MY FIRST EXPOSURE TO DRAGON BALL Z

The first time I ever saw Dragon Ball Z was when I saw Nappa beating up on all of "Earth's Special Forces." I thought Nappa was pretty cool, but then I saw Vegita and he looked even better. I especially liked his voice, which sounded pretty good for him. Nappa was a big tough guy that seemed to be an idiot. I can't really tell if he was meant to be like that or if he was translated badly from the Japanese version or something. Well, when I saw Piccolo my first reaction was "what the hell??" I meant what kind of a show was this? I watched the episode till it ended and vowed to see the next one. However, something came up and I completely forgot about the show.

ARRIVAL

A year later, my brother seemed to have bought a tape of Dragon Ball Z called "Arrival". It seemed interesting enough to me, so I borrowed it and watched it knowing that this was the first episode of Dragon Ball Z. The beginning part of the video explained to me what happened since Dragon Ball (a show that I had partially watched 2 times in my life), and that cleared things up for me a little. But when I first saw Raditz and his cool outfit, I was hooked. Piccolo and Raditz squaring off made my eyes widen, it was just so suspense filled! Although I probably could have picked a better line for "keep your eye on the birdie!" The neat thing I liked about the episode was the terminology of power levels. That made it a little more interesting. When Piccolo and Goku fought side by side, I was surprised of how skillfully they handled themselves. Although I knew that some translation problem had taken a hold of Piccolo's "Special Beam Cannon!" But everything else was great! I loved the show and started to tape all of the episodes.

SNAKE WAY: THE MOST BORING CHAIN OF EPISODES IN THE "NEXT DIMENSION!"

As the series moved on, I became very bored with the Snake Way crap that spanned for a billion episodes while I watched Gohan wonder around in the wilderness trying to fend for himself. Wow. I also noticed that the costumes for the Nappa and Vegita changed since "Arrival", but that didn't really bother me more than the when Vegita sent that insect planet to "another dimension!" What the hell was that?? I mean if you're going to show a planet being blown up, you might as well say that the inhabitants was blown up as well.

I know that this is not his true name, but King Kai was kinda stupid. And I wish that they showed more episodes of him training after he hit Gregory (which probably is another sad translation) The whole thing about the Pendulum Room was cool, I thought they should have made more coverage on that. I really didn't care much for when Goku trained on King Kai's planet, except that when he told about the history of the Sayians. Plus the opening part of that was pretty good when Goku acted out Bubbles' dance.

King Kai in all aspects like Freeza, disappointed the hell out of me. He was said to be all great and stuff but he sucked. In fact, after Goku trains with him, he becomes another cheesy support character. One fact: King Kai said that meteors destroyed the planet Vegita and later on Vegita discovers that Freeza blasted it?? I don’t get it. I'm not trying to put down Dragon Ball Z, but I feel that those inconsistencies confuse many fans. My friends also noticed a difference in Goku's voice after a while. I noticed it too but after a while I got used to it. The whole Fake Namek episodes could have been avoided too, I think. There wasn't really anything important to deal with except waste space on my videocassette for the better episodes. Also, I hated the episodes of Bulma trying to recover the dragon ball after Freeza's energy blasts caused it to roll into a nearby lake. WHO CARES?! Just skip to the part where the Ginyu Force arrives. I thought they were pretty neat except that they were a bit on the silly side compared to King Kai's earlier description. My friend Josh kept on saying how much of a disappointment it was to see the Ginyu Force was nothing more than a bunch of "Rock-paper-scissors!" chanting morons.

FREEZA HAS THROAT CANCER!

The first time I saw Freeza, I cringed, Freeza sounded kind of weird, I'm not sure if that was intended to be his real voice or not but it did not sound right. Same goes for Krillen's cap spelled "Kulilen" or something like that. I know that much is edited out of the American version of Dragon Ball Z, but why do so much bad editing and leave in a Japanese name and confuse everyone? Or maybe it's just me. Go figure.

HURRY UP GOKU! TIME IS ALMOST UP FOR YOU TO SAVE EVERYONE! AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

The bad thing overall about Dragon Ball Z is that everyone except Goku is always beating up the ultimate evil bad guy. Everyone else just waits till he come to save him. In fact, the same BGM played for both when Goku reached Nappa right before he would smash Gohan and the part where Goku arrives on Namek. Now that I think of it, there has not been any new BGM since the start of the 1st episode!! It does get rather boring and tedious.

"Has Goku really become a legendary Super-Sayian?? Are his new powers any match for that of Freeza? Stay tuned for scenes of the next episode of Dragon Ball Z! Because that's all you're going to SEE of the new episodes cause we run reruns everyday for the rest of the season!!!! HA HA HA HA!!!!"

When they started to show repeats of Dragon Ball Z, I figured it would take months to get back to the spot where they left off. But I was patient. And when they finally did show the new episodes I was happy. But there was a problem. They only SHOWED ONE NEW EPISODE!!!!!!!!!! After that, it was all repeats again until they switched to Cartoon Network and then continued to show repeats until every Dragon Ball Z friend of mine wanted to shoot everyone at Funimation.

THE MOVIES

I was quite surprised with the movies because they were so much different than the series, and so much better! First I saw the Dead Zone, that's when I found out that the movies had no bearing on the series. It kicked so much ass! I got the Cha-La-Head-Cha-La song stuck in my head for a while now. The other movies like The World's Strongest was pretty cool too! I love the intros! They're so much more uplifting and exhilarating than "Dragon! Dragon! Rock the Dragon!" It was totally awesome. The only movie I haven't seen was The Tree of Might, although I did see it on Cartoon Network. However, since I know now that the series version was way different than the actual movie, I'm thinking of buying it just to see how much better it is. All I can say is that the movies kicked the English series away. I found out just how much I was missing from the Japanese Dragon Ball Z episodes. This makes me VERY angry with Funimation. How could they go through all that trouble to make Dragon Ball Z so kiddy oriented??? It probably was more expensive editing the episodes than thinking about just subtitling the words! This bugs the crap out of me!!

DAMN CENSORSHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!

Damn censorship! Damn "next dimension!" Damn "look I can see their parachutes! Their okay!" Damn "Too bad its Sunday, those buildings would have been filled up tomorrow!" (which is stupid because how did Vegita know it was Sunday and that people were off on Sunday??) Damn "A little target practice on some empty buildings and they scatter!" (HONESTLY WHAT KIND OF SAYIAN WOULD BLOW EMPTY BUILDINGS WHILE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE RUNNING ABOUT THE STREETS?!?!?) Honestly, this show needs to be a bit more realistic with death.

Sayians that kill planet populations do not aim at EMPTY BUILDINGS! HOW IN THE WORLD DID THEY EVACUATE THE CITY SO FAST WHEN NAPPA BLOWS EVERYTHING UP IN A SECOND?! That just made me choke on my lunch, how obvious did they want to get in trying to censor the show?! I haven't seen the Japanese versions but I do know that they had to translate it, and no self-respecting Japanese Anime show would go to such disgusting lengths to censor the show and ruin it of its entertainment value. Compared to the movies, the series are so tame and bland. I really wish they would come out with more movies. I really do. Well, that's all I have to say. Thanks for reading my thoughts. Ja mata!

- Paul Sakuma
<PTSakuma@email.msn.com>