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Dragon Ball Primer
Intro
One of the top ten most popular anime series in the world has to be Akira
Toriyama's Dragon Ball. However, considering what is available in the US, it
is one hard series for many otaku to get into, especially the older ones. I
realized that unless you seek out a Dragon Ball specialty site, it is hard to
get info on the series. I guess it seems to effect people in two ways: either
you get so into it you become a dedicated fanboy/girl of the series, or you
say "That's nice" and quietly slip out of the room. I admit it, I'm an
enormous fan of the series and know nearly every nook and cranny of the story.
So I am here to help you! There's no real easy way to begin, but here goes.
Manga
Like nearly every anime series, Dragon Ball began as a manga series. In
1984, when manga artist Akira Toriyama's popular series Dr. Slump came to an
end in the Shoonen Jump (a weekly compilation of the latest young boy's
manga), he needed to think up another new series. He decided to base his new
series off of an old Chinese fable, Journey to the West (the same fable
"Monkey Magic " was based on years later). As he sat down to start it,
however, he realized he didn't know that much about it. He took every possible
liberty you could think of with the initial story. While it wasn't quite a
mess, this mix of that classic theme and tons of jokes (many perverted) didn't
get that popular. A friend joked with Toriyama about continuing the series,
and he actually did. It began to take on more of a fighting emphasis as the
main characters entered their first fighting tournament. This was what made
the series really begin to take off. More on all that later in the story
section.
The manga had 519 chapters, one each week, in the Shoonen Jump. As it
progressed over the course of almost 10 years, the manga was compiled into 42
tankooban. Unlike the anime, the series was always known as Dragon Ball. It is
currently being published in English by Viz, separately as Dragon Ball and
Dragon Ball Z (which started at two chapters into Tankooban 17).
Anime
By 1985, the Dragon Ball manga had become popular enough that TOEI
animation and Bird Studios began the anime for the manga series. The anime
contained every single event that was in the manga, plus extra scenes and
filler episodes to keep it fresh. For mid-eighties anime, the animation was
above-average and even still looks good on all the low quality fansubs I have.
The voice actors were topnotch and so was the music. The Dragon Ball anime
spanned 153 episodes and covered the first 16 tankooban of the manga, plus a
couple more chapters of #17.
In the 154th anime episode, the name of the show changed to Dragon Ball Z,
even though the manga had always carried the Dragon Ball name. Episode 1 of
Dragon Ball Z took place 5 years after Dragon Ball, and introduced the main
character's, Son Gokuu's, son, Son Gohan. Dragon Ball Z is the series that
REALLY made the Dragon Ball franchise huge. The main character finds out in
the beginning that one of the reasons he's so strong is because he is from an
alien warrior race, the Saiya-jin. More on that in the story section. Dragon
Ball Z lasted a whopping 291 episodes; even without Dragon Ball's help it
outnumbers other long-runners like Ranma 1/2 and Bishooju Senshi Sailor Moon.
The last episode of Dragon Ball Z contained the events in the last chapter of
the manga.
But the anime still wasn't over. Looking to make more money off of the
franchise, TOEI made a new series, Dragon Ball GT, without getting the
assistance of Toriyama to do the story. Thus it had many inconsistencies,
plot-holes, and relatively poor animation, especially considering the progress
made in the 90's. While on its own the show wasn't too bad, many long time
fans were angry at how many of their favorite characters were shunned, killed
off, or otherwise mistreated. I guess you could liken it to the Tenchi Muyo
spin-offs so hated by many Tenchi fans. Because of this, the series was doomed
from the start. Compared to the other series', the total of 64 episodes when
it ended was meager. It would've died even sooner if Bandai hadn't made sure
the show didn't end until their new DBGT video game came out. On a cold
Wednesday in November 1997, Dragon Ball finally died.
