KA-MAYA-MAYA!!! While I’m the resident Anime Noob here, I’ve actually been watching anime (on and off) for as long as I can remember. Growing up in Singapore, some of my earliest memories of TV involved watching DORAEMON and CAPTAIN HARLOCK on TV. The series that I actually started following, consciously, when I was 7 or 8 was DRAGONBALL Z. Back then, I didn’t even know what “anime” was… I was just watching a cartoon. Judging from a lot of comments here, it seems that a lot of you lunatics in the Anime Vice community first got interested in all this stuff after watching POKEMON or NARUTO. Well, DBZ was the one for me and I watched a different dub than most Americans encountered on Cartoon Network. That is, the one I watched showed Gohan’s wee-wee. My friends and I watched enough DBZ that we were able to break down the typical DBZ saga… STEP ONE: Gohan and Krillin are doing something innocuous in the woods while Goku’s going through some absurd training exercise. They’re fishing or camping or whatever… STEP TWO: Aliens (could be evil Saiyans, could be Freeza) attack. They toss Gohan away and then beat the hell out of Krillin while Gohan watches, crying about it. STEP THREE: Getting the distress call, Goku arrives and puts the hurt on the aliens. STEP FOUR: The aliens charge up and beat up Goku while Gohan cries. STEP FIVE: Gohan charges up and makes a valiant fight against the aliens to protect Goku, but he’s then tossed away. He then, of course, cries about it. STEP SIX: Vegeta or Piccolo or Yamcha arrive to fight the aliens, only to get their asses kicked, too. STEP SEVEN: Goku reaches some new level of power - - maybe a new Saiya level or a summoned spirit bomb - - and then blows the aliens to Kingdom Come. Let me know if any of that sounds off-base. Speaking just from my perspective, I have to say that DBZ’s something of a guilty pleasure. It is stupid - - senseless fighting stretched over 40 episodes arcs, with so much charging up throughout. But, you know what? Often times, you’re in the mood for stupid, so I’ll always have a soft-spot for DBZ. Hell, anytime I feel like I’m flying high, like I’m doing better than usual, I tell people I’ve gone Super-Saiyan. And I do shout, "It's over NINE THOUSAND!!!!" from time-to-time. So, what I want to know is… where does DBZ fit in the hearts of experienced anime fans. Do you share the same endearment for it that I have? Do you think it has greater complexities that I’m missing? Or do you roll your eyes over the fact that this is the series that so many people pay attention to, the one whose notoriety comes at the expense of possibly better anime? -- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Comics and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia. Pre-order the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover now on Amazon.com.
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