How did you get into Dragon Ball?

[super michael]

I am curious to see how people got into Dragon Ball and became a fan of Dragon Ball.

In my case I guess when I was flicking through the channels and I saw Dragon Ball Z by chance, it was during the Saiyan Saga I saw it. What got me into Dragon Ball Z was Goku vs Vegeta fight and since then I have always been a fan. I saw the Namek Saga, Android Saga, Cell saga and Buu Saga.
Afterwards I saw Dragon Ball GT which I enjoyed, however thanks to GT that is how I found out Dragon Ball Z wasn't the first series, it was actually Dragon Ball when Goku was a kid. I enjoyed Dragon Ball just as much as DBZ and more than GT.

I never got bored of rewatching Dragon Ball and Z or reading the manga.

[Shinsa]

Ditto,

My experience is similar however when I was a kid in the 90s my first taste was of the original dragonball when it aired for a very short time on TV.

The one with this intro lol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqcdFywCRks

After that my brother and I randomly rented the Arrival VHS because we noticed Goku and the Dragonball title. While we really loved those episodes and wanted to see more, it wasn't possible since there weren't any other VHS tapes nor was the show airing on TV at the time for us.

It was not until when the Saiyan Saga aired on TV was when we fully got into DBZ. Then the downward spiral began with all things DB lol.

[Planetnamek]

Like most people in the 90s it was catching Z on Toonami, took me a while longer to get around to original DB and GT though.

[MasenkoHA]

I caught episodes here and there as far back as the Saiyan saga on Toonami so circa late 98 early 99 but I didn’t get hooked until the Goku vs Freeza fight. I mean when you’re 7 how many other kids cartoons had characters bleeding? (even if it was censored down from the uncut version)

And also aside from Yugioh and Pokemon (which were always way more about the trading cards than the shows themselves) DBZ was the big show to watch around 4th/5th grade

Dragon Ball well of course I watched it but for some reason I didnt get as interested until much later. I stand by the fact that Toonami promoting it as Dragon Ball Z Babies did it no favors. I don’t think I even saw past the Chaotzu vs Krillin fight for some reason. I might not of had cable for a while circa 2003 (I also ended up missing out on the Kid Buu saga)

I never bothered watching GT when it was on Toonami and only bothered with it much later


Ironically it was a mixture of the abridged series and Kao that got me back into Dragon Ball even though neither holds up much for me anymore

[MrSatan2099]

Although I had seen ads for it in syndication on my local Fox affiliate while I was watching Beast Wars, I didn't really sit down and watch any of it until Fall of 98 on Toonami. First thing I ever saw was the lead up to the Goku vs Nappa fight so you can imagine I was pretty confused. I followed for a few episodes but didn't really get deep into the series until the next Spring when I dropped in on the middle of the Namek saga. We were staying with my grandmother for a few days during a move, and I distinctly remember catching the episode about Bulma and the giant crab while I was watching Toonami Midnight Run in her den. Been hooked ever since.

[Dbzfan94]

Cartoon Network was the only channel I watched as a kid, and one day I turned it on and the Toonami block was running. I had known about DB when i was real little (like 1998/1999) but didnt get into it until like 2002 when they were airing Buu Saga. So i watched it and was hooked ever since.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Cartoon network, late 90s, like most of you.

[MasenkoHA]

As far as people in the US are concerned I assume

Early 80s babies- Japanese bootleg tapes
Late 80s babies- Syndication
90s babies- Cartoon Network
2000s babies- Kai on Nicktoon or Toonzai

Obviously there’s gonna be some overlap (someone born in the 80s may have first saw the show on Toonami or someone born in the 90s might have seen it when it was syndicated) but this seems the general rule of thumb.

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

My earliest memories of Dragon Ball was watching two imported VHS of DBZ movies, featuring Cooler, at a relatives house. I remember liking the fights a lot, I think I was something like 7 or 8 years old (?). Sometime later I caugh the show in a public channel that was doing re-runs and I was "that guy is from those movies" and that's how I went into Dragon Ball.

