The Impact of Dragon Ball Z: The Series that Changed Everything

everyone has that anime that takes you from a place where you know nothing about Japanese animation to a way of doing it that lets you know that the rules are different here, that they don't work the same way as Western cartoons and for a lot of people, anime was Dragon Ball Z. Dragon Ball Z is undoubtedly one of the most influential properties on the planet with 240 million volumes sold. It is the second most successful manga in history, losing only to a

series

it directly inspired, but it is also the defining moment in shonen anime and manga, a

series

that shaped almost

everything

that followed it and to which every popular series today it still owes a great death the success and influence of

dragon

ball

z has been monumental and constant i came across

dragon

ball

z for the first time almost two decades ago and coming home and watching it every day after school was a big part of my adolescence.

These characters, their battles, their struggles. I was fascinated by

everything

and the series left a mark on me in a way that no other show has. It's because of dragon ball z that I started working out, started practicing martial arts, and developed an interest in shonen anime in general, which eventually led me to other shows like yu hakusho hajimeno ippo and Hunter x Hunter. I wouldn't change the experience of seeing each one for anything. It was such a big part of my life that I have my doubts whether this channel would exist without it and to this day I still have a fondness for the series, maybe I only have a handful of others, so if you want an objective breakdown of this one series I'm not the person to give it to you I'm not blind to the serious flaws but they're not my goal here either nostalgia is a big part of what Dragon Ball Z is for me and more so than perhaps In any other show, I can't separate my feelings from what my life was like when I first saw it, so this will be even more than any of my other videos.

A personal and nostalgic look at what Dragon Ball Z is and what it was. For me, its many fans and the industry it defined and to do that I think we need to go back to the time when Dragon Ball Z first touched foreign shores, we need to go back to the 90's, the late 90's were a glorious era to be A young teenager who was first discovering his love for the Pokémon anime had been on television long enough to acclimate the general audience to the idea that Japanese animation existed and the success of Sony Playstation popularized the games of generation-defining titles like Final Fantasy VII were the system's big hits and, perhaps most importantly, the penetration of consumer 56k modems meant that, by the end of the decade, The vast majority of households were now equipped to explore the Internet, meaning that niche interests no longer needed to be so specific, if you so desired, you could now connect with other anime fans, give and receive recommendations, or, In my case, spending days and days downloading amvs configured in Linkin Park, but still, for many people it is like that.

Anime of the era was still confined to the box art of games or obscure titles that played on the arid television slots that haunted the early hours of the morning and if anime were to truly explode in the West, there would have to be a constant source easily consumable. of it and that source emerged during the last gasp of the '90s when Sean Atkins and Jason Demarco relaunched their Toonami serialization block in 1999. Toonami was nothing less than a revolutionary siren song for a generation of young anime fans who replaced the oldest and most traditional area of ​​power. slot with a block filled almost entirely with oriental properties like Gundam Wing Outlaw Star and Sailor Moon.

Until now, the only real way to consume these shows was by trading in VHS tapes or downloading low-quality fan subtitles online, but now anime was streaming directly into our living rooms and it was mind-blowing and at the center of this movement and the Toonami's most popular show was Dragon Ball Z. Keep in mind, this was American television in the late '90s, where the most popular animated shows were family-friendly titles like Doug and Rugrats. and in comparison, Dragon Ball Z was shocking, the show felt like a gateway to a completely different world, a violent and even dark place, one of incredibly powerful villains who committed genocide with barely a second thought, and horrible alternate futures where our entire cast of heroes too.

