Monday 22 February 2016

12 Surprising Facts You Might Not Have Known About Dragon Ball Z

12 Surprising Facts You Might Not Have Known About Dragon Ball Z





1. Goku only killed two villains in all of Dragon Ball Z

goku
Almost every storyline in Dragon Ball boils down to waiting for Goku to get in the fight and beat up the big bad, but it's easy to forget that the series' main protagonist rarely murders his enemies. Goku let Frieza slice his own goofy ass in half (while Future Trunks finished off Frieza in his Cyborg form), and Cell hit his own self-destruct button. The fact remains that,throughout Dragon Ball Z, Goku only kills two people
Both events occur during the Majin Buu arc. The first was Yakon, a low-level miniboss whose gimmick was devouring energy. All Goku had to do was overload him, like flexing to pop the bloody bowels of a pesky mosquito.
goku
The real biggie here was the time that Goku demolished Kid Buu with a Spirit Bomb, marking the only time the Spirit Bomb was actually good for anything beyond stretching the episode count.
goku kills buu
It's strange that Goku seems to have such an aversion to taking life, considering that he did it all the time as a kid. In the Z-less Dragon Ball, Goku took out scores of bad guys from the Red Ribbon Army without giving it a second thought. Alberto Cubatas on DeviantArt illustrates this beautifully in his series of visualized Dragon Ball killcounts. Here's Goku:
goku kills
via Alberto Cubatas
 
It's kind of sad that the most notable kill Goku has after Kid Buu and King Piccolo is his own grandfather, who he accidentally iced while in Great Ape form. 
Compare that paltry collection to Vegeta's massive tally
goku kills
via Alberto Cubatas
 
Dude took out almost the entire Ginyu Force, Nappa, Android 19 and a shitload of civilians, including an entire goddamn planet of lovestruck bug people. Though Goku was in the fight for much of Dragon Ball Z, his bloodlust was nothing compared to his Saiyan frenemy. 
Then again, it could be worse. 
yamcha kills
via Alberto Cubatas
 
You can call Goku dumb, a poor father or a terrible husband, but at least he'll never be Yamcha. 

2. The Dragon Balls are based on a really messed up myth

dragon balls
It's well-known within anime circles that Dragon Ball is loosely based on the centuries-old tale Journey to the West, in which a monkey boy flies on a magic cloud while wielding a size-changing staff. But the titular spheres themselves are actually inspired by an old novel series. Nanso Satomi Hakkenden, roughly translated as The Eight Dog Chronicles, was written way back in the early 1800s. 
In the original story, there are eight crystal balls, which were created when a Princess has sex with her father's dog. Don't worry, someone made an anime about it so you can see what that looks like. 
dragon ball facts
After being "born" -- again, from the unholy union of a woman and a dog -- the crystal balls went into the sky and split off, and later became human children. The phrase "Dammit, Japan" has never been more applicable.
When asked why there are seven instead of eight Dragon Balls, creator Akira Toriyama explained that he didn't want to have the same number as the famous story where a dog has sex with a human female who later gives birth to jewelry. Go figure.

3. You probably know more about Dragon Ball than the creator of Dragon Ball

toriyama forgot
There wouldn't be a Dragon Ball without Akira Toriyama, and as such fans owe him a lot of respect. However, like many mega-popular franchises, there comes a point where the collective fandom is more knowledgable and enthusiastic than the singular creator. When Toriyama cranked out 500 chapters of the manga, it was technically his job; whereas fans are free to watch and rewatch the material over and over again, it might be a little more trying for the guy who spent his career with these characters and their story. You can forgive the guy for spacing the little details, but Toriyama's forgetfulness goes beyond the pale. 
For instance, there's the fact that Toriyama forgot that there was a Super Saiyan 2 form. In his mind, it jumped straight from 1 to 3.
super saiyan 2 and 3
Seriously. He admitted as much in an interview:
V-Jump: Do you write down notes anywhere for that sort of background information?
Akira Toriyama: No, I don't do that. That's why I keep on forgetting things. If I don't forget stuff, new ideas won't come to mind. For example, you know how there's "Super Saiyan 3??
VJ: Yes. Where the hair gets long.
AT: I didn't know that. (laughs) The whole time, I thought that was "Super Saiyan 2?. (laughs)
VJ: Whaaa?!
AT: And I drew that myself. (laughs) Anyhow, I thought "2" was the one with long hair. It was like, "Man, I've really forgotten stuff...".
  
