For Love of the Dragon

This column has been stewing in my head for a long while but now I feel confident in wanting to put it down into something written and coherent as much as possible.

And that is my love of a Japanese Manga/Anime called Dragon Ball and its sister series Dragon Ball Z.

My love of this show started way back in January 2000 which is also when it first premiered here in Australia first on Cartoon Network and then on Channel 10's Cheez TV block which used to play 3 cartoon shows at a time from 7am to 8.30am before finishing for the day and before it started on CN an Austar/Foxtel channel I saw little ads for it before it started and decided to give it a look the morning it premiered (January 4th 2000 was when it first began.)

I watched the first batch of episodes and then Goku the main character of the show dies and it was only 4 episodes into the series run needless to say I was taken aback but in a good way as later that night I became inspired to find out what happened next as by this point those episodes had long since aired in the United States so knowing the rest of the storyline was not easy to find through an Internet search.

Needless to say I was inspired to keep on watching but I feel I really got hooked on it when the Z Fighters fought Nappa later that season and that sealed it from then on out as here was the brave six staring down him, Vegeta and their Saibamen soldiers and within one three episode block half of them are dead and though they walked around that in the dialogue by saying they went to the next dimension I could easily read between the lines.

And this cartoon series really came along at the right time as I turned 14 the year it premiered here and almost all Western cartoons that I watched never and I mean never touched the subject of death in any meaningful way some cartoons like Reboot from Canada did go in a darker direction but even then no one meaningful really died they were sent off for sure but they were later rescued but here three of our main heroes die in one battle and in 2 of those situations for nothing and then the one person that can help bring them all back to life dies as well in self sacrifice pretty heavy stuff for a fun cartoon show.

But there are 3 other reasons I love this show firstly the roster of heroes here is very well developed and not just Goku but also his son Gohan, Krillin, Piccolo, Yamcha, Tien and Chiaotzu. Yamcha and Tien in particular really struck me from the moment I saw them as Yamcha had long hair and scars on his face and Tien was bald with 3 eyes and instantly I wanted to know them more but sadly they ended up doing very little afterwards and Krillin became the main human fighter to get the majority of the screen time and back then he kinda bothered me a fair bit I tended to find him annoying at times.

The second is the brilliant roster of villains especially in the first 3 seasons of the show which are known as the Vegeta and Frieza sagas (even back then it was 3 seasons on TV it didn't come about with the revising season rosters of the box sets) the first time I heard Brian Drummond as Vegeta I thought he was awesome and I really loved watching that character as well as Goku really learn about their true heritage as peoples of the Saiyan race and how Frieza ties into that.

And lastly that storyline of Frieza and the Saiyan Race which he ruled over with an iron fist and later became so scared of he wiped them from existence was not only exciting to watch action wise but also looking back very thematically interesting as not only the Saiyans were affected but also the Namekians a peaceful race brutally murdered for the mere trinkets they owned affected not just Goku and Vegeta but also Piccolo and still today us as fans are still living with the aftermath of that arcs popularity.

But there is also a more personal side to this that I want to write about as well and that is my love of this series very nearly inspired me to learn Martial Arts in real life but given I was in my early teens at that time I didn't really put the dots together back then as I look back now and perhaps feel that if I had the kind of thinking that would put those together perhaps I might of but hindsight is such a lovely thing isn't it.

However in the early to mid 2000s I started to lose interest in a big degree in the series as the Cell saga had put a pretty definitive end to the storyline and it became clear the Friday after that final episode had played on TV that perhaps the show was not coming back and back then it was really disappointing as it was my favourite show to watch even though others like Nickelodeons Rocket Power was more popular with some of my peers even though I didn't understand that all that well at the time I do now and slowly but surely I moved on.

But then cut to 2015 and Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F I learned was coming to my cinema now I had heard about it and the previous film Battle of Gods but BOG got a very limited release here in Aus back then and I didn't really have much desire to see it even when it came out on disc but hearing that Resurrection F was coming to my main cinema I had to go as I used to dream of a DBZ film and what that would be like and now here it was and not like the turgid live action film from 2009 which was one of the worst films I've ever seen.

This time it was animated, Akira Toriyama himself was intimately involved with it as well as the Japanese company Toei and it had the proper voice cast not a bunch of stars pretending to be those characters and that night seeing it on the big screen was amazing a packed crowd, big screen and big sound it was something else and it became one of my top 3 films of that year.

But this year 2017 has been when my love of the series has really come back in a big way for three key reasons:

- Firstly I really got to learn more about Akira Toriyama himself the kind of person/writer/creator he was as well as how he plotted out the original manga and how that differs somewhat from the TV series not to mention the rocky relationship he had at times with his Manga editors and it was rather fascinating learning at least for me.

- Secondly to finally be able to watch the original Dragon Ball series from start to finish and this plays into the very different world that was when the series was first on TV as a group of episodes would play and then it would end and maybe never come back and for a serialised show like this one it was terrible but through the DVD compilation sets I was able to see it all from beginning to end and fully uncut plus the option to watch the original Japanese episodes if I so wish.

- And thirdly the opportunity to revisit the first 3 seasons of DBZ fully uncut and without the heavy editing that was done to fit US Broadcast Standards was a real delight and also to do so having watched the original Dragon Ball beforehand and seen the characters really come into their own and in the space of the first 5 episodes watch everything fans thought they knew fundamentally change and some of the character deaths have much more impact and it has made the revisit feel both old and new at the same time not to mention watching it with the proper Japanese music score.

All that being said I have to say that DBZ sadly became another example of a series that just went on for too long and that started with the final battle between Freeza and Goku as a Super Saiyan it just went on and on and on to the point where I gave up watching it it was so long and it only got worse with the Cell and Majin Buu arcs but alas the fans and powers that be in Japan wanted more and well we got what we got even though Freeza would’ve been the ideal end for the series.

At the same time though and here is where I’ll wrap things up the 2 films plus the currently running Universe Survival arc where fighters from the 8 different universes deemed unworthy duke it out for survival have been terrific and shown the series back at its best since the Freeza arc from the late 80s and early 90s though it is a shame I will say that that Tournament isn’t a 2 hour film and the third film in a trilogy with BOG and RF had that happened It would’ve been my runaway favourite film of 2017 so far and been hard to dislodge from top spot at year’s end though these also prove to me that I don’t mind a franchise running this long if the quality is good.

And so that was my love of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z in a column I wanted to get it off my chest and write about it because it's a series I love and has inspired me personally to some degree I hope people enjoyed reading it.