I’m sure all of us have heard or seen the news by now but if you haven’t, DB’s creator, Akira Toriyama, recently passed away. His works ranging from comedy (Dr. Slump), action (DB), to tons of video game artwork (Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger) - his works have brought countless joy to billions of people across the world. But how old were you when you discovered DB? And how did you discover it?

For me, I was 11 years old back in 98 in the U.S. My friend was spending the night one Friday, and as was customary back then, we rented a movie to watch over the weekend (rip movie rental stores). The movie we rented was Star Kid. It was about some kid who found an alien exo-suit, and used it to fight an evil alien and help save both earth and another alien world. It’s okay. But anyways, as all movies did back then on vhs, it had ads and promos for other movies that came on beforehand. One was for “A Kid in Aladdin’s Castle”, and I can’t tell you what the rest were…. Except for one other one. It was a promo for the original Dragonball [https://youtu.be/7ZHV9bXffHU?si=VTwNJUg7qdAPc7BV ]. Everything about it stood out to me: Goku’s name, the background music used, and of course the character designs and animation. My friend made fun of me afterwards saying that it looked like something my brother and I would like (especially after the part where the narrator said “popular with kids ages 5 and up”).

I didn’t think anything about it afterwards until a few months later in either 98 or 99 when I was watching Toonami, and a scene from a certain show came on. A kid was leaping across some stones to get a golden ball, and his name was Gohan. I suddenly remembered that promo I saw from Star Kid, and started to connect the dots that this must be DragonBall. I kept watching, and then the episode ended abruptly with Gohan and another guy named Krillin being caught by some giant squid things. The narrator said “stay tuned for the next episode of Dragon Ball Z”. It was the Ocean dub of DBZ that I had just watched, and I wanted to watch more of it. From that point on, I tried to catch it whenever I could on Toonami, and I became a lifelong DB fan as a result.