[Shinsa]

As far as people in the US are concerned I assume

Early 80s babies- Japanese bootleg tapes
Late 80s babies- Syndication
90s babies- Cartoon Network
2000s babies- Kai on Nicktoon or Toonzai

Obviously there’s gonna be some overlap (someone born in the 80s may have first saw the show on Toonami or someone born in the 90s might have seen it when it was syndicated) but this seems the general rule of thumb.

Yup thats me, born in the late 80s but watched it on cable during the 90s. There will be a lot of overlap because this stuff wasn't easy to get back in the day unlike now.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The first stuff i really saw Dragon Ball wise was when repeats of Ocean dubbed Z was airing sometime in '99 up to when Season 3 started airing weekdays on Toonami soon after, although i didn't really start watching the show heavily until sometime midway into the next year around the time that the Androids/Cell arc was in first run. Then of course over the next couple of years afterwards i gradually saw it much more as Z continued it's initial run then the original DB series and GT after as my first cousin was also into the series at the time and watching quite heavily as well. Ever since then my being into the series has gone in cycles, as for a few years from between the time the Ultimate Uncut redubs of the Saiyan and early Namek episodes ran on CN and Kai coming out here my interest waned though it was really the latter which reignited it in mid 2010 and i've more or less been consistently back in since.

At the time, it was Pokemon and Dragon Ball that were my two two favorite shows to watch and of course both were huge here at the time so no surprise.

[90sDBZ]

Cartoon Network UK in the year 2000 for me. 21 years later and I still haven't got sick of it.

[ABED]

I lived in Japan in the early 90s so I heard about DB and saw a little bit of it without understanding ti. Cut to 96 and some young woman is calling out for Gohan. I knew it was Dragon Ball and have been a fan ever since.

[Alruneia]

I'm a bit of a "newer" fan, I guess. I actually first got introduced to the show through a friend showing me DBZ Abridged (which hadn't gotten all that far at the time). From there, I decided to watch the actual show itself, which makes me part of a (probably) relatively small set of Kanzenshuu users whose first "proper" experience with Dragon Ball was through Dragon Ball Kai. The Kai dub hadn't gotten further than Namek, though, so I did have to switch to Z. (That was an odd transition, by the way.) After that, I watched the non-Z Dragon Ball. Then I made an attempt at watching GT, which didn't go so great. I left the whole thing behind for a while after that, but Battle of Gods really brought me back in, and that's when I became a more "hardcore" Dragon Ball fan.

[TheGreatness25]

I somehow caught it right on the first or second episode of dubbed Z. It was early on a weekend and my brother was going through the channels and left it on. This was when it was in syndication. Might've even been back-to-back episodes (so the first and second episode).

Didn't watch it regularly, just here and there. I know at one point it was at 6:00am on Sundays and they'd even air Tree of Might as three episodes.

Then, it came to Toonami and explored into this thing and the rest is history. I saw VHS tapes of the first 13 episodes of Dragon Ball (along with three movies) and had to get them from Suncoast. So, I felt pretty cool having seen some of Dragon Ball... being the only one to have seen Dragon Ball out of anyone I knew.

It's weird to think that the giant, peak moments for me that I base my entire love of the series on, is mostly from like 1998-2003. Such a short period of time, but I guess when you're a kid, five years seems like a lifetime.

By the time they were airing GT, I kind of grew out of it. I had no interest in watching GT. Then, it was in and out for me. I wanted to own it on DVD, so I had a small collection that I stopped really cultivating. But in 2005, when they did Ultimate Uncut, I watched it out of curiosity and it was pretty cool. In 2007, I can't across the first orange brick in Virgin (Times Square) and bought it. Started collecting those, then realized they kinda sucked, so I got the singles, then Dragon Boxes, then like everything else that came out.

It's been a weird journey.

[precita]

It was on Cartoon Network.

