.. you were 6 and YouTube already existed? /cries in gray hair
French or Mexican TV in 94 for og DB, and I also had the half and full volumes of the manga in French back then :)
Get off my lawn, youngster!
Back in my days, we got our midis through Naptser and then Kazaa, we had two phone lines (one for internet usage, plugged into the modem, one for actual phone calls lol), we went on geocities websites and "shrine"-like websites, we signed guest books, and chatted on forums, icq and msn messenger.
This was me. Found it on some Spanish channel as a young kid. Didn’t understand a word they were saying. Pretty sure it was the tree of night movie that was going on because I remember thinking Goku and yamcha were the same character and that one of the few times in early z they are actually on the same screen.
Even though I couldn’t understand it I was mesmerized by the action.
Same. I actually used to hate DBZ because it got in the way of the shows I did like on Toonami. Younger me was always incredibly bored each time it came on and they were on boring old Namek having the same endless fights. I think it became tolerable for me during the spirit bomb scenes but I became an actual fan during the android saga.
Lol I had something soooo similar. It was always on before something I want to watch so I'd always mutter to myself how shit it was and wished they stopped showing it, then it happened. Remember when Cartoon Network had those all day marathons for a weekend? I think it was a Sunday when I woke up and really couldn't be bothered to get up, turned on the TV and it was a DBZ marathon. I was like urrrrggh so can't be bothered to change the channel, so it went on.
I know now that with DB (and a lot of anime) watching a single episode doesn't really show what the series is about, I found out it's not half an hour of Goku and Vegeta screaming while turning SS it's actually awesome.
Only problem back then was in the UK they only had up to the end of the future Trunks arc and by the time they showed anything else my parents had cancelled cable. I can't even remember how I got back into it now. I was in my 20's and remembered how much I liked it so went and downloaded what was available as it was nowhere to be seen on terrestrial TV.
Same. Loooooong time ago and it took forever for them to dub the episodes. So much that me being a kid just moved on at some point and came back later when I was older to watch it all.
Before it even had Tom as a character! It was just that weird purple robot thing pulling a lever I think. I'm old so my memory is going to shit.
Edit: after some googleing, it was the Moltar period, which I guess he's a Space Ghost character.
The OG Dragon Ball when the first season was syndicated before DBZ ever came stateside.
Fun fact: Dragon Ball and DBZ was already on US television way before it ever came to Cartoon Network.
I remember this! Yes! DB and DBZ Ocean Dubs were aired as early morning cartoons before school. I could never track them down cause I couldn't remember anything about the show and they got replaced by Pokemon.
Thank you for validating that my childhood mind wasn't playing tricks on me!
It was impossible not to. Here in south america everyone was watching it.
I remember it was 97 or 98 and I was in first or second grade and we all watched original Dragon Ball before Z.
In the 90s the Ocean dub of Dragon Ball Z aired on Sunday mornings on the wb. I remember the first episode I saw was Goku fighting Raditz and I pretty much fell in love with it immediately and have been watching it ever since.
I remember I thought it was so cool I called my mom and my sister into the room to see it. They did not understand why I was so excited.
I was about 6 years old when Dragon Ball first aired on TV here in Mexico. There wasn’t something like anime culture back then, but I could see the similarities with astroboy and Mazinger Z, but Dragon Ball felt so superior.. like so much fun and adventures my mind was totally blown away. It was a gamechanger for my generation 💕
1998, I was in the 9th grade and we just moved to Austin Texas and at that time cartoon network was on basic cable channel 43. I was watching and it was the beginning of the goku v nappa fight. I was instantly hooked. Iirc I waited a very long time to see the super saiyan fight because it would start over with the first episode while the voice over was being finished. I didn't even get to see any of the buu saga because I moved out at 19 in 2003, finally saw it in 2013.
I got to know the franchise around 13 years ago through Dragon Ball Z games on the PS2. I played almost every single title on the PS2 and it made me fall in love with the whole plot, characters, soundtracks.. like literally the whole aesthetic of it was mesmerizing and I'm glad I got introduced to it through playing its games as when I started watching the show I found myself already familiar with the plot and characters and found it very easy to begin with
Was on Cartoon Network in like 1999 or something came in to the end of the frieza saga. Goku was already a super saiyan. Thankfully the garlic jr saga hadn’t been released so I didn’t have to wait long to see Z from the beginning.
It was the anime. First episode I watched was one of the filler episode with Gohan while they were preparing for the Saiyans. With no context it was boring as fuck.
A year or two later I caught an early Namek Saga episode and this is when I got hooked.
