Anyone see the BLT dub during its initial broadcast?

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Just came across this while browsing through Youtube.

It's the OP and ED to the BLT dub, as it aired on the 9th of September 1995 on WUHF, virtual channel 31, a Fox-affiliated station in Rochester, New York, owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group from Hunt Valley, Maryland.

It's nice to see recordings like this are out there. They're no doubt nostalgic to many and a piece of Dragon Ball history more generally.

For anyone who lived in the US, or even Canada (who also aired it on YTV) in the mid 90s did you see Funimation's first dub of episodes 1-13 of original Dragon Ball? What was it like discovering the show at such unusual timeslots? Was it your first anime experience? Were you disappointed it was cut so short only for a full 140 episodes to be skipped when the series returned? Did you see the Harmony Gold dub first and feel pleasantly surprised this show returned? Did you ever feel not having that cast for the full 153 episodes of the series was a missed opportunity?

Any other memories or thoughts on this initial airing are also welcome.

[VegettoEX]

I came in with DBZ in 1996, so I juuuuuust missed the original DB broadcast in 1995. That said, the DB broadcast actually kept re-airing into the fall 1996 season (yes, alongside DBZ!), and the tapes were widely available, so it still felt very contemporary to me at the time. It was definitely disappointing to not have the ability to see the series in full, but I was able to get up to speed on the situation from fansites and newsgroups and magazines.

The timeslots of the day were wildly different from region to region and channel to channel. I moved around a lot, so over that span of 1996-1998 of the DBZ syndication broadcast, I probably checked it out at like three or four different timeslots. My local season two broadcast was later in the morning on Sundays, I think from 9 to 10, so it was extremely reasonable. (My season one memories are of setting the VCR to record and checking it out later...! )

My wife got into it with the 1995 DB broadcast, and she's definitely talked on the podcast from time to time about how wild it was to learn that the Goku in DBZ was that same Goku from DB all grown up with his own family, but then it was the same experience as me with meeting other anime fans, learning things online, reading magazines, etc. to piece it all together.

It's not necessarily something I wish on other people, because the fact that they can just... watch the series, beginning to end... seems crazy to me... like, I literally couldn't imagine something like that...

... but there was definitely something a little magical (a mystical adventure, even?!) about having so little available to me and having to really put in an absurd amount of self-motivated effort to learn and consume. It's so easy to take for granted these days how much we have, we know, and can readily get. It wasn't like that when I first got into the series, and a lot of times I feel like I'm still kinda chasing that feeling of wonder. I actually think a lot of what I do in terms of research and documentation is a part of that chasing/feeling: I want to make it easier for other people who want to look things up, and my own process of research and fact-checking is a good mirror/parallel of my original getting into the series and learning all about it.

[ABED]

Ah memories. Remember when the local cable provider gave little booklets each week showing what was on the TV schedule?

To answer the question, no. I saw it on VHS. The first I rented from Blockbuster and the others I got for Christmas in 96.

[MyVisionity]

I was aware of it from commercials and merchandise, but wasn't interested in watching.

I remember when DBZ started in 96, kids at school would talk about it like "Did you watch it when it was just Dragon Ball??".

[MasenkoHA]

I didn’t know about DBZ until it started airing on Cartoon Network so unsurprisingly I didn’t Dragon Ball was a thing until the 2001 dub and just assumed it was like a Fltinstone’s Kids type show.

Although I do know I watched the last 3 episodes of the BLT dub at a friends house (about 2001ish) because I remember the 95 theme and wasn’t even aware the 2001 dub had a different theme.

[Cure Dragon 255]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozALyhvfsRk

Yabba dab Yabba dab Yabba daba doo! WE ARE THE FLITSTONE KIDS!!!

Sorry just had to.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I didn't see any of the BLT DB dub until 2001 when i was about 7/8, so around the time or shortly after the in house FUNi dub started airing on Toonami. A friend of mine from school (we're still good friends, but with our busy lives don't see each other a lot though we text and call every now and then) had like the first two BLT volumes with the first four episodes and Curse of the Blood Rubies among the many DBZ tapes he had.