[Hellspawn28]

Unlike most people, I didn't like Dragon Ball when I first saw it. I may saw images and clips of Dragon Ball before I knew what it was before from Japanese collector shops. The first time when I actually knew what Dragon Ball was back in 1997 when my Dad got two VHS copies of Dragon Ball for my birthday. They were these VHS tapes:





When I was 6, I thought Dragon Ball was pretty boring compare to the anime that I was watching on Sci-Fi. My two sisters (They were 4 and 2 at the time) did like it though. Sometime in 1998, I was waiting for Beast Wars to come on TV and I stumble upon the episode where Goku was being wished back to life. I had no idea what I was watching and I end up turning off the TV. I believe this was the syndication run of DBZ because I was still living at my old house in Columbia, MD before we moved out after July 1998 and DBZ didn't air on CN until August 1998. When I was in the second grade, I remember DBZ blew up and everyone was talking about it. I didn't bother to watch it until 1999 when I watched the episode when Piccolo was fighting Freeza. I remember hating it and I was like "This is so stupid. Why do people like this?". Even as an 8-year-old back in 1999, I can tell that the dub was awful. I was already watching other anime at the time, so I didn't see the point of watching anime on Toonami (I still watched it for some anime like Ronin Warriors).

From 1999-2000, I avoid anything related to Dragon Ball because I thought it was stupid and annoying. It was not until early 2001 when I was bored late at night and I decided to check out the Toonami Midnight Run. When I was a kid, I used to stay up late and did channel surfing to watch whatever I can find on late-night TV. I remember watching the episode where Goku teleported Cell to North Kai's Planet and I was now interested in Dragon Ball. The next day, I used the Internet at home to discover more about Dragon Ball and the first fan website that I went to was DBZ Uncensored. It did me want to check out the uncut episodes of DBZ in Japanese, but I had no idea how to. I was in the tape trading community, but I was mostly watching live-action movies from Japan and Hong Kong at the time.

When I move out of Ellicott City, MD during the summer of 2001, I moved to a new house in another part of Maryland and one of my neighbors was super into Dragon Ball. We became best friends and one of his friends had DBZ Legends on the PS1. This was my first time hearing Goku's voice in Japanese and it didn't bother me. When I started the 5th grade back in late August 2001, one person in the 5th grade had Japanese episodes of DBZ on VHS and he would start playground rumors of the series. He would tell people that DBZ in Japanese is a show for grown-ups and DBZ on Cartoon Network is the baby's version. After school, we sneak inside the TV room (It was a place where the school keeps all of their TVs) and watched uncut episodes of DBZ in Japanese. This was my first time watching Dragon Ball Z in Japanese and it was DBZ Episode 29 (Goku vs. Nappa). I would later buy a VHS fan sub-copy of DBZ Movie 8 and it felt amazing to watch something before it was dubbed.

Later that year in 2001, I found out that one of my cousins had DBZ stuff that he had before the series was dubbed. He had every episode of the Cell saga and Buu saga in Japanese with fansubs along with DBZ Movie 6, DBZ Movie 7, and DBZ Movie 12. I was also able to watch GT on fansubs tapes thanks to a friend of mine and a local Japanese collector's shop. I do admit that it felt cool that I was way head of everyone else when it came to Dragon Ball. The rest is history and I'm still a big fan of Dragon Ball. I never grew out of it or move on from it as I did with many other childhood franchises.

So that's my story.

[Cure Dragon 255]

Your story is freaking amazing! To come from hating Dragon Ball to loving it is a freaking amazing thing.

I have a much simpler story. Watching DB on Magic Kids in Paraguay when it premiered in 1997.

[Yosheets]

I am curious to see how people got into Dragon Ball and became a fan of Dragon Ball.

In my case I guess when I was flicking through the channels and I saw Dragon Ball Z by chance, it was during the Saiyan Saga I saw it. What got me into Dragon Ball Z was Goku vs Vegeta fight and since then I have always been a fan. I saw the Namek Saga, Android Saga, Cell saga and Buu Saga.
Afterwards I saw Dragon Ball GT which I enjoyed, however thanks to GT that is how I found out Dragon Ball Z wasn't the first series, it was actually Dragon Ball when Goku was a kid. I enjoyed Dragon Ball just as much as DBZ and more than GT.

I never got bored of rewatching Dragon Ball and Z or reading the manga.

By posting on the Neoseeker Dragon Ball forum in 2009. That's also where I met you.

[pepd]

Saw it on TV on early elementary school with my brother and cousin, I vaguely remember the Great Saiyaman episodes and talking about Friiza. Some years later me and my brother bought pirate CDs of all the series and watched it. We played BT3 a lot. In high-school I read the manga for first time.