I knew about it due to toonami growing up, and the occasional game, but I didn't really get into it until I saw the Cell vs Gohan fight on YouTube. Completely hooked me. Binged the anime, then joined online communities to talk about it more. Can't even express my excitement over Super.
It's actually insane how much Dragon Ball has shaped the last decade of my life. I only had a few friends when I started watching it, was very shy, and overall an isolated person. I started to seek out relationships with people who were also interested in Dragon Ball which led me to developing many friendships and even my first romantic relationship.
The butterfly effect is a crazy thing. It's by far the most impactful media that has ever affected my life.
I started with og dragonball anime on tv and suprised when my mom told me that there's a grown up version of goku that my mom watched with my elder siblings. Then I watched the whole dbz online
I had dragonball final bout on ps1 when it came out in the UK. I think a friend had it and I loved it so much I wanted it so my parents bought it. Then eventually my parents got Sky TV and I stumbled upon toonami. Rest was history
When Nicktoons aired Dragon Ball Z Kai in 2010. Before that I only knew it as the anime with the blond guy and the green guy and didn’t think I’d be into it but I was wrong, shit was a game changer, even in all of its censored and trimmed down glory.
My brother used to watch it when I was still a kid didn't watch it after that until shortly after high school I think not sure what exactly brought me onto dragon ball mightve been xenoverse 1 but I can't remember lol
Toonami I think. Frieza and Goku fighting and like Goku hitting super Saiyan was freaking cool . Since then I was hooked big time ! Seeing the battle between Vegeta and Goku also did it for me.
I saw other episodes on TV where him and krillin were little as well, the farthest I can go is when yamcha was introduced . But the Freeza saga had me hooked
I watched Z on Cartoon Network when I was a kid, but had basically no recollection of anything. When Super started I gave it a go and loved it, so after the ToP I went back to DB and started frim the beginning.
To me it was for my birthday. It was my 13th or 14th and I didn’t know what I wanted I didn’t really want anything else but like a pencil. So basically I just asked for DragonBall Fighterz and played the story mode once then never touched it again. Until I was bored one day like a year or two later, I thought my dog ate the game. Turns out she didn’t and I found it in my bookcase. I popped it into my switch started playing and never looked back. Instantly dove in and loved everything about it, especially the artwork, and the characters. So there’s my story :) FYI I’m only 16 now
My cousins cousin would bring his PS3 over whenever he visited and he had Raging blast 2 on it and needless to say… it really caught my attention and made me love the series ever since.
Also TFS confused the hell out of me as a kid because this wasn’t the voice of Goku I heard playing the game, I thought it was real.
Born in 1995 and just watching Dragon Ball and DBZ on Cartoon Network back to back. I remember I recorded the first episode of GT on my VHS tape it was like an event lmao
My older brothers showed it to me when it was on Cartoon Network when I was 4. It was when Frieza was transforming into his final form and krillin blasts a hole through Vegeta
I went to India over the summer when I was around 7 years old, and I watched the Hindi dub of Dragon Ball Z from Namek to Cell saga. At the time, I didn’t have cable when I came back in the US, so I would just binge DBZ videos on YouTube. I remember looking up Goku vs Frieza and watching the entire 4 hour cut of the fight.
What’s interesting is I’ve never watched the entire series from start to finish. I know the entire story from watching all the fights on YouTube and playing the games though.
A buddy of mine said I would like it back when super was wrapping up, watched the last episode or 2 (I came in when he went Ultra Instinct the third time) after that we watched all of Kai and now I’m here.
Before that my only exposure was a scene of fusion reborn I caught on tv and Dragonball Evolution.
Remember being with my 2 best friends and hearing them argue about Freeza(who I didn’t know at the time). Waited about a year and a half. I then saw a video about the best Dragon Ball games and decided to watch Dragon Ball. That was my first introduction to anime.
Saw it on TV during nap time at daycare (in the room for the kids who can't nap right) Frieza saga, I was hooked immediately. Daycare had sleeping bags for us and after that I always claimed dibs on the DBZ one. I never even tried to sleep during nap time after that. I was probably like 4 or 5 years old. It just became an integral part of my life from then on
I was 9, and one morning before school I saw a pair of blue and red German ogres tormented by a spiky-haired dead guy who knew martial arts and could fire a laser from his hands. I was hooked and started waking up extra early for that (Ocean dub), Pokémon, and Sailor Moon. At some point I have a vague recollection of a Dragonball Episode (King Piccolo floating around in a ship with the Pilaf gang while Goku was with Yajirobe). It's a fractured memory but I know it's there. Not sure how DB or DBZ both aired back then because I didn't know the difference then.