Since the vast majority of the human race had been wiped out by malevolent psychopathic androids, it was a series where people could suffer serious bodily injury and heroes could die, it felt like a show you shouldn't watch and couldn't be broadcast. on children's television and yet it also felt strangely unknowable and even a little mysterious Dragon Ball Z was, of course, based on Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball manga and what we know as Dragon Ball Z are really just the latest 325 chapters of Dragon Ball Z. It was only added when the original anime was rebooted with a new staff, this rebooted anime was then localized first through oceanic dubbing and then through funimation and this version which aired on toonami in the late 90s and early of the 2000s, so essentially what we got was the second. half of an ongoing story, unless you caught the first episode of the 100+ episode cycle, you had no real context for what a saiyan was, who the red ribbon army was, or what, in the name of the dear sweet chocolate, Christ was happening with the choutsu, but This lack of information was also a bit tempting, which contributed greatly to the show's already palpable sense of mystique and much of the fun of watching Dragon Ball Z on Toonami was Slowly piecing together the details of this world and learning how it all came together and when.

What You Did What You Got was the story of Goku and these Z fighters, a group of extremely powerful martial artists who would have to defend the Earth from even more powerful villains in battles that would play out as violent and bombastic clashes, and these encounters were the centerpieces. About Dragon Ball Z The first thing that will surprise anyone not familiar with Dragon Ball Z is the show's relentless focus on combat and action scenes. Go to any random episode or chapter and you'll probably find two overly muscled men beating the shit out of you. one another or very occasionally a slightly muscular girl i love you so much 18. but it was the nature and scale of the combat that was so fresh and exciting that the characters could fly, had the strength and durability to hit and being punched through mountains, as well as the ability to launch enormous energy blasts that would shake planets and in the process of these catastrophic clashes entire fields would be shattered and cities would buckle and burst under the strain of attacks that could be measured on a galactic scale was violent was destructive and it was deeply cathartic, it was easy to get lost in the pure chaos, whatever problem you had, whatever difficult reality you faced, it all faded away in the searing light of such destructive escapism and this was one of the main qualities that made me the show stand out against a sea of ​​their more everyday Western counterparts and this aspect was only enhanced by the very specific way the show handled its villains.

Each dbz arc was defined by the appearance of a new, more powerful enemy and it was around these characters that the events of the story unfolded. What's interesting about how Dragon Ball Z uses its villains is how dramatically different they were framed compared to the standard villains that were popular in Western and Eastern children's media of the time when most children's entertainment of this era was structured to be highly episodic with entire plots developing and concluding in a single episode, so if there was a villain, they were usually designed to be introduced, fought and defeated in the same 22 minute span and for decades that was how children's television worked , sticking rigorously to the weak monster formula as seen in shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-Man and Thundercats, this type of villain had actually been around even longer on Japanese television and rose to prominence in mid from the '70s with classic sentai shows like Kamen Rider and eventually made its way into the power-obsessed anime and manga of the '80s, where disposable, underpowered villains were routinely dispatched by hyper-powered heroes like Kinshiro.

The advantage of these replaceable, disposable bad guys was that it was a simple, repeatable episodic formula one that wouldn't alienate. new viewers, but constantly presented new opportunities for products while also constantly framing our heroes in the most powerful and victorious light possible, but then came the villains of Dragon Ball Z, ultra-powerful and nearly invincible demigod beings whose mere existence was so cataclysmic. He would dominate entire story arcs, committing large-scale atrocities and forcing our heroes into tense, desperate battles where survival seemed unlikely and victory seemed impossible. They weren't monsters of the week anymore, these were just monsters that routinely and solidly defeated our heroes, the ones that tore up the 22 minutes. structure and planted their feet deep into the story staying there for dozens and dozens of episodes during which the entire plot would focus solely on their existence.

The story framed these villains in a way that made them feel so dominant and powerful that the idea of ​​their defeat. It seemed truly impossible, but this created exhilarating tension as you truly felt every blow, every burst of energy as our heroes inched forward in the face of such monstrously overwhelming odds, that when victory occurred it felt profound and one of the reasons was won. why Goku won. Frieza feels so monumental is that at this point in the story you've seen Frieza decimate our heroes for dozens of episodes by defeating Nail Gohan Piccolo Vegeta Krillin in a climate where 22-minute villains reigned.

