ROCK THE DRAGON

or, A Nerdy White Boy's History with Dragon Ball

I was nine when Dragon Ball hit US syndication in '95. By then I'd already been very familiar with anime thanks to Superbook and having an older brother who bought awesome shit on VHS from Manga Video like Macross Plus and that. Watching TV one day and seeing an incredibly short TV spot for the show which I'd only ever seen once, I knew I had to be up that morning at 5 a.m. or whenever the hell it aired, 'cos I needed my anime fix.

Despite the show's censorship, I actually thought the show was surprisingly risque—still do. Dinosaur's head lopped off with blood squirting out, Bulma's Playboy bunny outfit, among other things. As a kid, I couldn't help but see it as being kind of adult. Then the show disappeared before I ever got to see the last few (out of 13) episodes and that was it.

DBZ came about half a year to a year later and I couldn't believe my eyes that the show had a sequel, and that Goku was grown up. I was the happiest kid right then and there when the first episode aired. But even then, I found it exceptionally cheesy when people didn't die but were sent to "THE NEXT DIMENSION!!!!!" and people being A-OK when whole cities were eradicated was some serious bullshit even to little ten-year-old me. When I saw Dead Zone on tape in either Suncoast, Sam Goody, or Best Buy (the last of which had an amazing selection of anime even back then), I begged my mom to get it for me right away and I was taken aback by the violence and profanity and weird music, and the show seemed rather weak by comparison. It was not long after that the Internet first entered our home and I did some searching for DBZ to come across a website that listed all of the censorship done in the US and chronicled all the changes complete with pictures and video. It was right then and there that I began aching for uncut DBZ—and that aching had pretty much lasted all this time as I never wanted to buy any of those fansubs as a kid, (a) because I didn't have the money, and (b) because even if I did, I had no interest in paying for shittydick-quality VHS dupes. Even as a kid before DVD came along I thought that was weak. So I just never got to see it and waited for it to come out in the US subbed and uncut.

Oh, that's the other thing: DBZ taught me to appreciate subs and eventually love them. I bought The Tree of Might on VHS (a movie I'd already caught on the air), not even realizing that anime was ever released in the US in Japanese, and I popped that sucker in that night to hear Japanese voices and having to read the dialog instead of hear it. That was a whole new experience for me, and it totally confused me at first until my brother explained it to me, to which I thought, "Oh, cool." I—and my brother as well, oddly enough (he'd bought anime dubbed until then)—quickly became sub Nazis. Though I still think the Ocean dubs for the first three movies are awesome, particularly since they kept the original music. Wish I still had all my tapes, including the ones for the TV series... They really did have some great art on them. When I was approaching 13, I'd felt that I had outgrown the show and so sold off most of my tapes (including the very first two or three episodes sold as a movie in that awesome golden bubble case) to my best friend who by that point loved the show more than me, though I kept the dubbed Dead Zone tape and all of the original tapes for Dragon Ball since I found that show to be much more entertaining, and its lower level of censorship more bearable.

Then both shows came back on Cartoon Network, I didn't have cable so there was no way I could see it, and being in my mid teens I just did not care by that point because all I wanted was to see the show completely uncut and subbed, but there was no way I'd start from a fourth of the way or whatever into the show.

That's when the uncut DVDs by FUNimation came out, when I was 17 or 18 or so, and I said fuck no because they were only three or four episodes a disc and insanely expensive. (Good for me, because FUNimation stopped releasing that line after only eight or so DVDs anyway and I picked them up years later for peanuts and they remain unwatched, except for when I want to sample the video quality.) By that point my tolerance for anime prices had disappeared—probably because I was the one actually buying my shit then (well, since I was 12, actually—worked for my dad but put most of my money toward N64 games)—but also because I just wasn't all that into cartoons and movies at the time (Evil Dead series aside, which I watched religiously), and spent most of my money not used on gas and food on music CDs. (The "orange brick" season sets came a few years later, but I'd never be crazy enough to buy those ugly masters.)

But then when I was approaching or was already in my 20s, I felt a desire to watch the whole series, from Dragon Ball to the end of Z. DeepDiscount had a sale, I bought all of the Saga sets of the original series, and began watching those, clamoring for the first 13 episodes subbed and uncut but enjoying the series nonetheless. But I watched it slowly. Eeeeeever so slowly. I bought those DVDs like six years ago and only JUST finished them a couple weeks ago. Meanwhile I was buying all of the DBZ Dragon Boxes for when I eventually do finish the original series, but now with the Level Blu-rays, it's kind of serendipitous that I can now continue the series with Z in muthafukken HD!!!!! But BLAST those discs for not having the episodes' Japanese title cards... No opening/closing credits I can deal with, next episode previews I rarely ever watch anyway, but I CANNOT STAND THOSE PHOTOSHOP-FOR-RETARDS-IFIED ENGLISH TITLE CARDS! Oh well. Quality of the picture seems really astounding, so I can deal with those, although begrudgingly. Sent FUNimation an email about it. They damn well better fix this problem on future sets.

Hoo, shit... Here I've spent all this time reminiscing and using more potty words than I probably should. Looking forward to getting my Level 1.1 BD and finally being able to see the series subbed and uncut fifteen years after I initially had that urge, so this has been a long wait (which is why I'm so pissed Amazon didn't ship out my pre-order until today, ensuring I won't get the disc until two weeks after release date—the bastids).

I'd buy all of the manga if it weren't censored in the States (razzin' frazzin'). When there are official nude drawings of Bulma, I wanna see that shit.


Pafu pafu!