Knowing whether Dragon Ball was Japanese or not.

[Insertclevername]

When I was a young, Dragon Ball obsessed kid, I caught on pretty quickly that the franchise was from Japan. However, I see some remarks every now and then stating that there are a lot of fans who think Dragon Ball (more often Z) is an American produced series that aired first in the States during whatever period they first watched it in (either the 1996 run or the Toonami era). Do these people actually exist? Were you once one of these people?

[eledoremassis02]

I remember thinking it was an American show then I learned it was made in Japan. It looked different from other Anime I saw so I assumed it was American haha

[Flame Dragon]

I didn't know it was Japanese, but i didn't care either.
I just wanted to watch the hell out of it. It was so much better than all the other cartoons airing at the time!
Except for Lupin and Pokemon, those were pretty cool too.

[RocktheDragon]

I didn't know it was Japanese, but i didn't care either.
I just wanted to watch the hell out of it. It was so much better than all the other cartoons airing at the time!
Except for Lupin and Pokemon, those were pretty cool too.

Sort of this for me too as a child. I didn't care where the darn thing was from I just wanted to watch as many episodes as I could get my eyes on. I did understand that it was from Japan though since a lot of my brother's friends were Japanese and would bring over their Japanese consoles and games to play with us. Probably the only reason I even knew it was Japanese and would not have known if not for that exposure to that set of friends.

[FortuneSSJ]

When I was a kid. I was innocent enough to think it was portuguese.
Not only because it was dubbed in our language but because our dub makes jokes about Portugal Culture. xD

So when I would get the VHS and saw the movies preview, I didn't understand why they aren't talking portuguese.

[RandomGuy96]

I didn't really know or care what country any animated show was from when I was a kid.

[Bussani]

I was already a big animation fan before I saw/read Dragon Ball for the first time, and I had one or two books specifically about Japanese animation, so I knew of Dragon Ball and its origins before my first real experience with it. I remember when I first saw a video of Dragon Ball Z, I was reminded of Pocky & Rocky for some reason, so I probably would have guessed it was Japanese even if I hadn't known...but there were several other Japanese shows I watched as a kid that I had no idea about until much later.

[Pantalones]

By the time I first heard of DBZ, I was already familiar with Sailor Moon and found out somewhere that it was originally Japanese (I can't remember how or where exactly, it's probably been nearly 20 years at this point!... but I'm guessing I figured it out when I found pictures/information about characters who hadn't shown up yet along with logos in Japanese. XD) Some of my earliest exposures to DBZ fans were those who used Japanese names for the Androids of all characters (oddly, considering that their Japanese names are basically just "#17" and "#18" in Japanese...), and by that time Pokémon had already come out over here (and of course everyone who bothered to look into things knew that was originally from Japan, too) so I was pretty familiar with the concept of a Japanese show being translated and brought over.

By the time I actually got into DBZ at all (around the time the Androids/early Cell saga were showing on Carton Network in the afternoons, and Buu hadn't come out in English at all), it would've been hard to assume that it was an American series originally, since years ago I had already heard about characters (sometimes with different, more-Japanese-sounding names) who were only just then appearing on American TV for the first time.

[TheGmGoken]

My friend thinks it's Chinese cause he thinks the author of Journey of The West made it. I always knew it was from Japan as...I had bootleg tapes. I know and seen many on YouTube (who even made videos bout it) who thinks Funimation made it. Most causal fans I know thinks it's Us made but based on Anime.

[B]

I recall stumbling onto GT on the International Channel(can't recall if the dub was there yet) seeing Goku's penis in the OP, and being very uncomfortable. I became less prude over time. I didn't have an opinion on Nozawa as Goku or Minaguchi as Pan; I was kind of hung up on seeing animated peen.

Learning that this show, or anime in general, came from Japan couldn't have been less of an experience for me. It's just a fact I learned one day. To use another series as an example, for the longest time I was only familiar with Digimon through its dub, and then we had the four year gap between Frontier and Savers. As soon as Savers came out, I couldn't have cared less that it would be my first time seeing any portion of the show in Japanese; I just wanted more Digimon.

