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In a more HN esque theme. Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west. But since there wasn't many anime shows aired on

In a more HN esque theme. Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west. But since there wasn't many anime shows aired on TV, one had to reach for the internet to get to download other shows. I remember begging my mom for broadband internet rather than dialup, just to be able to download more shows that I would then share with my friends. Being able to download anime/share translations was definitely a part of the early nerd/internet culture. And DragonBall was the gateway for many to that. RIP Toriyama-san

peoplefromibiza 3y ago
> Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west In Italy, Dragon Ball was first aired in 1989. I watched it because it was from the "Dr. Slump guy" that had been aired in 1983, and I had fallen madly in love with it. I've bought and read both manga later on, in the 90s. Over the years Dragon Ball has become immensely more popular than Dr. Slump, but I'm fond of the first two chapters (Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z), I didn't actually enjoy much anything past Cell.
- anthk 3y ago
  DItto in Spain, the regional TV's got DB in Basque/Galician/Catalan as early as 1989/1990.
  - glandium 3y ago
    I was watching DBZ and Dr Slump, switching between Catalan and Japanese in the 90s on TV3! (yes, they had multilingual broadcast)
  - pier25 3y ago
    Maybe my memory fails but I seem to remember watching Dr Slump in the mid 80s on TV3.
- wibblewobble125 3y ago
  YouTube commenters insists that Akira wanted to end Goku’s arc at Cell, but fanserviced beyond that. If true, explains a lot. I also felt that there was a lot of maturity and build up to the climax of the cell saga and everything afterwards felt like it undid that growth and just went on and on.
  - glandium 3y ago
    If I recall correctly, he originally wanted to end after Freezer, with the legendary super saiyan finale. Then again after Cell.
makeitdouble 3y ago
Before getting access to the internet the game was to find importers and sub culture groups that got access to these series. If it wasn't for the anime it was for the books, for the games, for the figures etc. It looks different at first, but I see the same effort to get out of one's sphere and reach for another culture, and start to learn things that aren't in school books, see the world in a different way. We quickly learned the difference between SECAM and NTSC, how audio was coded on the tapes, why colors were different, the import taxes depending on the price and category, the IP licensing deals, the yen fluctuation etc...while in middle school. I'd never want to go back, but it sure was a formative journey. RIP Toriyama
nvarsj 3y ago
> Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west. Highly debateable. Saint Seiya was huge in other parts of the world, for example. Also, Sailor Moon and Pokemon - both were arguably larger than DB. For me, it was Robotech/Macross. But yeah, DB (DBZ in particular) was hugely popular in the 90s, with Cartoon Network showing it basically over and over. And remains one of the best of its genre.
- anthk 3y ago
  No, you are wrong. DBZ in the late 80's and 90's was huge in Europe, megahuge, more than Pokémon. It just happens the US got DB very late. By the age they were whatching DBZ we already finished GT, and DBZ ended for us more than half a decade ago.
  - tanjtanjtanj 3y ago
    That's not exactly true, The Cell and Buu sagas were aired on US TV after only a small delay from the Japanese release and local television was airing the Frieza saga on from the mid 90s.
    - anthk 3y ago
      We got the Frieza saga in early 90's. Very early.
- csydas 3y ago
  I think it's not such a useful debate. All of the early anime that was popular early on outside of Japan was undoubtedly influential and important part of the popularity of anime outside of the US, but Dragonball Z really had a special spot in that it had pretty large mainstream appeal and aired during normal afternoon blocks on American TV -- while Sailor Moon was known when I was growing up, I remember it being on early morning (06:00) cartoon blocks, so it was kind of out of the way. That isn't to diminish the influence of Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya, etc, but at least in the United States DBZ was a cartoon you talked about at school because "everyone" watched it and was waiting for the rest to be translated and dubbed. I think that's mostly what the GP meant, and I would agree it was quite significant in this regard.
epolanski 3y ago
Japanese animation was already popular decades before. But I think it's fair to say that Dragon Ball was the most ubiquitous piece of anime on the globe across the 90s/2010s and the one with the longest lasting impact
- Thuggery 3y ago
  Depends on where you were. I was an American fan of anime before it was really socially acceptable and I've been of the mind that its popularity was probably inevitable once enough old guard culturally sneering at it died. Same as happened with video games. But DBZ (and Sailor Moon) definitely solidified it as a respectable commercial force for the mainstream USA, and gave a unified culture experience that's now pop culture, thanks to millenials getting old.
astura 3y ago
>Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west. I like Dragon Ball, but come on, let's be real. You said "the west," but at least in America Dragon Ball (I think only Z aired in America) was extremely niche whereas Pokemon was a widespread cultural phenomenon. Even Digimon was more popular/commercially successful than DBZ in the US.
pier25 3y ago
At least in Spain there were already plenty of Japanese animation shows before DB. Captain Harlock, Robotech, Mazinger Z, etc.
29athrowaway 3y ago
For your generation, perhaps. But there were many other shows before.
- agilob 3y ago
  There were computers before von Neumann architecture too.
  - 29athrowaway 3y ago
    Yes. Abacus and slide rule.
agilob 3y ago
In Poland Dragon Ball with a reader voice over French dubbing was broadcasted by a German TV (RTL). We had to have two TV antennas, one for RTL and one for normal Polish TV. In my wall there's still a wall socket with places for 2 coaxial cables. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCJaryccMCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCJaryccMCc
- rvba 3y ago
  It was also on cable tv
- AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
  Was "live overdubbing" a common thing in Poland? I spent some time in the Middle East as a child, and we'd periodically pick up satellite broadcasts of American TV (e.g. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) that was then being translated in real-time into Polish. I remember thinking it was incredibly bizarre at the time, because the delay between the original audio finishing and the reader voice-over made it really hard to hear either audio stream.
  - agilob 3y ago
    I dont think it was frequent, but it wasn't unusual.
  - jareklupinski 3y ago
    > the delay between the original audio finishing and the reader voice-over made it really hard to hear either audio stream growing up in a household that spoke both, it wasn't too hard to pick out both 'streams', and this definitely helped me learn the languages 2x as fast, but it felt like there was more 'processing' going on in my head, and I don't think I enjoyed watching things that way (when later given the choice for one language or the other)
pmontra 3y ago
Japanese animation became popular in Europe in the late 70s and early 80s with the robot animes, Lupin III, Future Boy Conan, Heidi, Lady Oscar, etc. I was in primary school. Dragon Ball started much later and I watched it when I was at university or maybe later. Everybody of my age already has been an anime fan for at least 15 years by then.
- gotbeans 3y ago
  I can at least confirm that in my home european country japanese animated series did not start appearing until late 80s, early 90s, and by all means they were outliers and not _popular_ at very least til some heavy hitters came around the 90s. I also don't know how applicable is making broad statements to europe as a whole in this specific regard. I feel cultural barriers have traditionally been pretty tall and what might be applicable to a country might not be applicable in the same timeframe to a neighboring one.
- PurpleRamen 3y ago
  That depends strongly on the country and shows. Some countries had original anime, some had Westernized anime like Heidi and other WMT-series. Some had localized original anime, and people didn't know they came from Japan. France for example had a very original experience of Anime from the beginning, while others started decades later with the late 90s boom of Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  It was a different phase. At least in scale. It seems you a few years older than I so maybe you can tell me, but did the late 70s felt like japanese animation or just "animation", I was too young to really sense how captain harlock and such were perceived ? To me that was a big change, dragon ball made people crazy about mangas per se (it was around the time Glenat started to produce a lot of french translations too IIRC), imports, merch, japanese language and culture .. all like one big tsunami
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    Agree, I watched all robot animes but dragonball gave me the first kick to explore Japanese animation and mangas. I guess because I was older and looking for answers regarding the next transformation.