Frieza felt nothing less than a god and seeing Goku. Putting everything he had into fighting Frieza and finally surpassing him was nothing short of inspiring, it truly felt like this character had been through a monumentally punishing test and somehow came out the other end and survived this aspect of Dragon Ball Z is one of the main qualities that would define what shonen battle manga is and that would be repeated in many classic arcs that followed over the years one piece es enos lobby the dark tournament saga of yuyu hakusho the chimera ant arc of hunter x hunter these are some of the best arcs shown in the story and each one uses the same fundamental villain-centric structure that was defined and popularized in Dragon Ball Z.

With everything we've talked about so far, it might be pretty easy to summarize Dragon Ball Z as a consecutive one-on-one series. one fights and you know what it was totally. All of Dragon Ball Z's main plot points focus on the idea of ​​combat, but I also don't see that as an objective flaw and the reason is that all of these characters are written around the concept of fighting and to explain what I mean. Here, let's take a little look at this scene from the beginning of the Android saga. Goku and company receive a cryptic warning from the future that in three years evil androids will rise and devastate civilization and Bulma suggests. that by using the dragon balls they could stop the androids before they activate, but goku and the rest of the z fighters flatly refuse, they want to face the incoming threat of the androids, they want to test themselves against these new, more powerful enemies. despite reliable confirmation that and most of humanity will be wiped out in the process.

The takeaway from this scene is that combat wasn't actually a way to solve problems for these characters, but rather it was a justification for why they exist. These were all proud fighters who put an immense amount of personal weight into their physical strength and skill, or to put it another way, Dragon Ball Z wasn't a story about fighting, it was a story about a group of characters who really liked each other. loved fighting conflict, it was how these characters defined themselves, whether it be Vegeta's identity as the prince of all saiyans, Goku's pride in being the strongest under the heavens, or Frieza's belief that is the most powerful being in the universe, you could see this in both the delight these characters felt while fighting and the rigor and often grueling training they underwent between battles and it was here, in these scenes, where you could truly witness the The character's passion for both combat and self-improvement as they struggled to overcome their limits and reach new levels of strength.

Hell, as an adult, these scenes wereincredibly influential. You were seeing characters who were extremely passionate about something and put everything they had into it and it made you want to work hard and you also wanted to feel the same excitement as them. It also gave the fight scenes a more personal and intense emotional touch. These characters sweated and bled to reach their current level of strength. They carried an intense pride in their abilities and it made combat seem like personal victory felt monumental and validating, while defeat was emotional. and a devastating loss for these characters not only meant a loss, but it was a deeply personal affront to how they saw themselves and something they might not recover from for years to come, this also meant that when the protagonists dated to confront one of the characters of the program. immensely powerful villains, there was a really emotional way to it, like it was more than just a battle of good versus evil, but something that really mattered personally to both characters, so the plot of Dragon Ball Z revolved around a balance of shifting power between its heroes and villains. and then when a character reached a new level of power, it was a major turning point in the story and these moments were conveyed through Dragon Ball Z's now iconic transformation scenes because of how the show framed its heroes and Villains The transformations of both archetypes felt drastically different when a villain transformed, it was a nightmare, the worst case scenario possible, as the power gap now widened into an abyss, the transformation of a villain was also something to do.

What they always had access to or could only achieve through external means such as The heroes' transformations were for the most part internal, something that could only be achieved through massive amounts of the aforementioned training or having to break through some emotional barrier. depth that would then allow them to unleash their true potential and because of the way these moments were framed, they felt monumental because the heroes finally had a ray of hope in the face of the villains, as well as being deeply meaningful to the personal narratives of these characters. and the reason for this is that these scenes represented important moments in our characters' lives, the culmination of months, years or even lifetimes of training and fighting, instances in which a character's entire existence changes and ultimately becomes what you were meant to be and, as a teenager, where you were constantly insecure about every aspect of your physical and emotional identity.

