My husband is obsessed with the show. He watches it every day. He tells me that he is one of millions of fans.
I’ve tried to watch it once or twice, but all I’ve seen is two or three little guys hovering in mid-air fighting a big pink guy with a long tail. There doesn’t seem to be more to it than that!
My husband’s tried to explain the plot to me but after 10-15 seconds of “Vegeta this…Goku that…” my eyes glaze over and he gives up.
Can someone enlighten me on all things Dragonball Z? What is the big attraction?
I don’t like it myself, but I think people are drawn in by the extremely extended fight scenes. Since episode rarely actually resolve anything there’s a need to tune in again to find out what happens. Kind of like an action movie meets a soap opera, I suppose.
Personally, I tune in for Gohan :: but other than that, I only watch it in the original Japanese to see how much I can translate. Not much, as it turns out. It’s certainly not my favorite anime` (Cardcaptor Sakura and Pokemon take that spot of “pride”) but it’s good to watch. If you want a better version, watch DragonBall. It takes place when Goku was a young’un (don’t mind the tail) and should clear up somethings regarding DBZ.
My son loves this show. His taste evolved from Pokeman to Dragonball Z. I think it is just like the Wheelie cartoons of my preteen years, or like the Trix rabbit-- there is always something that needs to be obtained or won but the main character never quite gets there and it keeps you tuned in next time.
Personally, I can’t stand Japanese TV animation. When anime is good, it’s beautiful, but the TV stuff is just lazy. Just like Scooby Doo was where you can kill 3 minutes of show time by only animating a mouth moving or a background sliding by.
kaylasdad99, I don’t get the tail. All I know is that it was removed. The halos mean that these people have died at least once (Goku is brought back, I believe to train Goten). They are, IIRC, the spirits that watch the fights and then intervene to help their descendents.
It is very much like listening to a five-year-old trying to tell you a story, a long one, where they’re obviously just pulling whatever thought floats into their brain and adding them to the story in hopes that they will eventually make sense.
You’re a grownup, you know they won’t ever make sense, but you keep listening just to see what kind of oddball whatsis they’ll come up with next.
Note: I don’t like DragonballZ but I’ve watched it with my son several times, and that’s the impression I’ve gotten.
The characters who (used to) have tails are Saiyans. Saiyans are monkey people and when the moon is full Goku used to turn into a King Kong like beast. The monkey bit comes from the fact that Goku is based on the Monkey King, even if only in name, from Journey to the West. Goku also has parallels to Superman mythology where he was sent to Earth and was raised by humans. Also the fact that Goku’s a boy scout at heart.
When a Saiyan loses their tail for any reason this allows them to call upon deeper powers which allows them to go Super Saiyan. Super Saiyan is when they go all Aryan with an aura and sometimes lightning bolts. There are four levels and I believe the last two levels are only attainable if the Saiyans do the fusion dance. The fusion dance merges two people into a new entity which has the powers of both and then some.
The halos mean that the character is dead. Dead characters can manifest in the real world, like Goku did in the Buu saga, but mostly they stay in their own afterlives watching the real world like TV and trying to influence things for the best or worst. Shenlong, the dragon who is summoned when seven dragonballs are brought together, is the Earth’s dragon. He only has enough power to raise an individual twice from the dead. There are other dragons out there which are more powerful like the dragon of Namek who was able to raise everyone killed during the Freeza story. Namek is Piccolo’s home planet. Piccolo is the overmuscled green skinned guy with antennae.
I do not like the cartoon overall because it’s just exposition, exposition, exposition then two weeks later the fighting begins. The reason why the battles are so drawn out is Akira Toriyama, the creator of the Dragonball series, was in the middle of doing the comic at the same time Dragonball Z was being aired in Japan. The show had to be aired so the producers put in all that exposition. Some exposition is nice where you get to know the backgrounds of the characters or their motives but Dragonball Z engages in overkill in this department. Also the whole Super Saiyan thing which ended the Freeza story was cool at first but it just became really stupid with the various power levels like SSJ2, SSJ3, SSJ4 and the fandom saying “D00D TEHRE IZ GONNA B SSJ6 GOKU!!!11”. Plus it seems everyone who has a drop of Saiyan blood in them is able to achieve this higher state of being nowadays so there’s really nothing special about it.
What I like about Dragonball Z is the fact that Goku is such a nice guy that he eventually befriends almost all of his enemies. The only exceptions being Freezer and Cell who were utterly destroyed because they were engaging in egregious acts of genocide. It’s cute that the characters have different themes for their names. Saiyans are named after vegetables, Vegeta being Vegetable, Goku’s Saiyan name is Kakerot which is Carrot, Nameks are named after musical instruments and the notorious Buu. Buu was created by a wizard named Bobity who has some relative who was involved with Buu’s creation named Bibidy. Bibidy Bobidy Buu. Think Cinderella. Groan if you must.
Dragonball Z is fairly simple. The battles are cool when they finally happen and have something behind them greater than “I hate you” because the exposition shows why each character dislikes their opponent. All of the characters have some history either from their introduction to Dragonball Z or from being carried over from the original Dragonball series.
It’s not high art nor is it Shakespeare but I would be pleased to see Toriyama’s work dug up one day in the far future and taught to bored, unwilling students like Beowulf is taught nowadays.
If there are any Dragonball fans out there and I made any errors, please correct or clarify them.
I like it because Piccalo is the coolest motherfucker ever. Also because I’m forced to watch it, and really, it’s easier just to give in and not fight it.
If I understand the cans at the Asian market correctly, “Saiyan” is Japanese for “peas.” Or maybe it’s just a brand of peas. Anyway, even though they transform into monkey-men, I prefer to think of the Saiyans as the pea-people. Funny that Piccolo is the green one, though. LOL LOL LOL
Dragonball can be kind of racy, too; however, I think it’s been pretty sanitized for Cartoon Network. Still, when raisinbread was explaining the name themes, he forgot the underwear names:
Bulma = Bloomers (panties)
Trunks = Trunks (briefs)
Bra = Bra (y’know, bra)
Rereading raisinbread’s post, I caught the part about DBZ being (loosely) based on The Monkey King (“Saiyu-Ki”). Maybe I’m wrong about “saiyan” meaning peas. Or maybe it’s a pun playing on both the vegetable and monkeyman themes. That would be kind of funny.
There’s a Japanese animated movie from the '60s called “Saiyu-Ki.” It was dubbed in English using the voices of Frankie Avalon, Jonathon Winters, and Sterling Holloway, and was called “Alakazam the Great.” I thought the animation was kind of pretty and wouldn’t mind seeing it subbed (or even a decent dub) with the original, un-Westernized dialog.
[sub]Even with the corny 1960’s Americanized dialog, it was better than DBZ[/sub]
: but other than that, I only watch it in the original Japanese to see how much I can translate. Not much, as it turns out. It’s certainly not my favorite anime` (Cardcaptor Sakura and Pokemon take that spot of “pride”) but it’s good to watch. If you want a better version, watch DragonBall. It takes place when Goku was a young’un (don’t mind the tail) and should clear up somethings regarding DBZ.