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Dragon Ball
ドラゴンボール
1986 · TV series · 24 min episodes · 1 season
AnimationActionAdventureScience FictionFantasy
Young Goku sets off on a quest with his teenage friend Bulma to find the seven Dragon Balls, which grant whoever possesses them a single wish.
1 positive9 neutralfrom 10 commenters
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10 comments on Hacker News
> Nippon TV in Japan did a cool TV series adaption of this story that was dubbed into English and shown on kids TV in the UK as 'Monkey', which was quite popular back in the day.
Nah, HN readers might be more familiar with its anime adaptation, "Dragon Ball".
While there was a ban, it wasn't an all-encompassing ban on everything Japanese. To give you a video game example, both NES and SNES were licensed to Hyundai and released as Comboy (컴보이) and Super Comboy (슈퍼컴보이). This came with the expected large releases, as you can see in Korean adverts of the time, literally singing about Super Mario, Bubble Bobble, Megaman III, Ninja Turtles, Doctor Mario, Dragon Quest, Zelda, etc.[0][1]
Manga and anime were available as well, as long as they were translated and adapted to local references accordingly. Dragon Ball was available by 1989 officially[2] and Crayon Shin-chan by 1995[3]. Music and regular films were the most impacted since Japanese language could not be kept in media.
Reading through the Wikipedia article for it[4], it's quite incomplete as it makes it sound like all things Japanese were banned in Korea. At least for games, anime, and manga, by mid-90s, quite a lot were available officially. While a bit biased (a whole separate issue about Namuwiki[5]), here's a perspective on the history of it if you can read Korean (or want to read through a translator)[6]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_C6azkQ7Mw [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzBHMmDBKuE [2] https://namu.wiki/w/%EB%93%9C%EB%9E%98%EA%B3%A4%EB%B3%BC#s-10 [3] https://namu.wiki/w/%ED%81%AC%EB%A0%88%EC%9A%A9%20%EC%8B%A0%EC%A7%B1#s-7.1 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_influence_on_Korean_culture [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namuwiki [6] https://namu.wiki/w/%EC%9D%BC%EB%B3%B8%20%EB%8C%80%EC%A4%91%EB%AC%B8%ED%99%94%20%EA%B0%9C%EB%B0%A9
> That was about around 1990, when Dragon Ball was aired for the first times.
In France, Dragon ball first aired in 1988.
Kids in the 80's didn't say they were watching anime, they said they were watching japanese cartoons. They knew it was different from Disney and Tom&Jerry and other productions but it didn't mean yet what anime meant in the mid 90's with Ghost in the shell, Lodoss and other anime that weren't aired on TVs (and that weren't long running serie).
And then there was someone at FR3 who somehow slipped 3 or 4 hours a harlock captain movies on christma and new year's eve in the beginning of the 90's. That was dope.
What an odd comment. Dragon Ball, which is absolutely huge in Japan, is an original creation of Akira Toriyama. I mean, the top-earning Japanese film of 2018 was Dragon Ball Super: Broly, which sold 3 million+ tickets in Japan. Dragon Ball became the basis for how Jump structured all of its shonen manga. Its impact on the industry is incalculable. You'll be hard-pressed to find a Japanese person under 50 who isn't familiar with Dragon Ball.
Dragon Quest, a video game series that was very popular in Japan in the 1980s, featured character art by Toriyama. I wouldn't exactly call Dragon Quest "Toriyama's work". And while Dragon Quest is very popular among a certain audience, it doesn't have nearly the reach and broad appeal of Dragon Ball.
Absolutely loved everything Dragon Ball growing up. I still get excited hearing about new Dragon Ball movies and series. He'll be sorely missed and his influence on anime will last generations. Far too soon, RIP Akira.
This article seems to be written by a religious zealot, and the fact that the article opens mentioning his concern of whether or not his friends at church nod in approval or not about what he does is very telling.