It's hard to believe that such a pivotal moment in the series could have possibly slipped by the dude who was responsible for bringing it to life. Toriyama says "I've really forgotten stuff..." as though he just realized he didn't get milk at the grocery store . This is more along the lines of forgetting to pick up your child at a soccer game, and then going on with your life as though the kid never existed.
It's gotten worse, probably because he's been more or less off the job in the two decades since Dragon Ball Z ended. When it came time for him to draw up some promotional art for his comeback movie Battle of the Gods, Toriyama drew Android 18 with purple hair
toriyama forgot
You might pass it off as a character choice -- there's nothing stopping Androids from dying their hair -- but since 18 showed up in BotG as a blonde, we can probably assume a very awkward conversation occurred between Toriyama and the production team.  
As unfortunate as that is, at least 18 doesn't have it as bad as poor Launch.
launch
Don't remember Launch? That's okay, Toriyama doesn't remember Launch either. She was a major character in Dragon Ball prior to Raditz's arrival, and she even had a cool hook; whenever she sneezed, Launch drastically changed personality (and hairstyle). When DBZ rolled around, Launch snuck into a few scenes, but eventually disappeared for over 150 episodes. On numerous occasions, Toriyama has responded to inquiries about Launch with "I forgot."
Maybe we could learn something from Toriyama's bold memory-based approach to storytelling. Maybe if we all forget hard enough, Dragon Ball GT will never have existed.

4. Episodes looked wildly different depending on the animator

dbz animation
A few episodes into the relaunched Dragon Ball Super, fans complained of a noticeable drop in animation quality. What was intially a fine-looking anime suddenly became something like a school project belonging to a kid who should probably give up their dream. Thing is, Dragon Ball has pretty much always been inconsistent in the visuals department. Above on the left, you can see a pretty decent Goku in episode 168, and to the right is a derpified version from the very next episode.
Kanzenshuu has a great article chronicling where and how this sort of thing happens. Basically, because of budget and time constraints (and a variety of other factors), different episodes get handed off to different teams. It's a common practice even for American cartoons like Tiny Toons. No animator is created equal, and as a result there are sometimes vast discrepancies from chapter to chapter. Even episodes that depict the exact same scene can be as different as an apple and the bruised reject apple in the produce section that everyone puts back down.
dbz animation
via Kanzenshuu
 
There are "Character Bibles" to be sure, but these guides don't guarantee a congruent look between episodes. You might not have noticed it back then, but there's a big difference between "epic flowing hair Vegeta" (bottom right) and "clearly has a cocaine problem Vegeta" (top right):
dbz animation
via Kanzenshuu
 
This is just the kind of thing you have to deal with when you run into such a long-running series. Sometimes, sacrifices in quality are made in the name of quantity. The best thing that can be said for DBZ's animation consistency is that it gives you an extra appreciation for the truly beautiful episodes. 

5. Tons of differences between the anime and the manga

manga dbz
Changes are inevitable when you're translating from the page to the screen, but Dragon Ball is kind of a special case. Toriyama was drawing new chapters of the series constantly, while the anime was running at the same time. And they never pulled a Game of Thrones and jumped ahead of the books, but instead came up with ways to expand or extend the story -- which is how "Five minutes until Namek explodes!" became a six hour miniseries.  
The need for padding gave us superfluous storylines that weren't in the manga, like the frogged Captain Ginyu temporarily swapping places with Bulma. 
switch
A lot of these "filler" episodes were inconsequential trash, but every once in a while the B-team hit gold. The episode where Goku and Piccolo get their driver's licenses has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the series, but it's still pretty awesome. 
gokus ordeal
Most of what was in the comic did end up making it to the show, simply because the animators wanted to use every inch of the manga that they could. But sometimes the violence was a little too extreme, even for a show where people try to kill each other every episode.There's a particularly brutal scene early in the Android saga that didn't make it into the anime. When Dr. Gero first appears, he stops traffic and then... well, just look. Remember, read right to left.
dr gero kills
Holy shit! Gero just straight up squeezes that guy's head off at the neck, like the world's most twisted balloon animal artist. This is an unprecedented level of graphic violence that is never approached in the anime, even when Gero impales Yamcha with his bare hand.
Of course, where there's wanton violence, gratiutous nudity is sure to follow. 
dbz manga
There are panty shots and teases in the show, but it never really goes "all the way." The manga, however, wasn't afraid to exploit its token female at any given opportunity. Bulma is partially naked in several scenes like the one above, which are obscured or altered altogether in the anime
Some of the changes are a bit more subtle, but last for the entire series.
manga piccolo
Look closely and you can see that in the manga (left), Piccolo only has four fingers total, but in the show (right), he has five fingers. It's kind of a baffling change, one that makes you wonder whether animators drew Piccolo with a full set of digits by mistake and kept rolling with it after they realized their error. 
That would be a plausible explanation, if it weren't for how Cell turned out. 
cell manga anime
In the manga, Imperfect Cell has three-fingers on each of his Ninja Turtley hands, but they revert to the five-digit standard in the anime.
Even Majin Buu didn't come out of the adaptation unscathed. 
manga buu
As you can see, Buu has these gooey mitten hands in the source material, but is given human hands with stylish black nail polish in the show. We can probably guess these finger changes are for simplicity's sake -- with several animation studios working on different episodes of the show at any given time, it's probably easier to avoid confusion and possible inconsistencies by just giving everyone the same hands. 
In the end, that's not a big deal. Unlike this:
over 9000
There's no way that can be right! CAAAN IIIT!? Indeed, the famous "Over 9,000!!" meme should really be "Over 8,000!!" That's what it read as in the original manga and Japanese version of the anime. Some suspect that a mistranslation was to blame, or perhaps the localization team just thought that 9,000 was a better lipsync match for the dub. When they were remastering and re-editing the series for Dragon Ball Z Kai, they actually changed the line back to 8,000. But in our hearts, we know what the scouter really says about Goku's power level.