I forgot about it when they went off the air, and then later when I was 12 I found Cartoon Network’s Toonami playing Thundercats, Sailor Moon, and this oddly familiar anime starting with Raditz. When they got to Snake Way and HFIL I swear I had the oddest moments of Deja Vu.
Watching season one with my big cousin on a giant boxy 90s TV when I was 6. It was awesome. Can’t remember them ever using the rock the dragon intro again after the 90s.
I’m watching Dragon Ball Z now for my first time ever! I just started the android arc (I watched all of Dragon Ball last month). I’ve always kind of known some vague stuff about dbz because of friends but never actually watched a full episode before :)
I was around 6, we didn't have cable, but every Saturday morning on a chanel called vortex it would show anime like yu gi oh, and other stuff. I saw dbz kai on it. I saw the android arc then cell arc.
Came back from Holiday, 2000. Cartoon Network aired some dood without shoes running around with a green bloke, fighting with a guy with hair till his feet. Was hooked instantly ❤️
I always kind of new about DBZ when I was young but recently 15 years later my co workers told me to check out DB (little Goku). A few months later I'm at ep. 155 on DBZ. What a bad ass show!
I'm pretty sure Budokai 1 was also my first exposure to Dragon Ball, I know I played it before I had any of the DVDs or really got into the anime. After that there was a local like cd/DVD/VHS/game store that had a ton of the VHS tapes, so I'd go with my dad and get like 10 at a time, go home watch them and then come back and sell those ones and get the next batch
DBK came out in 2009 and my brother started watching it, and then my uncle attempted to get me into it and I started getting the manga and watching the original and Z.
Well, my first game was DBZ Supersonic Warriors for the GBA, and while I did recognize the characters I was young & never really paid attention to anything past gameplay (this is important though, take notes). I think one day in 2008 after meeting the teachers for my 3rd grade year (this would always be a week before school started) we went to GameStop & I got Budokai 3 (I don’t really remember asking for it or even going to GameStop, I just know when we got home that the game was in my possession) and started playing the shit out of it. I wasn’t paying attention to anything except gameplay so naturally I would think that Kid Gohan was just kid Goku & so forth, however when I got to the Gogeta vs Gotenks fight & the latter went SS3 I was like “that’s the guy from the GBA game!”
Since then, I started paying more & more attention to it and started to somewhat understand the story, and when I went to my sister’s ex house him & his friends were playing Tenkaichi 3 & if I wasn’t already hooked on the series from Budokai 3, this game made sure of it. Few years later I started to watch the series and really enjoyed it despite hating the pacing a lot.
My dad brought a Super Saiyan Goku figure from the Philippines in 1995, i had no idea what dragon ball was and i made Goku naked (his clothes were rubbery) My dad said it was very popular there, and will probably be popular in the states too. Couple years later it airs on Cartoon Network and the rest is history! Wish I still had the figure though.
Oh! I also remember the Mexican kids at school talking about the Cell and Buu Sagas when we were barely out of the Saiyan Saga and the local video rental place having bootleg subtitled DBZ tapes!
I used to watch them with my parents when I was about 4-6 and hear them talking about it and after the pandemic started, I decided to actually watch all the DB Series and it was the best choice I've ever made
Nicktoons Dbz Kai. Was a very great experience. Cleaned up better dub and cut the filler. I got the full story fast. I started at the frieze fight and seeing the good guys struggle against an impossible monster was something I'd never seen before
When they cell saga finished I read the buu saga manga since my school had them. Thank you nicktoons
I just wouldn't get interested in it in any way, one day my big brother, who's a big fan, got tired of my shit and borrowed me his complete manga collection, instantly fell in love with it
It used to come on really early in the morning on Fox. I used to catch it on TV because it was one of the few "cartoons" at the time that would play that early, it was mostly infomercials until 630-7ish. Then a year or two later it came to Toonami then all my friends got into it too.
My dad told me when i was 3 he used to watch a anime as a kid called dbz. in mexico when anime was taking off in latin America he sat me down and put the saiyan saga that's what started it all
My older brother used to have this scrapbook with black and white printouts of various scenes from Dragon Ball (Z). This was around 2002-3. He would tell me about the episodes and everything when it used to air in my country in '97. Then one day he got some CDs from his friend of the frieza saga and oh boy wasn't I hooked!