I have 2 young kids, and I select what they can watch. And I'm aware that when I was a kid I watched lots of violent shows like Tom and Jerry like someone else said, or even Dragon Ball which is a million times more violent, but I hesitate to let them watch other much more innocuous shows.
I'm an atheist, so I'm not burdened with religious prejudices, and I'm very open minded, I think everyone has a right to sleep with and love whoever they want, and to identify themselves as whoever they want, I also think no one should be discriminated against because of their skin tone, nationality, beliefs, identity, disabilities or anything else.
But I also understand the outrage against wokism. There is an episode in Ridley Jones which is a show for young kids, where there is a bison saying that it's non-binary and what are their preferred pronouns. This is completely unnecessary for the plot and those are subjects that go miles above the heads of the intended audience. Also in many of the latest Disney productions and other shows in Netflix there's been a lot of queer characters and gay/lesbian relationships, which is not necessarily a problem depending how it is treated, specially if the production is for teenagers and adults, but I think it's completely unnecessary and kind of force feeding to include that kind of topics in the shows for the youngest kids. That trend also brings us ludicrous contradictions like an upcoming version of Snow White and the 7 dwarves, which are not actually dwarves, I think there's maybe 1 dwarf only.
Having said that, there's so many examples of religious extremisms taking things to the, erm, well, extremes. And I'm not going to even mention Muslim Theocracies because I think those are ultimate level of autocratic religion fuelled fascist regimes. But for example in Catholic Poland, the children's show Teletubbies was banned because they said the purple teletubbie was gay.
I think there are lots of shows in Netflix that it would be wise to don't allow your kids to watch, depending on their age of course. But the concerns the article raises about Paw Patrol are honestly laughable. There's a lot of illogical things in kid's shows. Just look Spongebob Squarepants and you'll see that they're under the water but most of the time physics and everything else behaves as if they're not. In Paw Patrol I always asked myself how a 10 year old doesn't seem to have adult supervision and seems to have unlimited resources and money to fund his organization. But again, in this show puppies talk and can drive cars, so you can't expect it to be based on reality. Of course in this show there will always be some kind of trouble which the Paw Patrol will happily solve, but there wouldn't be much of a show if that wasn't the case, isn't it? I can think of many series I watched when I was a kid and teenager, that also show a different problem or villain in every episode, actually that's the case for a large number of series. Just think of those oldies Knight Rider, McGuiver, A Team... The same critiques applied to Paw Patrol in the article would applie to all of them.
Also it calls the Mayor in Paw Patrol tyrannical when there's no evidence of repression or autocracy in the show, and I find it funny that he fantasizes with a resistance composed of poets and religious types. As if religious types weren't on the oppressing end of autocracies most of the time along history.
Sun Wukong is five-times-immortal, because apparently each different method of achieving immortality has a loophole through which the immortal may still be killed. The loophole for one may be blocked by another. And if you're already immortal one way, you have time to do all the others, too.
This is why the divine court had to imprison him forever by pinning him down with a mountain heavier than he could lift. Execution wouldn't work.
There are quite a few books, movies, miniseries, and television shows covering this. The Monkey King is a cultural staple in China. Son Goku of Dragon Ball is also based on him. Loosely.
Have you paid attention to what your thoughts are at night?
I've had similar issues before and I've noticed that if I think about work, projects, my day, etc. I could go on for a long time without falling asleep. I began to notice that if I think about generally fiction/stories, I can fall asleep much more quickly. In my case I think about plots of movies I've recently watched (or a long time ago), whether it's Avengers or Dragon Ball etc. Perhaps you could give that a try.
Every year has a slew of animes which wrap up in 13 or 26 episodes. A sparse few go to 52. An even sparser few fit the mold you describe, but even many of those end eventually with a planned conclusion (Bleach and Dragon Ball <Suffix>).
I wasn't, having never read it. Anyway after the first 13 episodes Dragon Ball had little to do with Journey to the West other than sort of having an analogous cast of characters, most of whom eventually fell out of the spotlight.