6. Almost every single character has a pun for a name

dragon ball puns
If you're a native English speaker, it's easy to pass off a lot of the names in the series as just Japanese names. For all you know, there are guys named Nappa and Raditz all over Japan. But in almost every case, these names are actually puns. Super lame, adorable puns. 
As you might guess from the above image, almost all the Saiyans are named after vegetables. Goku's "real" name is Kakarot, which is a carrot; Vegeta is short for vegetable; Raditz is a radish, and so on. Most of the rest of the Z fighters are named after food. House of Infographics made a super handy chart of all the names: 
  dragon ball puns
The most notable character excluded from the pun trope is Mr. Popo, who was so named because Toriyama "thought it sounded comfortable." The unyielding void of Mr. Popo's soul-stripping stare is the last thing I'd call "comfortable," but to each their own.
What that chart doesn't include are the new characters that have appeared in the last couple Dragon Ball movies, along with the new anime series Dragon Ball Super. 
champa whis beerus
From left to right we've got Whis, Beerus and Champa -- all named after alcoholic beverages. Whis is whiskey, Beerus is beer and Champa is champagne. There are more characters in this pantheon yet to be revealed, so we could be looking at the introduction of Vodkadon, Bourbo or Saken. Really, anything but Appletinius will do.

7. The Japanese government funded a DBZ movie

dbz battle
As popular as DBZ is in the Western world, it's even bigger in its home country. Japan goes nuts for DBZ, especially since the franchise has seen a resurgence in the last few years. It's gotten to the point that Japan recently elected to spend money to support Dragon Ball by awarding a grant for the movie that arguably ignited DBZ's comeback: Battle of the Gods.
Japan's Co-production Certification Program funded production to the tune of 50 million yen, or about $600,000. That might not sound like a lot in movie terms, but this isn't Hollywood. The Frieza-focused movie sequel Ressurection F cost five million dollars to produce, and BotG very likely cost less. Which means that you have the Japanese government to thank for at least 1/10th of that movie. We'll just assume that 10% had nothing to do with Vegeta singing and dancing.

8. Hilarious bootleg Dragon Ball movies from the early 90s

korea dbz
The internet has provided us with a ton of fan-made films, but unauthorized bootleg Dragon Ball movies actually predate the internet. The early 90s saw two big productions that were in no way sanctioned by Akira Toriyama or any of the other rights holders. The first wasDragon Ball: Fight Son Goku Win Son Goku, and the other was Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins. They both have their own special brand of terrible.
A Korean production, Go Son Goku Win Son Goku has the distinction of being scarily accurate to the manga and anime, up to and including the part where young Goku slaps Bulma's vagina. 
             slap dragon ball   slap dragon ball
So dedicated to the accuracy of the story were they that they included even the cartooniest of characters in their live-action adaptation. The low budget prevented any real animatronics from being used, so Puar isn't so much Yoda as he is a vibrating dildo shoved up a handpuppet
puar
Rinky dink as it may be, at least Fight Son Goku was a bit more faithful than Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins. 
dbz movie
This Taiwanese ripoff was actually based on the first Dragon Ball movie, which was kind of like a shorter version of the first arc with some villains switched around. Even though they based it off of a non-canon film, the production team took even more liberties. For example, not only is Goku's grandpa still alive, but his kidnapping plays a major driving force in the plot. At least that's fairly innocuous compared to some of the other changes. 
When it came time to depict Oolong, the lovable shapeshifting pig, the filmmakers inexplicably decided to go with the always-awful "horrific blackface caricature." Just look at him. Dude has more in common with Mr. Popo than the anime Oolong. 
oolong
What's weird is that the production values seem to be considerably higher than those seen in Fight Son Goku, as there are actual special effects in play.

movie
It's not exactly impressive, but you might call it "impressively shitty." Either way, we can probably all agree that these bootlegs are far superior to the celluloid plague that is Dragonball: Evolution.