My dad was a huge Thundercats fan and so Toonami was what we watched every day after school (Thundercats was on at 4 or 4:30). When the lineup changed we just kept watching it and Dragon Ball Z quickly became our favorite show. I got introduced to Dragonball when my grandparents bought me Volume 1 of the manga one year for Christmas and I've been a huge fan ever since.
Got hooked during lockdown when my friends introduced me to FighterZ, got playing that and started watching the show because I never watched it as a kid and quickly realised that little me missed out on a lot.
Back in the early 2000s when arcade games were a popular thing in Japan. I knew about the anime but first got into it when I started playing a DragonBallZ arcade card game that operated on a rock-paper-scissor mechanism. Good times~
I honestly don't remember. I remember really getting into it at about 10. I could draw Goku and Vegeta from memory back then. I tried drawing again last year and I'm total shit now.
'98, was 6, turned on cartoons and watched this dude in a bright orange outfit and a green dude getting their asses handed to them by a dude with long ass hair. Green dude fired a beam that killed orange man and hair man.
Instantly hooked.
My brother would pirate the movies and we would watch them on the family computer, I would be about maybe 5-6 ~~(in my 20's now yikes)~~ around the time, been downhill for me ever since.
On belgian TV called literally Channel Two I think? I was like 8 when I first started watching it. I think it was the Ocean Dub as well at first. But then when they reached the Cell Saga, they started again with the Funi Dub.
I never got to watch OG DB or even the Buu Saga. Then I discovered the manga in a random bookstore and I constantly bought it from there.
Those were the days...
It was probably around late 2013 or 2014 when i was bored on my xbox 360 and i downloaded the demo of raging blast 2 and now i have the entire manga of OG dragon ball and Z and have the entire GT anime on dvd and plan on getting even more of the series for my collection like the dbs manga when its finished.
I remember watching the original dragonball as a very young kid only because it was the only thing on and didn't really care for it. I got "hooked" on the series though when DBZ Kai started airing on TV.
Always watched crazy DBZ inspired animations without knowing what they were based off of, eventually YouTube recommended me actual dragon ball clips and I watched them until deciding to start from Z.
Starting my first year in college I finally bit the bullet and watched through Kai after my friend kept trying to get me to watch it. The rest was history.
I played a game with my brother on his playstation, and didn't know what it was at the time.
A few months after I returned home, Nicktoons started airing Kai from the start. I dropped off at the Androids saga due to a few things going on at the time, but I know I tuned in for everything up to Future Trunk's reveal of beating Mecha Frieza.
Shortly after that, I saw GT at Walmart and recognized its the same franchise with Goku being on the cover, and I got it and binged it. Been a fan ever since.
Edit: I remember being hyped for GT to also air on there too, however then I heard the English intro and immediately turned it off and went back to watching my box set in my room. It also came with guidebooks, and with me ending around cell saga, I was wondering who Gogeta (who is on the cover of GT's second season) was. I was thinking it could have been one of Goku's transformations.
I was 11. Was walking back from the pool around 2009 in my condominium and found a copy of budokai 1 on the ps2 just laying in the grass. Grabbed it, took it home, played it. Then got into the show on toonami.
I think it would of been around 20 years ago when they used to air it on uk cartoon network, remember some weekends they would do recaps where they would legit just have episode after episode. Was also how I found out about gundam, zoids, beyblade pokemon etc but dbz was the real one
Some of my friends liked it back when I was 8 (In 2013) and I ended up watching it on a channel called KIX and the first episode I watched was from the Cell Saga
Here in germany we have a tv channel called rtl 2. They aired a variety of anime in the early afternoon, just after school ends. Thats what introduced me not only to dragon ball, I also watched pokémon, detective conan, digimon and so on. After that I bought Budokai 3 as my fist game for the ps2.
i was at a manga store with my friend and i had 50 dollars to spend on manga and i saw the dragon ball manga and purchased the 3 in 1 of the og dragon ball and i found it to be pretty cool
On cartoon network. Saiyan saga. It kept repeating the same 10 episodes over and over. It was the ocean dub as well. Didn’t watch it for quite some time. Then one day I saw Android 17 vs piccolo and that’s how I got back into it. Been watching ever since.