These transformations were a powerful fantasy to believe in the idea that we all had an enormous amount of lightning potential within us that could be released in an instant and change everything. This is also another one. aspect of the series that would define what shonen battle titles were with important moments, even in modern titles that still feature these same types of transformations that were defined and popularized in Dragon Ball Z, so what you had with Dragon Ball Z was an animation that was felt. more violent, darker and exciting than anything close to its time slot, where passionate, combat-driven characters face off against invincible villains in impossible battles until a Western teenager who grew up on the familiar cartoons of this era, the concepts introduced by Dragon Ball Z were not only fresh but mind-blowing and the reason why the show shook the West like it did and created a generation of young anime fans hungry to discover more series like this.

I should note that at this point I've been mainly talking about Dragon Ball Z. from a mostly Western perspective, but in Japan, unlike the West, it was manga that came first, manga is probably the purest way to experience Dragon Ball Z, as well as being brilliant in some ways that only the handle really can, but given the scope and length of this video I think that to do the topic justice, we must return to it another day. However, I would like to focus on the production of the anime and, in particular, some of the aspects it added and

changed

about the original manga.

Be clear, I'm talking about the original 291 episode version that aired on Toonami a long time ago and not the shortened 167 episode version of Dragon Ball Z Kai that was released in 2008, but rather a little about the reason why What saw the Dragon Ball Z anime as a reboot and not just a continuation was the addition of two new key staff members, Kozo Murashita as director and Taka Okama as writer, who greatly contributed to shaping the look and feel of the Dragon Ball Z anime. from the anime. The reason Morishita was brought on board was that Kazuhiko Torashima, the series' former editor, was dissatisfied with the look of the Dragon Ball anime and felt that it failed to capture the more serious tone of the manga, so Morashida joined. incorporated into the release of zee starting in ratata and The good thing is that you can see the look of the anime evolve and change throughout its run, and the Ratted saga still has many of the bland and vague lines of work that were inherent to the original until reaching the finely perfected.

Sharp drawings of the Buu saga and I really love how the show looks. At this point, there's a real energy and solidity to the way these characters move. Murashida was also responsible for much of the more interesting art direction in Z. I'm not afraid to take a scene from the manga and drench it in a scorching neon color palette and he gave many of the fight scenes this riotous edge. And almost surreal Murashita would also drastically increase the level of destruction and chaos of these fights by adding completely new things. stages and taking the time to animate and accentuate the damage to the environment that really helped communicate the magnitude of these battles and it was little details like this that gave some of the biggest moments in the story a much grander and even more

impact

ful emotional than the one they had in the original manga, as for Koyama, he was not only the screenwriter of the show, but he also wrote the first 13 Dragon Ball Z movies and was the creator of popular technically non-canonical characters like Broly and Kula.

He also wrote a rare side to Dragon Ball Z. manga called Prince Vegeta, a companion comic illustrated by Minoru Maeda that developed Vegeta's backstory and early years and to this day you can still see him giving interviews arguing that Broly could kick him. anyone's butt in a supermarket. I mention all this because I think it shows one. Koyama was extremely passionate about these characters and you could see this especially in the additional scenes he would add to the show he had used to develop these characters, their relationships and backstories taking this scene from Trunks' battle with Cell in the manga.

Cell basically just holds the young saiyan back, but in the anime the scene is given some much-needed weight and context by fleshing out both fighters' stories with individual flashbacks. The first is Trunks explaining the hardships he had to endure in the android-ravaged future, including an especially tragic sequence where he saw the Z fighters one by one being chased and eliminated by the androids and I really love this scene because really helps communicate how dire Trunks' future was, but then Cell 2 shares his story of how he woke up. the distant timeline after the androids and z-fighters annihilated each other and found themselves trapped and alone in the broken future unable to evolve without their android counterparts is a minor moment but adds a slight air of sympathy for Cell as simply like trunks, he had to endure a ruined future and find his way back to the past, and as a result, while the fight itself isn't especially memorable, the way the characters' narratives weave through their backstories it forms a strange kind of connection between the two. makes them both feel like they've really been through a lot to get to this point, giving the encounter some much-needed emotional context and this is what Koyama brought to Dragon Ball Z.

