Dragon Ball Z - the phases of fandom

[timepiececlock]

I was chatting with pepperlandgirl4 about anime, and she asked me why I had issues with Dragon Ball Z. So I compiled this list for her, to explain my fan experience:

The 7 Phases of DBZ Fandom

1. disbelief: You want me to watch that? You've got to be kidding. I mean look at it.

2. trial: Ok, this isn't so bad. I've watched a few eps and I'm kind of curious.

3. acceptance: Yeah, I watch it fairly regulary now in the afternoons. It's kinda cool. I like the fighting.

4. addiction: OMG I LOVE THIS SHOW! I LOVE VEGITA! No, I LOVE GOKU! No, I LOVE GOHAN! No, wait-- I LOVE TRUNKS! Nope, nevermind, definitely love Vegita. Fanfic, fanfic, here I come!

5. minor disillusionment: Hey, man, didn't we do this last season? It's kinda the same villain with different art design. And I thought we already beat the strongest guy in the universe? I thought Goku WAS the strongest guy in the universe? Or was it Gohan? Why won't Vegita just marry Bulma already and call it a day?

6. major disillusionment: Fuck , this show is SOOOOOO boring. All they do is fight, talk, fight, talk. Too much standing around posing. Every plot is the same and it takes forever to get through anything. And teenage Gohan the superhero is so stupid. I'm only watching this shit for Vegita loyalty.

7. apathy: What, DBZ? Yeah, it was ok. I used to watch it, until I realized that it just repeated itself over and over and they never won and barely changed. Vegita was cool. I wouldn't spend a lot of money on it if I were you, unless it's on the side-story specials. I can't believe I used to write B/V fic. Sad, ne? At least I've outgrown that by now.

Comments

[vrya.livejournal.com]

see you can skip phases 5-7 handily by just coming in and watching it for the first time on a regular basis during the Majin Buu cycle. Then, Tunami gets to the end, and doesn't cycle back to the beginning, so you jsut kinda shrug and say, hmm, well I suppose, if it's not too much trouble, someday, maybe I'll go back and watch (or, preferred, read) all the stuff I missed.

Meanwhile, you just enjoy the fond Vegeta memories and the pretty visuals of impossible hair undulating dramatically in power waves and let that paint a rosy glow over the whole experience. Or, um, that could just be me ;-)

[pepperlandgirl4.livejournal.com]

I got sucked in because after the 3rd time they ran the Boppity series (Hehhe, Bippity Boppity Buu, they're so original) they started over from the beginning.
*whimper*
So many episodes....

Re:

[vrya.livejournal.com]

So many episodes....

yes, yes indeed. But they're 90% filler, so it's not as bad as it seems, if you watch with remote in hand ;-) Someday, I may just have to do that experiment I've contemplated and see if you can catch every single plot point by just watching the 10 minute "previouslies" at the beginning and skipping the rest of the ep...

oh, and btw, had a peek at your profile, so I have to say: Upland? college? could we have a 5-C girl here? I'm class of '98 CMC, if that means anything to you ;-) I actually lived in Upland one summer myself, Woodlane Timberlan apartments, think it was...

[pepperlandgirl4.livejournal.com]

I don't live at the Woodlane Timberlans, but I drive by them all of the time.
I moved here to go to the University of La Verne, actually.

Oh, and you don't need to run your experiment. That's how I got through the last 20 episodes of the Buu saga, and I didn't miss a single thing. (God, I was SO pissed when CN stopped playing new episodes and started over again when there were only 12 episodes left. I can't believe I was forced to go online and look for DBZ spoilers. *rolleyes*)

Re:

[vrya.livejournal.com]

I don't live at the Woodlane Timberlans, but I drive by them all of the time.
I moved here to go to the University of La Verne, actually.

Still, close-enough for coinkydink land, methinks! Never actually got out to La Verne (amazing how a lack of car will constrain your travels!) but I recall seeing the track team coming and going...

how I got through the last 20 episodes of the Buu saga, and I didn't miss a single thing.

heh, heh...

started over again when there were only 12 episodes left

no kidding! talk about your annoying scheduling moves. and then to go back so far that Vegeta was dead again and force us to do that long wait before he's revived?!?!?! I mean honestly, it seemed long the *first* time around!

to go online and look for DBZ spoilers

heh, heh... luckily for me, I didn't care so much about what happened next, but more about what funny thing someone was going to say, so was relatively immune to the lure of spoilers...