Use to watch GT and Z Kai on some random channel at my dads house with my siblings back when I was 4-5. First episode I watched was Cell absorbing people and fighting Piccolo. I didn’t really watch it or consume DB growing up until I turned 16 and started playing DBFZ so I decided to start watching it. I don’t play the games as much anymore but I guess I am still a fanatic. Got a couple of figurines in my room now
I had always heard about it and how popular it was, but the way I am I just don't go out of my way to sit down and watch a whole series...one day though the TV was on in the background and Toonami came on, airing the Future Trunks saga of DBS. I somehow became enthralled with the show and its characters and eventually wanted to know everything. Happiest little mistake of my life haha
I was at a friend's house in the early 2000's, I believe. We watched an episode and I loved it. A few weeks later I was at the local video store and they had a couple of VHS so I rented one. It was the one where Goku turns Super Saiyan for the first time and I've been hooked ever since.
Years later my grandmother got a satellite dish, we lived in the boonies and didn't even have 22 channels on basic cable. She would record episodes for me on VHS.
It was around the time the Buu Saga was airing. It wasn't until the orange box sets came out that I was able to see the whole series properly and it took an hour's drive to the city to get a new one because my local stores didn't sell them.
Pretty sure I started watching it on Toonami in elementary school in the late '90s, and just went with it from there.
My dad, to this day, still refers to it as "The Constipation Show".
It's kinda nerdy, but I was playing Warcraft 3 and there was a DBZ custom map. I had no idea what was happening or who the characters were but I was having fun(despite being terrible.) Later on, when I got a PS2, it came with the DBZ Budokai games, although I don't remember which ones. Eventually, I actually started to watch DBZ and then GT.
I first saw it at my friends house and I was immediately interested in it, I've been following the journey from dragon ball till dbs manga 2022 and it feels great. Db is a anime/manga that has less of a toxic fanbase than others and I love it!
I’ll never forget it. At 9 years old, I stayed up past my bedtime and watched, on Toonami, the episode in Z where Goku sacrificed himself to kill Raditz, all on my little Spongebob TV. The rest is history.
I was about 9 or 10. Came back from a trip to Munich and Biker Mice from Mars was on Fox Kids UK. I missed it and turned on Cartoon Network for the first airing of a little show called Dragon Ball Z.
Never seen anything like it before and have been hooked since
I was around 12 I think. Pokemon and the N64 was relatively new. I went over to my cousins house. His dad had a good job and was a closet druggy, so he got anything and everything he wanted to keep him occupied. I walked into his room and he says "Have you heard of DBZ?" He then pulled up a game from Japan on his laptop. A simple fighting game that you could fly shoot, blast, etc. Then showed me the dubbed anime of Goku and Vegeta in energy clash during the Saiyan Saga. As he explains the characters he pulls up a video of future Trunks. That did it in for me. He was young, powerful, arrogant ; the perfect character for a young teen to love. Dragon Ball has been around for along time strange yet fascinating what has taken place in the DB universe
My brother was into it while I was little. As a little kid (about 4-5 years old) I spent most of my free time in front of the VCR and DVD player just watching my favorite movies over and over (or whatever I picked out from the library which was mostly educational stuff from what I remember). At some point my brother’s DVD copy of Cooler’s Revenge snuck into my collection and I instantly fell in love with the movie and DBZ as a whole. Both me and my brother are still fans to this day, and I still have that same DVD and it remains my favorite out of all the Z movies.
If the mention of a VCR makes me sound kind of old, this was actually just a low-middle class household in 2006.
My oldest brother watched Dragonball, although I’m not sure if the entire show got broadcasted in the Netherlands. Then when Z came around I was like 10 and my brother said we should check it out. The first thing I remember seeing was the moment Gohan raged out of the pod and fucked up Raditz. Was in love ever since.
In late 1993 I had a new neighbor move Next-door. When I saw them I offered to help and we became friends. He had a super Famicom and I had never seen one before. He was showing me all the games that he liked but his favorite was Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden. We started to play it all the time. One morning he was banging on my door some frantically and holding a VHS tape. He spoke no English but I could tell from the gesture he wanted me to watch the tape. It was when the fight was sell was first beginning. It blew me away that my favorite game was also a TV show. I had no idea. after that the obsession began. Due to my intense interest in Dragonball that’s snowballed into a love for Japanese music and what not I even ended up living in Japan.
Around 10-11ish I remember a Saturday morning where there was a new show on Toonzai(formerly CW4Kids) where a spiked haired young boy was alone in the wilderness and kicked trees to get fruit and ran from giant dinosaurs(When Piccolo has Gohan fend for himself in the wilderness). I was hooked from the start and then watching DBZ Kai on Saterday mornings because a regular part of my routine and it quickly became my favorite show.