The entire anime spanned 508 episodes, 3 made-for-TV movies, 17 theatrical
movies, and two little known OVA's. No episodes of the Japanese TV series were
released on VHS, LD, VCD, or DVD. Only the movies made it to VHS, LD, and VCD.
There are Chinese dubs of most of the movies and DBGT floating around on VCD,
plus the series has been dubbed into Spanish, French, and German, but only for
PAL VCRs. Apparently, TOEI doesn't want subtitled VHS versions of the series
released, but they seem to only DVD subbed versions (more on that later). One
interesting note is that the female voice actor used for Gokuu was the same
even when Gokuu grew up later in the series (if you ever wondered why he had
such a high-pitched voice).<BR>
Story (the short way)
This is what you're probably most interested in. When 7 orange,
softball-sized balls called Dragon Balls are brought together, the God Dragon,
Shenron, can be summoned to grant almost any one wish. To make a very long
story short, a young Son Gokuu goes on a quest with Buruma to find all the
Dragon Balls. They make many friends along the way who join them in the
journey. At the end, the already strong Gokuu decides to train more in martial
arts. He meets his best friend Kuririn while training together under the
Turtle Hermit. Together, they enter in the World Martial Arts tournament. With
the new focus on fighting, the series got more and more popular. At the end of
the 2nd tournament in the series, a demon kills Kuririn to get a Dragon Ball.
Gokuu seeks revenge against him, but it turns out that the Great Demon King
Piccolo had returned to take over the world. I hate to cut such an interesting
saga with all its twists, but in the end Gokuu kills Piccolo to save the
world. However, Kami (God) summons Gokuu to train at his palace high above the
earth. Piccolo spit out his last child before he died, an exact reincarnation
of him. A grown up Gokuu meets his fiancée at the next Martial Arts
Tournament, and later combats the new Piccolo in the final round. Gokuu
finally becomes the world champion, but doesn't kill the evil Piccolo, wanting
to keep his rival.
After this, the series changes its name to Dragon Ball Z. Gokuu's brother
comes to earth from space and reveals to Gokuu part of his past. Gokuu is from
the warrior race of Saiya-jin. After a hard battle, Gokuu holds his brother
still so Piccolo can kill him. Unfortunately, to do this, Gokuu must die also.
Gokuu's brother sends out a message to the only two other living Saiya-jin,
telling them about the Dragon Balls, before he dies. Gokuu trains while he is
dead, and is resurrected by the Dragon Balls just in time to fight with the
Saiya-jin. Later, in a confrontation over the Dragon Balls on another planet,
Piccolo's home planet, Kuririn is killed again. This causes Gokuu to go
through a transformation in which his hair turns blonde and stands up, known
as the Super Saiya-jin. Later on in the series, the Saiya-jins and half
Saiya-jins all turn Super Saiya-jin and some even go into states beyond it.
The series is focused almost totally onto fighting now. Gokuu's sons become
more of the focus of the series, but the Japanese fans asked for it, and Gokuu
returned later to save the world one last time.
In DBGT, Gokuu became nearly the sole focus. In the first episode, an old
enemy used the Dragon Balls to make Gokuu a kid again. Gokuu doesn't lose his
power though, and he goes on a quest to find special Dragon Balls that are
spread throughout the whole galaxy. There's some pretty cool fights and
battles in the series, even if the plot and everything else doesn't live up to
the earlier stories. But one thing that never changed in the story throughout
the entire series was that the Dragon Balls were always there and always
important. You'd nearly think after so long, the DB's would've been forgotten.
The Anime in America
The rights to the series in the US were bought around 1994 by a then
extremely small, little-known company (with connections, obviously) called
FUNimation. FUNimation at first bought the first set of Dragon Ball episodes.
Unfortunately, those first 13 episodes, censored pretty bad, failed in the US.