peoplefromibiza 3y ago

> Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west In Italy, Dragon Ball was first aired in 1989. I watched it because it was from the "Dr. Slump guy" that had been aired in 1983, and I had fallen madly in love with it. I've bought and read both manga later on, in the 90s. Over the years Dragon Ball has become immensely more popular than Dr. Slump, but I'm fond of the first two chapters (Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z), I didn't actually enjoy much anything past Cell.

anthk 3y ago
DItto in Spain, the regional TV's got DB in Basque/Galician/Catalan as early as 1989/1990.
- glandium 3y ago
  I was watching DBZ and Dr Slump, switching between Catalan and Japanese in the 90s on TV3! (yes, they had multilingual broadcast)
- pier25 3y ago
  Maybe my memory fails but I seem to remember watching Dr Slump in the mid 80s on TV3.
wibblewobble125 3y ago
YouTube commenters insists that Akira wanted to end Goku’s arc at Cell, but fanserviced beyond that. If true, explains a lot. I also felt that there was a lot of maturity and build up to the climax of the cell saga and everything afterwards felt like it undid that growth and just went on and on.
- glandium 3y ago
  If I recall correctly, he originally wanted to end after Freezer, with the legendary super saiyan finale. Then again after Cell.

makeitdouble 3y ago

Before getting access to the internet the game was to find importers and sub culture groups that got access to these series. If it wasn't for the anime it was for the books, for the games, for the figures etc. It looks different at first, but I see the same effort to get out of one's sphere and reach for another culture, and start to learn things that aren't in school books, see the world in a different way. We quickly learned the difference between SECAM and NTSC, how audio was coded on the tapes, why colors were different, the import taxes depending on the price and category, the IP licensing deals, the yen fluctuation etc...while in middle school. I'd never want to go back, but it sure was a formative journey. RIP Toriyama

nvarsj 3y ago

> Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west. Highly debateable. Saint Seiya was huge in other parts of the world, for example. Also, Sailor Moon and Pokemon - both were arguably larger than DB. For me, it was Robotech/Macross. But yeah, DB (DBZ in particular) was hugely popular in the 90s, with Cartoon Network showing it basically over and over. And remains one of the best of its genre.