More flashbacks, more emotion, more Piccolo and Gohan slowly forming the la cutest friendship on the planet plus vegeta being sad in the rain alone more of these characters and who they were there were also other aspects that contributed to the success of the show and particularly in the west one of which was the incredible bruce faulconer soundtrack that underlay it to many of the show's scenes with a deliciously dark synthetic audio flavor while also bringing a good degree of heart to some of its most touching moments and also with much of the voice work, some of which was incredible, particularly the performance of christopher sabbat who voiced both piccolo and vegeta and just listen to the emotion he brings to this scene when piccolo begs goku to stop the fight between gohan and cell do you want to know what he's thinking? he is not thinking about strength or competition.

He wonders why his father is standing there leaving him. He dies and then your son may be the most powerful person in the world, but he's also a scared 11-year-old boy. I mention all of these individuals because, while the manga is brilliant and unique, there are many people responsible for the success of the Dragon Ball Z anime and considering that is the version that brought the series to a global audience. I felt like they deserved some credit here, so up to this point in the video I've been trading Dragon Ball Z as gently as possible. I haven't talked about any of the Flaws of the series.

I haven't talked about the almost absurd level of filler that pads out and bogs down almost every part of the anime. How overusing cost-saving animation techniques reduces the quality of fights. There are places in the manga where you can really feel Toriyama's fatigue, as at this point he had been writing weekly manga for almost two decades and his fatigue shows in the occasional dip in the quality of the art or how contrived some of it feels. of the writing, especially later around the buu saga that the series suffers. Basically all the long running themes shown in the manga can cause problems, an underused supporting cast, piccolo effects, these were all problems that I didn't see when I was a teenager, but now, years later, I find them impossible to ignore and even outside of those criticisms.

It's hard not to see now how other shows have taken the foundation that Dragon Ball Z laid down and built on it. It's a much simpler story than titles like One Piece or Hunter x Hunter and those series arguably took what Dragon Ball Z did and built more interesting and creative worlds around it and filled those worlds with a more diverse cast of characters. and convincing. Titles like You, Hakusho, also took the themes of Dragon Ball Z and expressed them in infinitely more human and heartfelt ways, so the truth is, I really don't. I know what it's like for a person in 2018 to come to Dragon Ball Z for the first time.

As much as I love the series, I find it difficult to recommend 291 episodes of anything to anyone, and while Kai certainly makes it much more digestible, it's not the version of the show I grew up with, having removed Bruce Faulconer's iconic soundtrack and cut many of the additional scenes, including the two mentioned above, and rewriting much of Koyama's dialogue to better match the manga and in the process losing many of these subtleties. and nuances, as well as a host of other small details that I'm sure very few people except me will care about, and yet, personally, I don't know if I'll ever go back and rewatch Dragon. ball z in its entirety, I don't know if I'll ever be in a place in my life where I have the time or desire to make it happen, but in no way do I think that's okay because what's more important to me than that is the I remember that the program left me and that's why it seems right to end this video with the part of Dragon Ball Z that stayed with me the longest and the character that affected me the most, Vegeta, enters the story of Dragon Ball Z as the villainous protagonist of his second arc born a warrior prince of the saiyan race vegeta's combat capabilities stood out from an early age fighting and winning alongside his father king vegeta defining his identity by his ferocity and strength declaring himself the elite of the elite the prince of all However, the times would not last, as one day Vegeta sees his father defeated by the malicious space warlord Frieza, who takes Vegeta as an indentured servant in exchange for sparing the lives of his father and his people alone. to return to that agreement later when Frieza destroys the saiyan. home planet and wiping out almost the entire Vegeta race now, one of the four remaining Saiyans continues to fight under Frieza's command in hopes of one day becoming powerful enough to rise up and defeat him, during which time he suffers a humiliating defeat in the earth at hands. of goku, a lowborn saiyan commoner, after many difficulties, the day finally comes when vegeta believes that he has finally ascended to the level of the legendary super saiyan andfaces Frieza only to be crushed under the heel of the invincible warlord and then watches dishonor as goku did what he never could become a super saiyan and finally end frieza's reign vegeta now without purpose or direction will live to Earth and trains tirelessly to surpass his rival and escape the shadow that Goku has cast but as time progresses and he slowly finds himself becoming a reluctant ally to both Goku and the people of Earth.