This isn't surprising though, considering it wasn't even popular in Japan
after those 13 episodes. FUNimation decided to just skip over the remaining
140 episodes of Dragon Ball and go straight to the bigger action content in
Dragon Ball Z. At first, FUNimation censored mainly for gore and time, but
then Saban basically bought out the show. The show was censored for content a
lot more. Death and dying were referred to as going to the "Next Dimension."
Dialogue became really lame: "They're okay! I can see their parachutes!" "Good
thing it's a Sunday. Otherwise people could've got hurt." "We destroyed an
abandoned section of the city! That'll teach 'em!" Uh-huh...sure...we believe
'ya!
The series under Saban's rule spanned 53 episodes. It really covered 67
episodes of the Japanese version (that's how much they cut out!). Afterwards,
FUNimation teamed up with Pioneer to dub AND subtitle the first 3 movies,
uncut and uncensored. These made it to VHS and Bilingual DVDs. FUNimation was
finally free of Saban, but they had to start from scratch to restart the
series. To make money, FUNimation sold the rights to those 67 initial episodes
of Dragon Ball Z to Pioneer. Pioneer released the 53 dubbed episodes on DVD
soon afterwards.
In the meantime, FUNimation began dubbing more of the series. They began
making cut and uncut dubs for every VHS release. This began with the second
Dragon Ball (not Z) movie. Then, they began the infamous "Season 3" of DBZ.
While it started off slow at first, by the end of Season 3, the uncut dubs
began to be awfully close to the original version, except for the different
music and the blatant punch-up writing for the dub.
That brings us all the way up to today, when FUNimation is taking a break
between Seasons 3 and 4. They've announced their plans to dub and sub DBZ
movie 4, and publish a bilingual DVD of it themselves. That is supposed to be
their experimental first DVD. Afterwards, they planned on releasing their own
DVDs of the TV series starting with Season 3. Supposedly, these will have an
uncut video track, the uncut dub audio track, and the original Japanese audio
track, with accurate subtitles. While this hasn't been officially confirmed,
it is just shy of it.
The Manga in America
For the past couple of years, Viz Communications Inc. has published the
manga in the US. It is uncensored, uncut, and even unflopped (read it from
right to left, like Japanese manga). There's approximately 32 pages per issue,
normally 2 chapters per. They make one "Dragon Ball" and one "Dragon Ball Z" a
month, so they can keep up with the US anime better. The translations are very
good, it started off shaky, but at this point in time, the translations are
excellent. The best source for uncensored DB in America.
Where to Start?
This a really tough question to answer. The dub-only DVDs (the first 17
volumes) aren't really worth spending all that money on for such a butchered
dub, unless you're in the mood to MST3k it. If your cable or satellite
provider carries the Cartoon Network, you can watch all the censored dubs of
Dragon Ball Z on weekdays at 5 PM eastern/pacific. If you can catch the first
few episodes in the DBZ series and do a little guesswork and figuring-out, it
should be easy to understand. If you want the original Dragon Ball you'll have
to buy the VHS tapes. There is a box set available with all 6 dub tapes (13
eps.) plus the first movie (note: all are censored). You can find this at
either your local Suncoast/Sam Goody or at an online VHS retailer like Reel or
Amazon. The manga is another choice to start with, and for many it could be
the best. If your local comics shop doesn't have back issues, you can order
them at www.j-pop.com. If you see these
and get into it, I'd recommend buying every DVD you see that has a sub track
on it. The movie DVDs and the upcoming Season 3 DVDs will demonstrate how
superior the Japanese version is to the truly unconvinced.
Conclusion
I hope this helped you out a lot. I hope to add a supplemental, longer,
story section sometime soon. If possible, I will amend and update this primer
whenever need be. If you have any further questions, e-mail me at
Gotenks243@aol.com. I'll leave you
with some good site links for your continuing research:
Once again, I hope I helped you in some way, whatever way that was. Some of
these aforementioned sites have message boards that I frequent. Look for Mike,
that's me.
Mike Kiefl
Gotenks243@aol.com
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