[leslina.livejournal.com]

Ahh "Draggin'" Ball Z. Those were the days. Nothing wrong with Bulma/Vegeta fic. Lots of good stuff out there. It's worth sitting through all 291 eps and movies 6 through 13 just to watch Vegeta's evolution. It's bloody brilliant.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I was only making fun at the end there. I actually still like my own B/V fics, and I read one occaisionally.

It's worth sitting through all 291 eps and movies 6 through 13 just to watch Vegeta's evolution. It's bloody brilliant.

If I ever got to watch them with any regularity-- like if someone handed me the whole 40-tape boxed set of the series from DBZ through GT and said "Here, watch Vegita," I'd do it. But I can't afford them at 3 episodes a tape, and it's never on at a good time for me to record it. Not to mention, I'd be all out-of-synch if I started right now.

The last episode I saw... had something to do with Gohan and the Sword In The Stone on the Kai-planet. A concept which irrtated me, btw. I thought the Supreme Kai was a cool character when they introduced him (I loved his character design and his mohawk and his jewelry), being all-powerful of the all-powerful. But then suddenly he *wasn't* all-powerful, because he got beaten up. And that disappointed me. I'd rather have had him be all-powerful but aloof and unwilling to directly interfere. OR willing to directly interfere, but when it happens that's the wheere the buck stops, because that's what "all powerful" means, ya know? But it wasn't.

Not only was it disappointing, but it pointed out to me one of the things that really came to irritate me as the show progressed--- there were no definites or absolutes in the DBZ universe. You would get to the top, and then there was always someone stronger. Or you're always able to be strogner. The ultimate isn't so ultimate-- what the point of calling it the ultimate then? The only one that didn't annoy me in this way was, actually, Cell. Because Cell was made up of parts of the strongest warriors of the Galaxy, it's believable that he'd then surpass them. But Buu? Just another version of "You think you're the strongest, but you really weren't because you haven't heard about THIS guy yet..." The villians need to be different for them to work. You can't just have the newest "unbeatable foe" that Goku has to beat. Cell was a logical follow-up to Goku having beaten Freeza, who was before Goku the strongest warrior anywhere, because Cell was made from Goku and the others. Even the other androids, to an etxent, because they were custom-built to oppose Goku. But then the Buu thing came along, and the storyline began to annoy me. I loved Vegita choosing to be Majin's pawn-- that was cool. But I stopped watching not long after that because it was more of the same. I even missed Vegita's death episodes, though I caught a few after it.

You see what I'm sayign about the villians, though? What worked with Buffy was that the villains were extremely different each season--- it wasn't a new stronger-than-the-slayer person each time, it was different villains with completely different goals beyond "destroy the world." The master didn't want to destory the world, he wanted to take over. Glory didn't care about the world at all. Willow did, but only at the very end, and the First Evil was personally after Buffy and the Slayers rather than all of Earth.


Wow. That was longer than I meant. I'm just trying to clarify, ya know?

But I agree with you about Vegita's storyline being good. He was always (in my opinion) the most interesting character on the show and often the only one I cared about amongst the lot. Some people really love Goku. Goku never did anything for me. He was so good/straight-man/pure that he was boring. Gohan was cool as a little kid, especially when he'd get all vindictive and we saw shades of grey in the hero. But then he grew up and turned into a boring Goku immitation. I like my heros to have faults, and to sometimes do deliberately the wrong thing, like Buffy and Spike and Vegita. Trunks, especially Mirai Trunks, also stood out as being a little more in the grey area, a little more ruthless, but that, again, goes back to Vegita's character.

[vrya.livejournal.com]

and the Sword In The Stone on the Kai-planet. A concept which irrtated me, btw. I thought the Supreme Kai was a cool character when...

Supreme Kai was *so* lame. How "supreme" can he be and be all surprised at how strong the Saiyans are? The Sword -in-a-Stone thing was actually not so bad. Turns out, it wasn't a mystical weapon in the Scythe sense, so much as it was just so damn heavy that by training with it, you made yourself strong. It actually broke when Gohan and Goku were fooling around with it, so they never even used it in battle. I thought that was a nice little twist on the mystical weapon trope...

no definites or absolutes in the DBZ universe

I can shrug this off with an, eh, "kid's show" and so the tremendous never ending cycle of power inflation didn't bother me so very much. I expect a certain continuity world-building laxness in something so clearly geared towards "fun" rather than "art". Though going back and watching earlier episodes before the advent of super-saiyan was frustrating, because I'd start my traditional "super saiyan! super saiyan!" chant in anticipation of the transformation, and nothing would happen. Bummer.

