoons all my life. Then Pokémon back in the 90's was a combination of the two, and single-handedly responsible for getting me interested in anime, or at least recognizing the differences between it and 'normal" western cartoons. In the late 90's and into the new millennium, I was also passively aware of Dragon Ball Z on TV, and knew a few of its characters, but wasn't all that interested.

Then, one day in 2002, it happened. Toonami aired DBZ episode 230... er, 245, an episode with a short and simple English title: "Super Saiyan 3?!" The main character, Goku, pulled out this crazy transformation that shook the entire Earth and could even be felt all the way off on what seemed like an entire other planet. It gave him crazy long hair in exchange for taking his eyebrows, he had a funky and intense aura filled with lightning bolts, and he proceeded to knock around the story's current goofy-looking bad guy like it weren't no thang.

I was finally "hooked." My family also just happened to upgrade to high-speed cable internet either right around that time or very soon after, so before long I was diving headfirst into the fandom, doing research, watching video clips, and learning everything I possibly could about Dragon Ball. A few years later, I discovered and joined Daizenshuu EX. The rest is history.

[Michelle91]

My dad got me a VHS copy of the first Dragon Ball back in 1997. My dad got it for my birthday and was like "The video store owner said that this cartoon is popular in Japan. You like stuff from Japan like Godzilla afterall". I watch it as a kid and I didn't like it because I found it to be so strange.

Then in 1998, I was waiting for Beast Wars to come on Toonami and I saw the episode of Goku getting wish back. I had no idea what it was and I change the channel to watch Angry Beavers instead. In 1999, DBZ was the show that everyone was talking about and I was like "DBZ? Is that the same as normal DB?". So I check out a episode of Piccolo fighting Freeza that day and I didn't like it. For a while, I hated DBZ because it was so popular at the time and no one would talk about anything else. Then around 2000, I stay up to check out the midnight run and I saw the episode of Gohan vs. Cell. It was uncut and I love it! A year later, my new best friend Ryan got me into DBZ and help me catch up. I was so crazy about DBZ that I started to track down bootlegs of the show in Japanese and the movies because I wanted to see more.

[TheMightyOzaru]

My first ever experience was with the Ocean dub of The World's Strongest when I was like 3 years old. I didn't like it. I was later reintroduced to DBZ through Toonami when I was a about 6 or 7 when Freeza saga was going. I got hooked when I first saw Goku turn into a SSJ. Nothing had ever been that badass in my 6-7 year old mind . I've been a fan ever since and I don't regret it . My first experience with the original Japanese version of the show was when my parents were unable to buy me the 9 orange bricks for Christmas so they settled on getting me the complete series in Japanese. I was upset at first because I was a dubbie and though Goku sounded stupid, but as I sat there and watched it in all it's glory, I realized the Japanese way was the right way.

[Kakarot88]

All my friends in middle school were hooked on it and having never seen it I was like "man that show's lame," one day I got bored and tried it out...It was the episode where Freeza tells Piccolo he has 2 more transformations! I was then like "Ohh mah gurrrr this shurrrr is uuurrrmazing!!!" I then decided I had to watch it from the beginning and so set up my VCR and waited till Raditz showed up and binged on the rest!!

I promptly borrowed my friend's manga and read scanlations, saw fan subs I WAS HOOKED and I have LOVED it ever since!