Hacker Cinema
Dragon Ball Z
ドラゴンボールゼット
1989 · TV series · 26 min episodes · 9 seasons
AnimationScience FictionFantasyActionAdventure
Now happily married and with a son, martial arts champion Goku must defend Earth from a series of extraterrestrial invaders bent on destruction.
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> Because we could buy stuff without leaving the house?
I'm guessing you were still pretty young/not yet born at the time?
Online shopping didn't just mean "I don't have to leave the house", it opened up a whole world of what was even possible.
Prior to the web if you didn't live in a big city (and less people did then) then your access to books, music, movies was insanely restricted.
I deeply recall how painfully limited my local Sam Goody was, even major "alternative" bands only had partial discographies available. I remember visiting my father's college campus as an early teen and being beyond excited to find a copy of NIN's "halo 1" in a college town record store. True indie music was reserved for kids with cool older siblings that both knew where the stores were and could drive there. In order to watch Dragon Ball Z I had to rely on a friend whose dad was a plumber in NYC and knew where the bootleg stores in China-town were. I got to tag along once and picked up a single random episode of a Gundam series, never to be finished because I could never find another.
Sure it was sort of fun to figure all this stuff out, but at the same time my bookshelf is filled with books that changed my life in various ways I would simply never had been able to find (or even be aware of) in the pre-web days. If you wanted to learn programming in the 90s you had to hope your local Walden books had some good options, and you certainly weren't going to learn Haskell or Lisp. Mine only had books on Excel, so I didn't learn to program until I was older.
Now the fact that American suburbs where a complete cultural wasteland in the 90s might be the bigger issue than the cure which was the web, but nonetheless the early web did make the world of information much bigger.
How to not find this amazing?!
We are just a couple years of really good anime/manga "live" action movies! A Real Dragon Ball Z or One Piece movie.
seeing dragon ball z on toonami in the early 2000's changed my life. it was so much cooler than anything i had ever seen up to that point. my life revolved around coming home to watch a new episode. my brother would tape episodes on vhs so we could pause it and i could try to draw the scene. i almost ended up with an art degree in college after it sparked my artistic side. i don't think i would have ever been so interested in japanese culture had dragon ball not been that gateway
I watched some Dragon Ball on TV as a kid, wasn't a fan at first, until I randomly saw the first or second episode. The beginning is very charming and has such a sense of adventure! I didn't know about Manga at the time, and you couldn't just "binge" TV shows back then. So now I tried to catch every single episode. I think this was the first TV show I saw where time actually passes - unless you were following some soap opera for decades, that wasn't really a thing! At some point there's a gap in time where the characters all go their own ways and then meet again for a big tournament, and the main character actually got a major growth spurt. As far as I remember, that was basically unthinkable in an animated show in the 90s, and to be honest that's still very rare today.
And that's when it felt like I was growing along with the characters in the show. After the next fast-forward, the main character is grown up, has a wife and a kid who looks a bit like he did when we first saw him. From then on, the manga/anime sheds pretty much anything outside its core formula (they fight some monster, lose, train really hard, then crush it) and it's mostly superheroes and monsters flexing and yelling. But teenage me ate it up. "Dragon Ball Z" was quite delayed in my country, and it's difficult to explain why a kid like me got very excited about some anime characters changing their hair colors, and would then download RealPlayer clips of that over ISDN. If you were a teenager at that time, you definitely had a whole bunch of cryptically named DBZ characters in your MSN or ICQ friends list.
On a completely different note, Akira Toriyama just completely redefined action in manga. I know he was pushed to do more martial arts because of the success of things like "Fist of the North Star", but I doubt you got this sense of motion and intensity on a piece of paper before Dragon Ball. Some of that got through in the anime as well, and it was the other main reason I was fascinated by it as a kid.
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That's like telling someone that Dragon Ball Z gets good around episode 100.
Maybe it's even true, but it doesn't matter.