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Though going back and watching earlier episodes before the advent of super-saiyan was frustrating, because I'd start my traditional "super saiyan! super saiyan!" chant in anticipation of the transformation, and nothing would happen.

But actually, the earlier part of the series didn't annoy me with the constant power-inflation so much, because then Goku (and the others by proxy) were just getting stronger and moving through the ranks of the enemy with Supersayain as the ultimate goal. It's when they They reach the ultimate goal, and then have to up it for lack of better plot ideas, that irritated me.

[cosmicfish.livejournal.com]

Horribly enough, I used to love Tenchi. Yeah, I know. Laugh all you want. It was my one and only anime obsession, although I never pursued any modes of Internet fandom. What happened? Pretty much what you described.

1) Nothing new ever happened. Aika and Ryoko still fought over Tenchi every episode. Tenchi thought about his mother. Aika's lil sis (it's been so long I can't remember her name) acted sweet and spoke in a squeaky voice. Ryoko's mutant rabbit/spaceship ate carrots.

2)I realized that nobody was ever going to get Tenchi. Obvious, but annoying none the less. And oh, I decided I hated Aika. Really hated her, until I became indifferent.

So yeah, I know what you're talking about.

The X-Files, my first great fan obsession - well I'm still smarting over that one. I can't get over the last few seasons. And I hate Chris Carter with a passion. I can't even watch my fav eppies anymore without making yucky faces, and grimacing over how everything ended up. It's horrible.

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Horribly enough, I used to love Tenchi.

::points:: BWAHAHAHAHAHAAA!

::cough::

Excuse me, that was horribly rude. I apologize.




::giggle::


So Ryoko didn't get him in the end? I only watched abour 6 episodes in total (plus the second movie), and she annoyed me the least. Though she still did. After I knew enough about it to get along I decided to never watch it again; it was simply too moronic for me. Though a lot of people love it, I'll admit.

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[cosmicfish.livejournal.com]

::points:: BWAHAHAHAHAHAAA!

I bite my thumb at you. :coughs: Bitch. But even I acknowledge that your scorn is deserved. Blech.

The truth is I like far too many moronic things than any intelligent person should. I read large novels for fun, I tend to string together huge syllables without even thinking about it, I appreciate the arts,and I have strong liberal views on society and politics ... and then I sing Jay's rap from "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" and start laughing at those horrid "dead baby" jokes. I'm afraid there's a bit of a mook in me, one that I'm unable to repress.

And hey, at least I wasn't a Pokemon or a Digimon fan ... :shudders:

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I read large novels for fun,

Sorry, dear, that actually makes you smarter than other people, not more moronic. ...Heh. Alliteration. :snert:

I tend to string together huge syllables without even thinking about it

Everyone does. Well, most normal people do. Super-ultra-all-the-time-precisely spoken people are either public speakers, lawyers, or scary.

And hey, at least I wasn't a Pokemon or a Digimon fan ... :shudders:

See, here's where you get a giggle. I went through a brief Digimon spell. I watched some episodes on Fox, and read some fanfic. Mostly I was a Ken fan. Ken is the Spike!Vegita!Anti-hero!villain of Digimon. I read a bunch of Ken fic.

But then I realized that in order to watch Ken angst about his evil nature and the brainy cute purple-haired girl worry about him (who he eventualy marries in the show years later), then I'd have to actually watch everyone ELSE and all their little dinosaurs. So I gave up.

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[cosmicfish.livejournal.com]

My brother watched all the Pokemon/Digimon stuff. I've seen two Pokemon movies and numerous eps of the show. At one point, I knew more about the stupid things than he did, just because he kept on making me look up stuff in the Guide books to help him with his video games. It really made me hate myself ...

As for Digimon, I watched far more than I want to admit. And I did like Ken ... but only while he was evil. I think it's a thing ... my fav characters (from anything) are ...

1) Iago (from Othello, not Aladdin)
2) Gollum
3) Spike

I think I need to start liking the good guys more than I do ...

[cosmicfish.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like Edmund from King Lear a lot too. I think that's more normal.

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[rashaka.livejournal.com]

King lear didn't do much for me. It was good, but I liked it less than Hamlet or R&J or the comedies.

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[cosmicfish.livejournal.com]

King Lear's not my fav either. I just like Edmund, because he denied fate and refused to believe that his stars were set for him. You gotta love a guy that tries to make a world for himself.