[Codarik]

Like many others here, I first saw it as a kid. At the time I just saw it as a different kind of cartoon. But with FUNi's scripts with references to American culture didn't help.

[DarkPrince_92]

Didn't know until I got my first DBZ DVD (Movie 10). It had a Japanese track option... I was lost.

[Gokuden]

When I saw the Golden Harvest logo before each episode, I thought it was Chinese. And to be honest, Goku practices kung fu, and has sashes.

I couldn't tell the difference before in terms of the sashes, I just thought it was Chinese.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I thought it was an American cartoon for the longest time.

When I was a kid, I was vaguely aware of what dubs were, but since I so commonly saw them associated with Asian movies as a punchline for how off the lip-syncing was for early English dubs, as a kid I thought all dubs had horrific lip-syncing. If the lip-syncing was good, that was enough to erase any suspicion in my mind that it was a dub. I was easily fooled. Well, and...to FUNimation's credit, one of the few things that their dub was excellent at from the get-go was fitting the lip flaps.

This led to a number of misconceptions that are, in hindsight, rather humorous:

-I thought, when blood started showing up in DBZ's Toonami afternoon run, that the creators just decided to start adding blood for the hell of it, and I remember being turned off by it because I thought, "that's so unnecessary, why did they have to do that just to appeal to older kids, it was just fine without blood."
-I remember being confused as hell when FUNimation switched to their in-house dub.
-I cringed at a lot of the lines in "Season 3," but there was no anger factor because I wasn't aware that any changes were made. I didn't like a lot of the dialogue, but just because I thought it was corny. When I found out that it was corny and changed, then I understood the anger factor.

[Hellspawn28]

I knew DBZ was from Japan given it's from art style. I was a anime fan before I became a DBZ fan and I love Japanese culture since I was a little kid because of my love for Godzilla.

[penguintruth]

I can't really recall exactly how I "figured it out".

I mean, I was watching DBZ on the same programming block as Ronin Warriors (Yoroiden Samurai Troopers) and since they had a somewhat similar aesthetic and it was obvious RW was Japanese, I think I just assumed.

But actually, I liked Ronin Warriors much more than DBZ when I first started watching. I had been a Power Rangers fan years before and this felt like a natural extension, five color-coded teens with weird outfits, their own special weapons, who fought mooks and demon generals. DBZ was just... too bizarre to me for a while. It was like nothing I ever saw and it kind of weirded me out. Especially since, when I started watching, they were already on Namek, and it looked like over muscled midgets were fighting transforming monsters on an alien golf course.

I even thought the name "Dragon Ball Z" was "Dragon BallZ" with the "Z" instead of an "S" to make it plural, because it was that late nineties EXTREEEEEEME attitude that had seeped into so much media.

It wasn't that I disliked it, but I felt detached from it until I could watch a bit more of the beginning.

This was before it was on Toonami, by the way.

[DBZ Mick]

I knew DBZ was from Japan given it's from art style. I was a anime fan before I became a DBZ fan and I love Japanese culture since I was a little kid because of my love for Godzilla.

I think I did too- through the art style and story telling. I loved Japanese culture and food in school and I had seen some anime such as Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Digimon prior to seeing Dragonball as well as being interested in Evangelion.

[sangofe]

When I was a young, Dragon Ball obsessed kid, I caught on pretty quickly that the franchise was from Japan. However, I see some remarks every now and then stating that there are a lot of fans who think Dragon Ball (more often Z) is an American produced series that aired first in the States during whatever period they first watched it in (either the 1996 run or the Toonami era). Do these people actually exist? Were you once one of these people?

I used to think Dragonball was french during the early 90's, before I hopped onto the internet around 1994...

[UltimateHammerBro]

To be fair, I don't recall not knowing.
However, many people in Spain think it's Chinese. Why? Because the word "Chinese" is used in slang for "everyone who has Asian-like eyes". Japanese, Vietnamitese, Mongolian... all of them are called "Chinese" (you know, I'm talking about older and uneducated people).

[TheRed259]

I thought that it was Chinese.