In light of recent events, I was reminded of the fact that like many others, this series holds a lot of emotional weight for me.

My dad got me into this series when I was maybe 5 years old at most, and I fondly remember at 8 years old loading up an old, sketchy, free anime site to watch the original Dragon Ball in gorgeous 360p quality. I used to scour the internet in search of action figures and merchandise of the series, always frothing at the mouth for those SH Figuarts ones that to an 8 year old, looked like the came straight out of the manga themselves - I was broke though, so it wasn’t like I was getting my hands on them. I remember one time I did a summer reading program at my local library, and managed to get into the top 3 of kids because I read nearly exclusively the Dragon Ball manga. That’s not to mention I used to religiously watch T4S’s abridged series, which is probably set into stone as one of the most important pieces of internet cultural history.

Of course, there’s much more so could say, but I’m more curious about you guys; what’s your history with Toriyama and his series? How did you discover it? What are your fondest memories and favorite moments of the series?