As a friendly counterpoint, my parents limited the time that I watched TV when I was young (mostly pre-ubiquitous-internet, so it probably implies limiting internet time somewhat). I’m just sharing my experience.
I got to pick what I watched and when; I just got 30 minutes or an hour a day. I mostly tried to catch the latest Dragon Ball Z episode.
The general strictness of my parents lead to severe rebellion, and that got me into all sorts of trouble (so it definitely wasn’t all a good thing). Now that I’ve matured a bit, I enjoy not having much of a TV habit (I find that I self-titrate internet content in a healthy way as well). I’m actually pretty grateful for the limits.
I don’t have kids, and I don’t know what I would do regarding this posted question, but I thought that I would share that I have very positive feelings concerning my parents’ decision to impose a limit on TV consumption time. I filled the rest of my time reading books, and that’s a very fulfilling time-sink to this day.
Also relevant: I think a lot of the streaming-video content available today (Netflix and others) has a lot more intrinsic value than most of the TV content when I was young. There are so many brilliant writers producing theses shows nowadays that my parents’ sentiment may not really apply to all the content. Even something like Cocomelon (we put it on in social settings if someone’s got their kids with them) is just better than Rugrats as far as providing entertaining wholesome/halfway-informative content.
Hard training is not the only ingredient to excellence. Po had an abundance of the secret ingredient: a spirit of authentic love and enthusiasm, leading to a practice dominated by play.
It's a theme you can encounter in a lot of martial arts contexts. You could say it is the entire lesson of Dragon Ball Z -- Vegeta exemplifies the ambitious hard work guts and glory approach. And it takes him very far. But he's always playing second fiddle to Goku's approach, defined by love, enthusiasm, and play. Likewise, Shifu cannot surpass Oogway.
It's a theme you'll encounter outside of martial arts, too. For example, high level hackers are said to be characterized by playfulness -- you find puns and puzzles and riddles and laughter, devouring of technical manuals like candy. There are rigorous hours of morally disciplined study, but this could not really be said to be the source of their power or the character of their existence. Sure, there's plenty of hard work, and it's unavoidable, but the spirit of love and curiosity and play and enthusiasm will take you much farther than the spirit of discipline and ambition alone.
I have a book about learning electric guitar that repeats the lesson. The author writes (in paraphrase - I don't have it with me at the moment), "In my experience, there are two groups of students of the guitar: those who practice a lot because they want to be good, and those who practice every spare moment because they literally would rather not do anything else. One of these groups gets really, really good -- I'll let you guess which."
Po has that. His authentic enthusiasm leads to a spirit that finds the suffering of practice to be light because he is so overjoyed that he is doing kung fu. It leads to an encyclopedic knowledge of the art because he would literally not rather be reading about anything else. He surpasses Shifu and perhaps eventually Oogway in subsequent films, entirely because this spirit leads him places that mere discipline and ambition never would.
Are his kicks as clean as the five? Never. That's not his strength. And to the film's credit, he doesn't skip the discipline and training aspect. But he remains physically a bit sloppy to the end of the series, and I think this is making the point that this is not what strength is. Po's strength is in his spirit, and this is what in the end makes him the greatest master.
I have always found his fight with Tai Lung a little unsatisfying, too. It seems odd that he's immune to nerve attacks. What, because he's fat or furry or something? What does that have to do with excellence? It seems a one off oddity, not a deep lesson. But the film is so philosophically on point that I doubt it's something this dumb. The lesson about the superiority of a spirit of play is so true to life that I have to think there's something here.
The best interpretation I have is this -- what we see with Po and Tai Lung might be metaphorically talking about a real life phenomenon: facing an opponent as overpowering as Tai Lung will absolutely sap the strength from your limbs if your faith is in your body and in your training. You think you're strong? He's stronger. You think you're well trained? Please. There will always be someone better, and when you face them, you will be paralyzed and weak by the knowledge of that fact. But if you are a lover of the art and it's something you cannot turn off, that effect does not work on you. You cannot lose faith because your efforts were never about faith. As hopeless as you may feel about your odds of success (and Po feels hopeless right up until the moment when he wins!), you retain your strength and alertness because to you fighting is not about winning -- it is about being who you are. The situation cannot change who you are.