anthk 3y ago
No, you are wrong. DBZ in the late 80's and 90's was huge in Europe, megahuge, more than Pokémon. It just happens the US got DB very late. By the age they were whatching DBZ we already finished GT, and DBZ ended for us more than half a decade ago.
- tanjtanjtanj 3y ago
  That's not exactly true, The Cell and Buu sagas were aired on US TV after only a small delay from the Japanese release and local television was airing the Frieza saga on from the mid 90s.
  - anthk 3y ago
    We got the Frieza saga in early 90's. Very early.
csydas 3y ago
I think it's not such a useful debate. All of the early anime that was popular early on outside of Japan was undoubtedly influential and important part of the popularity of anime outside of the US, but Dragonball Z really had a special spot in that it had pretty large mainstream appeal and aired during normal afternoon blocks on American TV -- while Sailor Moon was known when I was growing up, I remember it being on early morning (06:00) cartoon blocks, so it was kind of out of the way. That isn't to diminish the influence of Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya, etc, but at least in the United States DBZ was a cartoon you talked about at school because "everyone" watched it and was waiting for the rest to be translated and dubbed. I think that's mostly what the GP meant, and I would agree it was quite significant in this regard.

epolanski 3y ago

Japanese animation was already popular decades before. But I think it's fair to say that Dragon Ball was the most ubiquitous piece of anime on the globe across the 90s/2010s and the one with the longest lasting impact

Thuggery 3y ago
Depends on where you were. I was an American fan of anime before it was really socially acceptable and I've been of the mind that its popularity was probably inevitable once enough old guard culturally sneering at it died. Same as happened with video games. But DBZ (and Sailor Moon) definitely solidified it as a respectable commercial force for the mainstream USA, and gave a unified culture experience that's now pop culture, thanks to millenials getting old.

astura 3y ago

>Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west. I like Dragon Ball, but come on, let's be real. You said "the west," but at least in America Dragon Ball (I think only Z aired in America) was extremely niche whereas Pokemon was a widespread cultural phenomenon. Even Digimon was more popular/commercially successful than DBZ in the US.

pier25 3y ago

At least in Spain there were already plenty of Japanese animation shows before DB. Captain Harlock, Robotech, Mazinger Z, etc.

29athrowaway 3y ago

For your generation, perhaps. But there were many other shows before.

agilob 3y ago
There were computers before von Neumann architecture too.
- 29athrowaway 3y ago
  Yes. Abacus and slide rule.

agilob 3y ago

In Poland Dragon Ball with a reader voice over French dubbing was broadcasted by a German TV (RTL). We had to have two TV antennas, one for RTL and one for normal Polish TV. In my wall there's still a wall socket with places for 2 coaxial cables. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCJaryccMCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCJaryccMCc

rvba 3y ago
It was also on cable tv
AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
Was "live overdubbing" a common thing in Poland? I spent some time in the Middle East as a child, and we'd periodically pick up satellite broadcasts of American TV (e.g. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) that was then being translated in real-time into Polish. I remember thinking it was incredibly bizarre at the time, because the delay between the original audio finishing and the reader voice-over made it really hard to hear either audio stream.
- agilob 3y ago
  I dont think it was frequent, but it wasn't unusual.
- jareklupinski 3y ago
  > the delay between the original audio finishing and the reader voice-over made it really hard to hear either audio stream growing up in a household that spoke both, it wasn't too hard to pick out both 'streams', and this definitely helped me learn the languages 2x as fast, but it felt like there was more 'processing' going on in my head, and I don't think I enjoyed watching things that way (when later given the choice for one language or the other)

pmontra 3y ago

Japanese animation became popular in Europe in the late 70s and early 80s with the robot animes, Lupin III, Future Boy Conan, Heidi, Lady Oscar, etc. I was in primary school. Dragon Ball started much later and I watched it when I was at university or maybe later. Everybody of my age already has been an anime fan for at least 15 years by then.

gotbeans 3y ago
I can at least confirm that in my home european country japanese animated series did not start appearing until late 80s, early 90s, and by all means they were outliers and not _popular_ at very least til some heavy hitters came around the 90s. I also don't know how applicable is making broad statements to europe as a whole in this specific regard. I feel cultural barriers have traditionally been pretty tall and what might be applicable to a country might not be applicable in the same timeframe to a neighboring one.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
That depends strongly on the country and shows. Some countries had original anime, some had Westernized anime like Heidi and other WMT-series. Some had localized original anime, and people didn't know they came from Japan. France for example had a very original experience of Anime from the beginning, while others started decades later with the late 90s boom of Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball.
agumonkey 3y ago
It was a different phase. At least in scale. It seems you a few years older than I so maybe you can tell me, but did the late 70s felt like japanese animation or just "animation", I was too young to really sense how captain harlock and such were perceived ? To me that was a big change, dragon ball made people crazy about mangas per se (it was around the time Glenat started to produce a lot of french translations too IIRC), imports, merch, japanese language and culture .. all like one big tsunami
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
  Agree, I watched all robot animes but dragonball gave me the first kick to explore Japanese animation and mangas. I guess because I was older and looking for answers regarding the next transformation.