[AlexSketchy04]

Idk if anyone remembers, but there were any eyecatches during the original syndicated Broadcast of the BLT Dub?

[Super Sonic]

Idk if anyone remembers, but there were any eyecatches during the original syndicated Broadcast of the BLT Dub?

If I recall, it was just a brief thing of Goku on Nimbus with the words, "We'll be right back" coming on screen and the title with the words "Dragon Ball" being said when returning from commercial break.

[TheGreatness25]

Nope. The very first thing I saw was episode 1 of DBZ on a Sunday morning in 1996. Was it the very first airing? No clue.

I got the Dragon Ball VHS tapes from Suncoast Video in a mall probably in 1998 or so. At that time, most pepe I knew got into DBZ through Toonami. So, I just had to tell them about these 13 episodes plus the Sleeping Princess movie and the "weird" Curse of the Blood Rubies. I'm pretty sure that many kids thought I was BSing them, since we were kids and a lot of us liked to embellish our knowledge of the series. "I have a friend in Japan and he gave me all of the tapes of DBZ!" type of embellishing. I remember explaining that Yamcha was originally against Goku and the Ox King was a giant with a helmet, and the kid was just nodding as if to say, "Sure, buddy."

[linkdude20002001]

I remember. Let's see... I was six, and I must've been up too early, cuz I remember thinking "Aw, man... There's nothing good on this early. I'm so bored.", but then... I was trying to watch TV anyway, and there it was "Watch this brand-new show! Dragon Ball!" (I wonder what channel it was on...). Maybe it would be good! So I watched it, and it WAS good! It must've been anyway...cuz it seems that I kept getting up early to watch it, cuz... Years later, I got into DBZ, and had completely forgot about the original show. It wasn't till I saw some "Dragon Ball Z minus the Z" at Hollywood Video and rented it to watch with my cousin and his friend. The more I watched, the more I felt like I'd seen this all before. Eventually the memories all came back. I don't think I finished the show, however. I think...I probably ended up disrupted from my normal life. Maybe that's when the pipes in the walls burst, causing us to live with my granma down the road for a while.

That was probably my first experience with a show made exclusively by a Japanese company. Tho, I watched many movies that were partially Japanese like Little Nemo and The Princess and the Goblin. It was quite common in the 80s and early 90s, I think.

I think the Harmony Gold dub came out the year I was born (1989), so I didn't see it. And unfortunately I didn't get some awesome hand-me-down recording. I suppose it COULD have happened. Like all the hand-me-down Nintendo Power issues I got from some older kid who used to visit my granma. No Dragon Ball tapes, tho. I lived in the memory of the 80s rather than in the 80s itself. Like, 80s music was still somewhat new and played on every station, and 80s movies weren't old yet either.

As someone who was familiar with the 1994~1998 cast, it was definitely disappointing to me when they replaced them in 1998. Tho, I don't remember those thoughts and memories anymore. Just that I had them. So I can't even say WHEN I found out about the change. Probably, I didn't notice till I read it online. In the show, it was probably more like "Wow, the actors got bad." rather than "Wow, they fired all the actors and got sound-alikes.".

My only other thoughts are...wow, the late 90s was a magical time to be a fan of something popular and...mysterious. I mean, Dragon Ball came from Japan, and in the 80s, but it was suddenly popular with English speakers. So now people are retroactively bringing DB information to the west. But not very well. It was all bits and pieces in info, music, clips, etc, and usually with inaccuracies. "Chala Head Chala", "Trunks Song", "Dragon Ball song...I think"... It just made the whole series seem far more mysterious than it ever should have been, and it was wonderful. Plus, there were probably hundreds of DB websites. Going from site to site via the Links sections of DB sites was the late 90s/early 2000s version of the wiki rabbit hole, but for only DB.