Years pass and Vegeta wakes up one day to a life that he no longer recognizes. He now has a human wife and a half-saiyan son who he has actually become. Worrying about the time during which the warrior prince he once was began to feel like a distant memory. This realization awakens deep anger within Fujita. How could the prince of all saiyans be reduced to the common life of a family man and in that anger he trades? She uses his soul to gain greater power and turns against his former allies by attacking and killing a crowd of innocent people in an attempt to drag Goku into a terrible final fight.

These actions would cause the rise of Majin Buu, an invincible monster that would wreak havoc. across the earth and so Vegeta, faced with the destruction he has now caused, takes his son in his arms and hugs him for the first time before saying goodbye and leaving to face the monster once again and in the first selfless act of His existence gives him his life in a brilliant final attack like all Dragon Ball Z characters. Death would only prove temporary for Vegeta and he would later return to help Goku in the final battle against Buu, finally letting go of his pride and accepting Goku as ally and The Story of a Friend Vegeta had a big

impact

on me in my youth and I would be lying if I said that it ever stopped being the case and the reason is that despite all his strength even though he existed in a universe of explosives. spectacle and super-powered showdowns, he still felt so real and imperfect, someone with an intense amount of pride and self-loathing who would compare himself to everyone around him, a person who would make disastrous self-destructive decisions and suffer one crushing defeat after another.

Who would wake up one day to realize that life hasn't turned out the way they planned, that the person they thought they would become will now never exist, and yet someone who, at the end of it all, was still able to find fulfillment and that's something hard to put in a children's cartoon that I listened to every day at 5:00 p.m. m., but in a broader sense, Vegeta also represents what I love about Dragon Ball Z that you would see. These characters reach deep within themselves to face the overwhelmingly impossible, and in light of that, getting up the next day and going out into the world and dealing with whatever problem they faced there made it feel a little more possible.

It wasn't a story about getting what you want, but about overcoming who you are, and this to me is the legacy of the series, the explosion it caused whose reverberations would be felt throughout shonen storytelling for decades to come. and whose resulting force would break through global barriers and create entire continents of new anime fans. It is a story about great characters who do impossible things and for me, for an industry and for a generation, this was the impact of Dragon Ball Z, the series that

changed

. all friends, thank you once again for joining me today, I apologize if the weight of this video was a little longer than usual.

This one took some time. I have a little announcement to make and that is that Crunchyroll was kind enough to invite me as a guest to their 2017 Anime Awards Show in Los Angeles on Saturday, February 24, so spread the word as it's a great opportunity for their shows to favorites get some much-needed exposure. Personally, I'm looking for Maiden Abyss for anime of the year. the lustrous for best animation and my lesbian experience with loneliness for best manga, thanks as always to my incredible sponsors who made this video possible and if you want to be among them, you can do so for no more than a dollar at patreon.com super eyepatchwolf in particular this video i would like to thank lulu lamperouge maura cassidrus magdalene macleod schmack95 jp arthur artberg ernesto centino professor heraldo american hoagie robb aka your boy boob surgeon and slushie machine i also want to say a big thank you to my friend sheamus who helped me with editing the latest favorite things video, he makes amazing indie films, so check him out on twitter at seamus hanley, where you can also find me on ipatchwolf, where I'm a little more active these days. and also find me on the podcast of the video game let's Fight a boss where we recently talked about Monster Hunter and Dragon Ball Fighter Z friends, take care of yourselves and I'll see you next time.