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English isn’t my first language, so please bear with me here. So I just turned 26 earlier this month, and I have a little brother — he's in 5th grade—. This last Sunday night, my little brother comes up to me out of nowhere and says, “Hey, let’s watch anime. Let’s watch Dragon Ball.” And man, I was kind of surprised but also not really? When I was his age I also started to be interested in action-packed animations and videos more than regular cartoons. I also thought it was interesting that he now knows what anime is so I asked him if he heard of anime from school or from the youtubers he watches but he didn't know where he knew anime from.
He’s seen me play Dragon Ball FighterZ and Sparking! ZERO, so he already knows some DB characters. He’s even familiar with stuff like Kamehameha and Super Saiyans thanks to the games. And a year or two ago we watched that old episode where Master Roshi has Goku and Krillin searching for the rock with the "turtle" kanji on it, so that too could've been a reason for him asking for Dragon Ball instead of any other anime.
Still, when he said he wanted to watch Dragon Ball, I immediately knew there was going to be some “explaining” involved. Like, a lot. Anyone who's been around this franchise knows how messy the watch order can get for new comers. OG Dragon Ball, Z, Kai, GT, Super, Daima, movies, filler vs canon, manga vs anime, etc... . But in my mind, years ago, I devised a way to rewatch the past decades of Dragon Ball. and after my brother asked me to watch Dragon Ball I decided to put that way into a power point. A specific order that I think makes the most sense and feels the best.
So when he told me he wanted to watch Dragon Ball I told him I’d make a little presentation for him and give him the episodes I have saved.
He agreed on the presentation part but disagreed on himself watching it alone. He wanted to watch it with me, which makes sense honestly, we do a lot of things together.
So yeah… I unironically spent actual time making a whole Dragon Ball presentation just to explain how we're going to watch it to my little brother. Here are the links to the presentation so please check it out:
https://mega.nz/folder/PIY20CAA#GYZdpc7KDJqyEhT-7nSO8Q
https://mega.nz/file/TQAjFAaK#BweS_qvWe ... egkS6Yf1PU
Originally, I made it just for us, but figured, hey, why not share it and get some feedback from other fans?
I made the presentation on Monday and I presented it to him Tuesday afternoon. Even though it’s not a long presentation, it still took me about an hour to go through it because we were joking around, chatting, and he wasn't very focused anyway. I thought to myself this younger generation has lower attention span than previous generations so it's to be expected. And my presentation was probably boring since it might have come across like a professor or teacher giving a lecture, it was probably school-boring for him. but I think I actually managed to explain the whole Dragon Ball timeline and continuity pretty well. Can you imagine that? a fifth grader understanding the differences between every series, movie, manga and this 40 years history in about an hour? Of course I didn't teach him every detail and kept it simple because I just wanted to make him understand the general history and timelines or watch orders. And of course to keep it simple I skipped over a lot of unnecessary facts for a new comer. For example I know that GT does technically have a manga. But in the slides you'd see that Gt doesn't have a manga. And that's for the sake of simplicity.
I wasn’t planning on presenting and watching the anime the same day. Because I wanted to save the whole Pilaf/Adventure arc to watch in one go, especially since I have the Dragon Ball Recut fan edit. That version trims the filler and makes its length more true to the manga. And that would've made the arc about 10 episodes long (although some episodes are 30 minutes). Which we could've watched in one go. I mean when I first watched Dragon Ball, I binged like 20 episodes on day one.
But he really wanted to start watching it immediately after the presentation. So I thought we should watch an episode or two. But every time an episode would end, he would say "just one more episode. this one will be the last I promise". So we ended up watching 5 episodes and in the Recut version that's when Goku, Bulma and Oolong leave Yamcha's desert after knocking Yamcha's tooth out. He still wanted to watch more after Episode 5 but I didn't have the energy in me to watch two more episodes. And I wasn't going to watch episode 6 without 7 because I think we should watch them as a package since together they're the entire Mt. Frypan story.
To my surprise watching the anime wasn't like the presentation. As he wasn't very focused with the presentation while with the anime he was just sucked in, being willingly fully attentive to every little detail.
I actually filmed our reactions to the first 3 episodes for fun (just for our own personal use and not share them online or anything like that.). He’s watching it all blind, and I want to keep filming just a few key episodes, not the whole thing. He also said "isn't Gohan Goku's son?". But I think I managed to convince him that Gohan is Goku's Grandpa and not his son. So it can be closer to a spoiler free experience for him. If we ever get to Super I'd probably have some through away lines that will help convince him Goku Black might be Future Goten. Just because I think that might be fun.
Oh, and I had this YouTube video playing in the background while I presented:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E9KifgtBQI
because I hoped this way it wont be as boring as the classroom presentations
. and I would pause the music when it was time to watch one of the 3 clips in the slides.btw if you're wondering why there's a Tree (of Might) in the presentation, it's because it means the original manga alone is more than enough for Dragon Ball to be Complete. And the anime (DB/Z/KAI) adaptation of the manga content alone is enough for the tree to be complete. From the roots, to the trunk, to the branches and to the leaves. However over the years, some extra branches grew that added more to the tree (filler, movies, GT, Super, Daima, etc...).
There are barely any words in the presentation because I was supposed to be the ones to chat and explain it all lol. But since you guys are mostly long time fans I think you'll understand it with barely anything written on it lol.
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TL;DR: I made a Dragon Ball presentation explaining the best watch order by explaining the 40+ years history of Dragon Ball. Please check it out and feel free to give any feedback you'd like to give!:
https://mega.nz/folder/PIY20CAA#GYZdpc7KDJqyEhT-7nSO8Q
https://mega.nz/file/TQAjFAaK#BweS_qvWe ... egkS6Yf1PU