9. Goku's Japanese voice actor is a 78 year-old woman

goku voice actor
Goku gets around in America. He was voiced by a dozen different voice actors before settling on the gold standard Sean Schemmel. But in Japan, Goku has had the same voice since the very beginning, even when he was depicted as a child. Masako Nozawa has played Goku for 30 years, and she shows no signs of stopping. So engrained is Nozawa's voice into the Japanese populace that an unresponsive, hospitalized child responded to a personalized recording of Goku -- while the child was in a coma
Nozawa might be 78 years-old, but she doesn't have this guy beat: 
king kai voice actor
Joji Yanami is almost 84 years old, but is still voicing King Kai in new episodes of Dragon Ball Super. Perhaps more importantly, Yanami has voiced the narrator of the series since the first episode of Dragon Ball. When it comes to an enduring series like Dragon Ball, you're bound to have a few actors start getting up there in years.
Let's be honest with ourselves: With respect to the separate lives and spouses of these voice actors, Joji and and Masako should abandon their lives and marry each other and invite us to their Dragon Ball-themed wedding.

10. There was a Dragon Ball video game for NES, only it wasn't Dragon Ball

dragonball nes
Despite the enormous popularity of the series, none of the various Dragon Ball video games made it stateside until 1997's Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout on the PS1. We're not here to talk about that shitshow; what's more interesting is that we technically DID get a Dragon Ball game in 1988, but we didn't know it. The US-released "Dragon Power" is almost exactly the same as the first Dragon Ball game on NES, but Bandai didn't have the license, so this is what we got.
dragon ball dragonpower
All the sprites referring to Dragon Ball were stripped out -- sort of like the opposite of what happened to Doki Doki Panic when it was turned into the Super Mario Bros 2 that you know and love. Goku was altered to resemble the Monkey King from Journey to the West, Dragon Balls became "Crystal Balls," and the Kamehameha Wave became "Wind Wave." And the bit where Master Roshi appeared with several pairs of Bulma's panties floating around him was replaced with a random old wizard levitating a handful of sandwiches
bulma sandwiches
Naturally.

11. Goku's American voice actor once fainted from screaming so hard 

voice actor
Anyone who has tried to power-up by screaming along in their room knows that yelling at the top of your lungs can take it out of you. Now imagine what it must be like for the voice actors. Longtime Goku VA Sean Schemmel probably has the worst of it, given that he plays the main character of the series and therefore has the most scream time. 
There was an urban legend going around that he actually screamed so hard that he fainted in the recording booth, and it actually turned out to be true. The scene that broke him: The transformation to Super Saiyan 4 in Dragon Ball GT. 
super saiyan 4
Apparently a mixture of exhaustion and misjudgment caused the episode, after which Sean quickly recovered. He's recounted his entire tale here in this video. 

Schemmel is living proof that no matter how hard you scream, you'll never become a Super Saiyan. But you shouldn't let that stop you from trying.

12. The Super Saiyan form was invented to save time

super saiyan
The Super Saiyan transformation might be the most iconic thing about an iconic show, partly due to its simplicity. In Dragon Ball Z, Goku getting to the next level was represented by his hair being blown up and turned into a bright shade of yellow. But according to an interview, Toriyama only decided on the look of a Super Saiyan for practical reasons. 
Before we get into it, take a look at regular Goku and Super Saiyan Goku, as they appear in print. 
super saiyan
The biggest difference is obviously Goku's jet-black hair, which turns blonde in Super Saiyan form -- but in the manga, blonde is represented by blank white space. As it turns out, the Super Saiyan hairstyle was designed that way because filling in all of Goku's hair with solid black ink took a long time. Toriyama figured that if the made the transformation change his hair color, his assistant would have to spend far less time in the tedious process of making sure the entire hairdo was colored in. Who knows what Super Saiyans might have looked like if DBZ had been created in an age of Photoshop and fill-in paint bucket tools. 

BONUS! A behind-the-scenes look at the key animation frames for Vegeta's heroic sacrifice

key frame dbz
via (sigh) SLUT_MUFFIN

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