[Super Sonic]

I did watch it during its original broadcast. Came on Sundays on then WB station. First happened to come across "Curse of the Blood Rubies" when changing channels and missed the beginning, but then started watching the show proper. Didn't know what was different with "Blood Rubies" but because of that, saw what was coming with Yamcha and Bulma hooking up. Wouldn't see that again until renting the video in 2001. When Goku transformed I was wondering what would happen that week until it was resolved. The opening I did like, but was confused with why Penny wasn't showing up and was wondering was she like Baby Puss or something. (For those not familiar, on "The Flintstones" the cat Baby Puss basically only appeared in the opening and ending bits). Did think the last episode shown was it at first with the way it went, despite saying Goku would reunite with his friends. Did see some young foreign students with DBZ backpacks and wondered about that but didn't know until that aired. Did pick up one video of two episodes for $9.99 in 98 or 99 and watched quite a bit. My sister said she thought Chi Chi looked like a hoochie because of her outfit.

[MrSatan2099]

I didn't catch it durring the original run. In fact I don't think it was airing on any of my local affiliates at the time (I didn't have cable, only broadcast tv and I would seek out any and all animation). So like most folks I started with DBZ, and didn't even realize it had been produced until probably 99 in my early days on the internet.

However, I did acquire an old friend's home recorded VHS collection about ten years ago and found a few episodes from his local Fox affiliate. It was very trippy to see it in that context. I could absolutely see myself watching it in 95. Bonus, I also got some 90s rerun recordings of Robotech, G-Force and Transformers.

[NeverRamza]

I saw it!

I remember that the first episode I randomly turned into was the "Boss Rabbit" episode. The name Dragon Ball Z was vaguely familiar to me because the video game magazine GameFan did several articles on the SNES Super Butoden games, eventually lamenting that they had been cancelled for a US release. I always found the import previews interesting. They Super Saiyans also had a lot of representation in the envelope art section which confused me.

I had a budding thing for anime art since I recently played and loved Lunar for the Sega CD. Much later, I realized that Adventures of the Little Koala and Maya the Bee likely paved my anime journey as well which used to show on Nickelodeon during the daytime. I loved those shows.

Dragon Ball was fascinating to me. I was a little confused at the lack of "Z" in the title but I speculated that the "Z" might just be a video game thing. I also thought that maybe Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z were just completely different unconnected shows.

The show felt very cutting edge at the time. Choreography in fights hardly existed at the time in American cartoons. I watched countless episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where rarely did combat feel impactful. Characters actually hitting each other rarely happened. I remember characters throwing each other a lot in American cartoons at the time. Seeing Goku jump up and crescent kick a guy in the face was wild. I was taken aback as well when one of the lackeys kicks the woman and child as well for crossing their path.

Regarding the timeslot, it was just in the morning, not at a particularly bizarre time. Dad wouldn't let me sleep in too much and it was at a normal enough time.

I watched the series through each time eager for the supposed martial arts tournament that was supposed to be starting only for the series to reset back to episode 1. I didn't understand the idea of seasons, syndication, etc. I always looked forward to when episode 14 was about to start and then subsequently agitated and annoyed when episode 1 started again. I remember each time always getting hyped up and then my dad teasing me that it would probably be starting over again.

Eventually, I tuned in and Dragon Ball wasn't there. I went through the TV Guide equivalent my dad got which came with the newspaper and saw it wasn't listed to be on. However, an hour or two later, Dragon Ball Z was scheduled to be on. I still didn't really understand the significance of what the "Z" represented or why the name of the show changed. Was this the same show?

Watching Dragon Ball Z episode 1 was bizarre. I had no clue what was going on. Why was an alien shooting weird blasts at a green alien while talking about Goku? Why were some of the characters aged and why were there new characters that were so familiar with Goku when I had no clue who they were? Where the heck was Yamcha? The mood change, enhanced by the soundtrack shift, was very different. I remember being angry and disappointed that the Dragon Ball I knew was gone.

I continued to tune in the following weeks and by the time we got to Gohan training in the wilderness, I was hooked. I soon read all about Dragon Ball on this crazy new thing called the internet, read the Curtis Hoffman summaries of the manga without understanding that manga meant Japanese comics, and managed to track someone down someone on an anime email mailing list that was willing to send me copies of the NGN recordings on VHS of the original series.