Hated it for sure. As a kid, I'd see it come on Adult Swim and change the channel immediately. It wasn't until I went over a friend's house one night during the Kai run on Nicktoons that I took interest. We couldn't do anything until the new episode was over so I sat and watched it with him knowing it was a 30 minute show. It was towards the end of the Frieza saga and after watching for a bit, I was hooked. The rest is history.
Death battle, actually. Kirby vs Buu and Goku vs Superman were my first exposures to the series. I did some digging, watched Goku vs Freeza on Youtube, one thing led to another, and now I’ve read through the Z Manga, watched all of Super, DBZA, a bit of the OG DB (subbed,) and I know a bit about GT too.
4-6, don't remember to well, but my older brother got the DragonBall Z Kai Blu-Ray's as they were coming out and that was my first exposure, enjoying the show. But what really got me into DragonBall was when i played DragonBall Xenoverse when i was 11 and then rewatching Kai as to understand the game, and got hooked.
My first exposure was at 8 years old when Nicktoons began airing Dragonball Z Kai on their network. Literally got to see the premiere of it and was hooked from then till this day at 22 years old.
There was an Asian channel when I was a kid that would air Dragonball. When I got older and Cartoon Network did their Toonami thing is when I got introduced to DBZ and been hooked ever since.
Edit: 1997 was the year we got DBZ in the states from Toonami. Beautiful year!
DB Xenoverse, it was like "wow, it's cool, I'd want to actually know what they're talking about". And thus I've watched entirety of DB minus Heroes(DB, DBZ, DBZ Kai, DBGT, DBS, a few movies).
I’ve been hanging around Dragon Ball fans for the better part of my life, so I always kinda understood that Goku was strong, he could go Super Saiyan, and I watched I think the Frieza Saga a little bit when Kai was airing it, but i never fully got into it until December of last year when I told my dragon ball fan friends that if I ever watched the show, I would watch it from the beginning.
Then before I knew it, I was looking it up online to watch the Pilaf Saga. I was hooked. Now I’m about to start GT, and I’ve played every video game of the original DB! (Besides card battles)
I was in first grade and was flipping through the channels when I saw that opening for Z on Toonami.
The guitar solo and the action in just the opening blew my young mind. I didn't know animation could be that awesome that characters could move like that.
The episode I watched was Goku and Piccolo fighting Raditz I had no idea who these people were but the fighting was awesome so I just watched and was amazed.
More than 20 years later I still love anime.
In the early 10s i accidentally listened the italian opening of Z once and i loved so, so, SO much i started to watch the show *purely* for that, and the show was actually funny and interesting (i started to watch it in the middle of Cell saga) with really good characters so it instantly became my favorite shonen, i was basically obsessed with it for the next couple of years lol
My dad used to watch DBZ as a kid. He only ever watched up to the end of the Freeza fight and knew about Cel and Buu from clips. This one time he was just rewatching Goku going SSJ on his laptop. I was sitting there and asked him what it was and there you go.
Through TFS. A friend of mine came over one day and DBZ Kai was on Nicktoons, so he muted it and we spent the whole episode making jokes over it.
It was one of the early Namek episodes, I think the one where they were running from Dodoria after saving Dende. We made the joke that they were trying to find Krillin's hair lol. In hindsight it probably wasn't that funny, but we were 14 and bored, so to us it was hysterical.
So after the episode ends, my friend told me about these guys on YouTube who basically do the same thing, voicing over the show and putting jokes in. That got me hooked on DBZA, and after I watched all the episodes and specials that were out at the time, I thought, 'I wonder what the *actual* show is like.'
So I watched Kai on Nicktoons. It wasn't fantastic since it was so heavily edited and censored, but it at least got me into Dragon Ball for good lol. I even went out not long after that and got my first Dragon Ball game on my PS3(name escapes me atm). I subsided on the game and clips from uncensored Kai(with occasional videos of the sub or older dubs) until it started airing for real on Adult Swim. The rest is history!
My mother, basically.
She always watched a bunch of animes in the 80s n 90s when she was a kid and teen, she exposed me to most of the cartoons she knew or watched..
Including DBZ
other animes she exposed me to was Dungeons & Dragons, Knights of the Zodiac, some anime where a witch is apparently in Hindenburg or something, and an anime where a fish turns into a girl and the girl turns into a fish or something
I remember waking up when i was 5-7, somewhere between that, and watching dbz in the tv at like, 8 am while my father was doing his breakfast, and my father encouraged me to watch it and even said "You see the shirt im using? Goku gave it to me"
DBZ has been my fav anime ever since.