> Is NGE worth watching for someone who never was really into anime?
Maybe? NGE is not very representative of anime in general. Its definitely its own creature.
These days, "anime" lovers like "That Time I was Reincarnated as a Slime", "Naruto", "My Hero Academia", or "Demon Slayer". And back then, this "style" was carried by Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball Z.
You know: powerful hero collects a bunch of things and saves the world kind of plot. None of these shows are anything like NGE. I'd say people who like NGE will probably not like Demon Slayer, and vice versa.
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NGE is an existential mecha-pilot anime about depression, being forced into a losing battle with powers you don't understand. If you feel like dragging yourself through 26 episodes of that, yeah, go ahead.
But this ain't the happy-go-lucky overpowered main character always wins kinda show that's popular by 2020 standards. That's for sure.
Don't get me wrong, I like both style of shows (!!!), and both have their place. But "anime" is so diverse that you really can't compare this story with other great anime stories.
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That being said, I'd say the perfect "starter anime" is "Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood". This show has a lot of the crazy fights you'd see in some of the more battle-oriented anime, but also has some deeper self-introspection that was more common to 90s era anime.
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood hits a lot of themes and concepts that seem universal, that many people both anime-fans and non-anime fans can enjoy.
EDIT: In particular, the main character: Edward Elric, may be a kid but he grows up through the show and becomes a hero. Not your typical "anime superpower" growth (Naruto/Demon Slayer / Dragonball Z)... but instead actual outlook on life and maturity kind of growth. Yes, its a hero's journey but there's a reason this story is told over and over again, its a classic epic tale setup with widespread appeal.
What's exceptional is that Edward Elric is a mostly mature character even from episode 1. So starting from a largely mature character and seeing him grow even more is quite spectacular honestly. FMA just does the hero's tale extremely well, far better than most typical anime... with a few deconstructive bits thrown in here and there.
NGE is almost a self-loathing kind of story that makes you feel pitiful. Its good at it too, but I don't think it'd be popular or mainstream. NGE is really out there and goes 100% for whatever depressing feeling its trying to drag you into. I really don't think its something I'd typically share (despite its widespread acclaim, it really is a niche-storyline IMO that few people would enjoy).
EDIT: In contrast: FMA does have a couple of self-loathing parts (The early "Tucker" arc is especially a horrific ordeal), but never quite to the degree that NGE ever gets to. Its still horrific what happens in FMA: Brotherhood, but you never really lose hope in Edward Elric. You can root for the hero from the beginning and never lose faith.
In contrast, NGE absolutely expects you to lose faith in Shinji Ikari, his father, and the entire set of humans involved in the plot. These are not good people. You're watching a train-wreck in slow motion. This is very unusual, even by anime standards.
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Lets put this in terms of WW2 movies. There's lots of WW2 movies: like "Downfall / Der Untergang" and "Midway". Both have their benefits, both are WW2 movies.
But "Downfall / Der Untergang" is simply going to be more niche because the depressing stories are just less popular than the mainstream happy / boom boom fighting movies (like Midway).
If you were trying to get people into WW2 movies, would you start them on "Downfall / Der Untergang" ?? Probably not. Similarly, I wouldn't recommend NGE to a beginner anime watcher... I'd start you on something happier and more mainstream.
I looked at Dragon Ball Z. The first two entries were for actual episodes, but of Dragon Ball Heroes, not Dragon Ball Z. The last one was for "season 5 episode 65" but was actually a thread for the most recent movie, that contained the string "5.65" in the title.
Of course, I did choose this series because I thought it would be especially likely to have problems, but YMMV.
> I wanted to give both the anime and the Microsoft Store's video section a try, and did nothing more than just opening the Microsoft Store, finding the content, getting it for free and watching the first episode. My guess is that this might have been the problem.
