I'm always amazed to discover people my age who didn't watch Dragon Ball Z in their childhood. Son Goku was such a big part of my pre-pubescent life that, to me, the existence of individuals in my age group who don't know his adventures is unfathomable. Yet, when I take a moment to look back, I realize this shouldn't surprise me so much. Yes, Dragon Ball Z was a series that introduced many Americans to Japanese animation. Yes, it remains one of the most iconic animes to this very day. But DBZ wasn't Pokemon. If you had recess with my younger self, you watched Pokemon; no exceptions, unless you came from some weird, super-hippie-dippie family that didn't watch TV.
If you're my age, you might've watched Dragon Ball Z; in fact, the odds of you having watched the series aren't terrible. I had plenty of friends in elementary school who watched the show, and to this day, I know plenty of people in my age group who watched DBZ. But, I know plenty more who didn't. In fact, I think I was below the mean age of people watching the show at the time it was on. Hell, my cousin was in college back then, and he videotaped every episode.
Nobody will know what these are when I die.
Dragon Ball Z was the epitome of that show which your parents didn't want you to watch, but which you couldn't resist viewing anyway. It was a show about guys beating one another up. Bones were broken, blood was spilled (although digitally reduced in the English dub), and at no point did the show attempt to teach the kid how to read or do math. And, I loved it.
Yet, there was at least one youth my age who rejected this meaningless violence. I got into DBZ in the summer between first and second grade. When I entered the second grade, there were... a couple kids in my class who watched the show (again, I shouldn't be surprised to meet peers who never saw DBZ). But, a certain classmate tried to convince me that I shouldn't be watching Son Goku's adventures. He told me that Dragon Ball Z was too violent, that it was sending a bad message to children. Of course, I ignored him, since 1) Dragon Ball Z was awesome, and I wasn't gonna stop watching it, and 2) holy shit, dude! You're eight years old, and you're already talking like some conservative-Christian-child-protection advocate. Get that crayon out of your SpongeBob-underpants-wearing ass!
But, in fairness to that classmate, who hopefully doesn't remember the preceding anecdote and who probably won't read this because he never got into Dragon Ball, and also because he became interested in important things like sports and social life rather than reviewing comics for some blog that nobody reads, DBZ did have flaws. Those fight scenes tended to drag on more than they needed to, and the show had a taste for the overly dramatic.
24 Episodes.
These qualities stood in direct contrast to another series, one less known to western audiences than the adventures of adult Goku and his son, Gohan, but without which DBZ could not exist. I'm talking about the original Dragon Ball. The one without the Z.
Dragon Ball never achieved the popularity that its sequel series did in the United States. Every night Toonami showed an episode of the Z, and that's the part people would sit down and and watch. Then, they'd show the cartoon with kid Goku, and I think fewer individuals watched that show. But, I watched it. I had fun with the show, even if it wasn't the earth-shaking epic that Dragon Ball Z was. It was more light-hearted; the tone was more comedic fantasy than serious sci-fi. And deep down, there may have been a part of me that preferred the child Goku to his 'roided-up adult form.
The Japanese version of the Dragon Ball manga drew know distinctions between Z and no-Z. Every volume of manga that Akira Toriyama drew, featuring the stories of Son Goku and his friends and family, was called "Dragon Ball" (well, technically the Japanese translation of those words, but I don't think I needed to tell you that). It wasn't until the anime that the producers decided to start calling the section of Goku's life following his son's birth Dragon Ball Z.
So, the anime of DBZ became a hit in the States, and DB became, well, not as much of a hit. What did Viz do when they released the manga in Uncle Sam's country for the first time? They split up the comics in the same way that the Japanese producers divided the animation. This allowed the legions of American fanboys biased towards DBZ to skip through the early manga and head straight to when Goku's dickhead brother came down to Earth, and everything after that. Viz started releasing these volumes in the year 2000 and continued to release the two versions of Dragon Ball separately for over a decade.
When Viz started releasing Akira Toriyama's classic saga in the U.S. over ten years ago, they worried that DBZ fans would be confused to see the stories of that anime packaged together with the adventures of the child Goku. Come 2013, Viz is more aware of who their audience is. The publisher realizes the U.S. fans of anime and manga are very analytical about their pop culture obsessions. Any 'otaku' deeply invested in Dragon Ball and/or Dragon Ball Z has probably already done the research to inform them that the two manga series are really one. So, Viz decided to rerelease the manga in a series of 3-in-1 omnibuses (3 volumes per omnibus). In these tomes, Viz is releasing the entire Son Goku saga as one 42-volume series, just as it was in Japan. As of last month, three of these omnibuses are on the book shelves. Having read each of these books, I realize how much I still love the journey of that little kung-fu guy with a monkey tail.
Why does Dragon Ball still hold up three decades after Akira Toriyama started drawing the series in Japan? Why do I still enjoy it years after my family hoped I would've outgrown it? Well, honestly, it's just fun. Toriyama created a perfect mix of high-flying martial arts action and charming, cartoonish comedy. The characters are funny and imaginative, from an ancient, perverted martial arts master to an evil commander who builds a huge military force for the sake of making himself taller. And, Toriyama is brilliant at drawing this world. His dynamic, cartoonish style complements the tone of the story perfectly. The designs of beasts like Shenlong the dragon and Goku's giant ape form show why Toriyama built a second career out of creating art for role-playing games like Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger.
Mega Rayquaza
The early volumes of Dragon Ball never take themselves too seriously, yet the action is still a total thrill to read. Every punch and kick that Goku and his opponents unleashes is drawn beautifully. Viewing Toriyama's succession of panels, I felt like I was watching the fights and not just snapshots of those battles. From the first nine volumes of the series, two action sequences really stand out to me.
The first sequence of note occurs in the fourth and fifth volumes, featured in the second omnibus. It is the battle between young Son Goku, and the enigmatic martial artist, Jackie Chun, a man whose beard looks a bit too similar to that of Goku's mentor, Master Roshi. I previously mentioned one of DBZ's flaws as its tendency to drag out the battles too long. The battle between Goku and Jackie Chun goes on for about 100 pages, and yet, I was entertained all the way through. Toriyama knows that he is dragging out the fight, and he creates comedy through the goofy ways he drags out the conflict. The battle comes across as a parody of the drawn-out battles that would later define the series, as well as the many creations that were heavily inspired by DBZ. It's intense. It's ridiculous, and it's one of the best times you'll have reading comics.
I don't actually think this is a terrible disguise.
Another highlight comes in the eighth volume, the middle of the most recent omnibus; it's Goku's one-man assault on the Red Ribbon Army HQ. Here, Toriyama really puts his artistic pedal to the metal. The Red Ribbon HQ is full of highly-detailed buildings which dwarf the young Goku; it is an environment much more exciting than the blank fields we typically associate with DBZ. The artist plays with dynamic visual angles and his typical eye for clever panel-editing to create a jaw-dropping battle between a pint-sized martial artist and a mighty military force that's just not strong enough for the little guy with the spiky hair.
There are so many parts of this most recent omnibus that make the book entertaining: the comically brutal assassin, Taopaipai, Goku's interaction with the wise cat, Karin. I could write a whole book about why Dragon Ball is awesome. But, you've already read enough of my rambling. Go out and get Dragon Ball for yourself. Read it. Love it. Become obsessed with it. If you find yourself disappointed... I guess we can still be friends?
Bring up this movie, and you are dead to me.
Dragon Ball (everything so far) gets an A+ from this nerd.
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