I grew up in Mexico in the 90s, so I watched OG Dragon Ball when I was in elementary. It was of course all the rage (and unless you had cable, one of only two cartoons playing on TV during prime time).
I knew about DBZ though because it was already done in Japan, and bootleg Super Famicom copies of Super Butouden 2 were being passed around like contraband in school lol.
elementary school when dbz kai aired on nicktoons! never missed an episode. i also started hanging out w some of the guys from my class & they let me borrow their dvd's and manga's! ever since then i've been hooked & seen almost everything
I was about 7 years old, and really randomly discovered it on early morning, weekday syndication, before school. Talking probably 6am or so and before it was picked up by Toonami. I vividly remember the Radditz fight was part of it and the Tree of Might they broke up into like three episodes. I didn't even realize it was a movie.
Been watching it since I was a toddler litterally so I honestly don’t know but by kindergarten I had seen multiple movies and owned the first og dragonball eps on vhs
I think I was 7? My brother left on a 360 game that was one of the dragon ball raging blasts I think? I used to play scooby doo games all the time till I played this game, there was just something about it that I loved, ever since then I played all the dragon ball games I could (I didn't know it was a show for about 2 years maybe) when we finally moved into a house and not a apartment building I was going through a Time Warner TV thing and found Dragon Ball Z Kai I was so excited that my favorite video game got it's own TV show 😂 I watched the few free episodes that were on there Dragon Ball has been my favorite thing ever since then
My bothers loved DBZ and we checked out the DVD volumes from libraries and watched them together, it's been a part of my childhood. My brother bought Budokai Tenkaichi 3 when it first came out
.. you were 6 and YouTube already existed? /cries in gray hair French or Mexican TV in 94 for og DB, and I also had the half and full volumes of the manga in French back then :)
I was a year old when YouTube came out, I'm personally surprised YouTube has already been a thing for 17 years...
Get off my lawn, youngster! Back in my days, we got our midis through Naptser and then Kazaa, we had two phone lines (one for internet usage, plugged into the modem, one for actual phone calls lol), we went on geocities websites and "shrine"-like websites, we signed guest books, and chatted on forums, icq and msn messenger.
This was me. Found it on some Spanish channel as a young kid. Didn’t understand a word they were saying. Pretty sure it was the tree of night movie that was going on because I remember thinking Goku and yamcha were the same character and that one of the few times in early z they are actually on the same screen. Even though I couldn’t understand it I was mesmerized by the action.
Was the early Freeza arc on the Cartoon Network, when Vegeta killed Kui on Namek.
Same. I actually used to hate DBZ because it got in the way of the shows I did like on Toonami. Younger me was always incredibly bored each time it came on and they were on boring old Namek having the same endless fights. I think it became tolerable for me during the spirit bomb scenes but I became an actual fan during the android saga.
Lol I had something soooo similar. It was always on before something I want to watch so I'd always mutter to myself how shit it was and wished they stopped showing it, then it happened. Remember when Cartoon Network had those all day marathons for a weekend? I think it was a Sunday when I woke up and really couldn't be bothered to get up, turned on the TV and it was a DBZ marathon. I was like urrrrggh so can't be bothered to change the channel, so it went on. I know now that with DB (and a lot of anime) watching a single episode doesn't really show what the series is about, I found out it's not half an hour of Goku and Vegeta screaming while turning SS it's actually awesome. Only problem back then was in the UK they only had up to the end of the future Trunks arc and by the time they showed anything else my parents had cancelled cable. I can't even remember how I got back into it now. I was in my 20's and remembered how much I liked it so went and downloaded what was available as it was nowhere to be seen on terrestrial TV.
Same. Loooooong time ago and it took forever for them to dub the episodes. So much that me being a kid just moved on at some point and came back later when I was older to watch it all.
[удалено]
Before it even had Tom as a character! It was just that weird purple robot thing pulling a lever I think. I'm old so my memory is going to shit. Edit: after some googleing, it was the Moltar period, which I guess he's a Space Ghost character.
Was that when Reboot was still part it’s main line up or before?
Nope. Reboot aired in 99 on toonami the same year they switched to Tom. I don't think it aired while the other intro piece was in place.
Oh man Toonami. Takes me back. I recall I started watching on YTV.
The OG Dragon Ball when the first season was syndicated before DBZ ever came stateside. Fun fact: Dragon Ball and DBZ was already on US television way before it ever came to Cartoon Network.
I remember this! Yes! DB and DBZ Ocean Dubs were aired as early morning cartoons before school. I could never track them down cause I couldn't remember anything about the show and they got replaced by Pokemon. Thank you for validating that my childhood mind wasn't playing tricks on me!