I agree. It's very likely that, by using a US VPN, you circumvented geo-restriction in the Microsoft Store. You could test that by creating another Microsoft account, under a fake name, using a commercial VPN service with a non-US exit. Then try to get the Dragon Ball Z episode from Microsoft Store. If you need help, feel free to email me.
I've got another thing to become suspicious about, which again involves VPN.
I live in Turkey, I use VPN (on AWS at Ohio) not to circumvent anything else than the imposed restrictions of my own country, and not some other countries' or companies'. Along with countless others, Wikipedia and Imgur are some well-known websites that are made unaccessible from Turkey. With Windows 10's VPN client, you don't even recognize that you are on VPN. The overhead is so low (relative to the basic internet speeds), that I don't even notice that VPN is on most of the time. I usually open it when I want to visit some Wikipedia page, and turn it back off after recognizing delay/lag on the games I'm playing online. Not even videos load recognizably slower, not on my VPN on AWS at least.
Within last 10 days, I had encountered the news about Dragon Ball Z - Season 1 being free on Microsoft Store, one like this I just found searching: https://www.neowin.net/news/first-season-of-dragon-ball-z-now-free-to-download-on-windows-10-and-xbox-one
I wanted to give both the anime and the Microsoft Store's video section a try, and did nothing more than just opening the Microsoft Store, finding the content, getting it for free and watching the first episode. My guess is that this might have been the problem.
If this really is the case, then I could not possibly know I was fooling Microsoft Store: - I did not and still do not know if the content was not available, free or paid, from Turkey. There were no indications of the content being unavailable to Turkey on the Store page. - Microsoft Store did not ask me if I am from Ohio, I never said I was from Ohio. I regularly use VPN for personal reasons, unrelated to this matter. I did not use VPN to make Microsoft Store think that I am from Ohio. Microsoft Store itself may have falsely assumed that I am from Ohio, and granted me the right to watch a content for free. It is Microsoft Store's fault for immediately assuming my location from the way I connect to the Internet.
If my guesses are true, then Microsoft's Microsoft Store is the culprit for being overly presumptuous about my location, not asking me for approval, hence not putting me responsible, and giving me free access to some content as a result. I may not be put responsible for Microsoft's presumptions that I haven't approved.
> What would you ever fast forward besides the intro/"last time on.." and the outro?
5 minute long freeze-frame shots where the camera slowly pans over shocked faces having a massive emotional reaction to every single clever move.
Just like I'd fast forward Dragon Ball Z every time Goku needs to use 3 episodes of grunting to charge up an energy ball attack.
This makes a lot of sense. Every day, at 4am, I would spring out of my bed and begin screaming as I jumped up and down on my parents bed to wake them up, sometimes literally opening their eyelids for them, kept screaming, made myself captain crunch and began watching my daily episode of dragon ball z while eating capn crunch and acting out kung fu moves on the furniture.
My sister on the other hand is pretty quiet and just sometimes procrastinates too much and doesn't clean her apartment.
Iunno, I'm pretty sure most people know what Pokémon is and a large portion of those know it had a TV show. Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Cardcaptor Sakura all seem to be pretty well known among the younger generations and by extension the older generations who raise and take care of them.
And anime/manga is becoming more and more mainstream. Sure it's not like you'll walk in on your boss catching up on the latest episode of Attack on Titan but it's getting there.
Some very interesting analysis, and in some ways, it raises even more interesting questions about the sampling at IMDB. Who is filling out IMDB reviews and ratings? How many segments are there among the raters, and to what extent are they truly representative of the general, TV-watching population?
Looking at the list, for instance, you see that Dragon Ball Z shows up as one of the highest-rated shows of its decade. Now, perhaps a truly randomized, representative sample of the population really would rank Dragon Ball Z as one of the greatest TV series ever made. But my gut tells me that's unlikely. More likely is that a big cluster of fans of the show have self-selected into rating it highly. What you're actually seeing, in this case, is the power of a very vocal, very rabid niche. [1]
This same effect, in reverse, can artificially deflate the ratings of shows and movies that a vocal minority of the population rallies against. This appears to be the case with Gunday, one of the lowest-rated movies on the site, which David Goldenberg of FiveThirtyEight discusses in a very interesting post: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-story-behind-the-worst-movie-on-imdb/
Finally, we need to filter the data set for size. Ice TV, a show from 1996 with all of 6 ratings on its IMDB page, probably wouldn't pass our gut check for "Best of the 90s," alongside shows like The Sopranos and Friends, which probably got ratings more or less representative of public opinion.
This is a fascinating subject and a really compelling start. But the next step in this sort of analysis is developing a reasonable methodology for parsing and reconciling quality, quantity, and clusters. To give the author due credit, he expresses the appropriate amount of skepticism or reservation when showing results. And his observations about genre and overall trends are fascinating to see.
[1] Of course, this raises some intriguing questions about what, exactly, a "quality" show is. A show that has a large, thriving fanbase is a great show to that fanbase. And to the extent it's attracted a sizable, rabid following, it can probably be said to be a great show in general -- even if it's not everyone's cup of tea. And that's probably fine. Obviously not every show is going to appeal to everyone in the population. Nevertheless, strong-niche shows confound our idea of "generally" great shows and make normative comparisons very hard to do, unless we start factoring for things like strength of sentiment.
Tips like yours makes me wish I had studied a lot more of the classics, drama, etc.
One "trick" that drives me bugga is the plot device.
Like all kids of an age, my son devoured the Harry Potter books. Trying to be a good dad, shared interests, and all that, I tried to read those books. As far as I got, Rowling would write the protagonists into wedge and then throw in some awesome new power to get them out. Like a bad Star Trek TNG episode or pretty much all of Dragon Ball Z (which was still fun to watch with my kid). Haha. Never thought of Harry Potter as manga before.
Anyhoo.
Compared to Neil Gaiman's efforts. Especially his children's books. They're perfectly formed spheres, without flaw. His stories are internally consistent and conflict resolution happens in a (suspended belief) believable way.
I like anime vs north american television because often it's a succinct 26 episode series. It's going to have a conclusion. It feels like reading a book at times.
There are many anime that go on forever. Dragon Ball Z, etc. The ones truly worth watching are the science fiction ones. Planetes, Nadesico, Ghost in the Shell, some of the early Gundams, and Evangelion. Each of those paint a very coherent picture of the world. Very unlike american television where a series is milked out over years and often fails to deliver.
It will also stay very similar. The outline of life in the 1970s vs 2010 is still fairly similar. Drive around in cars, live in a house, take the subway, read the newspaper, watch tv, go to the movie theatre, buy food at a grocery store, call people on a landline, plug stuff into the wall, use your fridge and hair drier, drive around in your RV, fly an airplane at supersonic speeds, rent an apartment, have a family reunion, go to the doctor, get surgery, take drugs, read a book, go to the public library, go to school, flush a toliet, use an AC, open the windows. The dragon ball Z live action movie, although pretty horrible has a pretty accurate deception how high school will look like in 20 to 40 years. Pretty much the same with more flat screens and computers.
Well I actually forgot the name, but I'm pretty sure it's not Mondo Kim.
It's like straight out of a movie where you find this old, eclectic store and it has all these buildable, multi-scale Gundam models, etc.
I try not to go becuase the first time I went it was like, "Dragon Ball Z - the Uncut, Unedited version" and it was like, "WTF? There's an edited and an unedited version"?
Basically everything they have makes me realize just how much I haven't seen ... by the time I got done with my wish list I had like $15,000 worth of anime I really, really wanted to see.
That's when i realized I lost control, walked out and never came back.
But if you want to chase the anime dragon, let me know - I"ll ask around for you.
But I don't take responsibility if you walk into the anime den never to see the light of day again ...