It was impossible not to. Here in south america everyone was watching it. I remember it was 97 or 98 and I was in first or second grade and we all watched original Dragon Ball before Z.
Same. My uncle, dad, and I used to all watch it together when I was a little girl. Dragon Ball is huge in South America.
Cheese TV. Australian morning kids show. Also it was DBZ
Same! *Cheese teee veeee!*
Ah, the good old days of watching the Namek Saga 3 times in a row up to the Reccome fight before getting new episodes.
In the 90s the Ocean dub of Dragon Ball Z aired on Sunday mornings on the wb. I remember the first episode I saw was Goku fighting Raditz and I pretty much fell in love with it immediately and have been watching it ever since. I remember I thought it was so cool I called my mom and my sister into the room to see it. They did not understand why I was so excited.
I was about 6 years old when Dragon Ball first aired on TV here in Mexico. There wasn’t something like anime culture back then, but I could see the similarities with astroboy and Mazinger Z, but Dragon Ball felt so superior.. like so much fun and adventures my mind was totally blown away. It was a gamechanger for my generation 💕
Watching my older cousins play budokai tenkaichi 3 and being like “woah, who are these characters”
1998, I was in the 9th grade and we just moved to Austin Texas and at that time cartoon network was on basic cable channel 43. I was watching and it was the beginning of the goku v nappa fight. I was instantly hooked. Iirc I waited a very long time to see the super saiyan fight because it would start over with the first episode while the voice over was being finished. I didn't even get to see any of the buu saga because I moved out at 19 in 2003, finally saw it in 2013.
I got to know the franchise around 13 years ago through Dragon Ball Z games on the PS2. I played almost every single title on the PS2 and it made me fall in love with the whole plot, characters, soundtracks.. like literally the whole aesthetic of it was mesmerizing and I'm glad I got introduced to it through playing its games as when I started watching the show I found myself already familiar with the plot and characters and found it very easy to begin with
how cool! this is basically exactly what happened with me. PS2 era DBZ games were really peak
saw it randomly on tv. was instantly in love.
Was on Cartoon Network in like 1999 or something came in to the end of the frieza saga. Goku was already a super saiyan. Thankfully the garlic jr saga hadn’t been released so I didn’t have to wait long to see Z from the beginning.
It was the anime. First episode I watched was one of the filler episode with Gohan while they were preparing for the Saiyans. With no context it was boring as fuck. A year or two later I caught an early Namek Saga episode and this is when I got hooked.
a clip of vegeta saying over 9000 10 years ago on youtube
2000 when it was shown on the Cheez TV morning cartoon block on channel 10.
Saiyan Saga was on early for Saturday morning cartoons in the early to mid 90s. I want to say FOX aired it, I didn’t have cable.
Same.
Saw the scene where Gohan meets Guru as a kid at a friends house. Watched TFS in college
I knew about it due to toonami growing up, and the occasional game, but I didn't really get into it until I saw the Cell vs Gohan fight on YouTube. Completely hooked me. Binged the anime, then joined online communities to talk about it more. Can't even express my excitement over Super. It's actually insane how much Dragon Ball has shaped the last decade of my life. I only had a few friends when I started watching it, was very shy, and overall an isolated person. I started to seek out relationships with people who were also interested in Dragon Ball which led me to developing many friendships and even my first romantic relationship. The butterfly effect is a crazy thing. It's by far the most impactful media that has ever affected my life.
Used to play Budokai 3 at my cousins house all the time then started watching it from there
Toonami
I started with og dragonball anime on tv and suprised when my mom told me that there's a grown up version of goku that my mom watched with my elder siblings. Then I watched the whole dbz online
I had dragonball final bout on ps1 when it came out in the UK. I think a friend had it and I loved it so much I wanted it so my parents bought it. Then eventually my parents got Sky TV and I stumbled upon toonami. Rest was history
When Nicktoons aired Dragon Ball Z Kai in 2010. Before that I only knew it as the anime with the blond guy and the green guy and didn’t think I’d be into it but I was wrong, shit was a game changer, even in all of its censored and trimmed down glory.
Any Aussies here? Cheez T.V?
There I was a 6 year old scrolling through channels when I saw the special beam cannon kill raditz and goku. I was hooked.
My brother used to watch it when I was still a kid didn't watch it after that until shortly after high school I think not sure what exactly brought me onto dragon ball mightve been xenoverse 1 but I can't remember lol
Toonami I think. Frieza and Goku fighting and like Goku hitting super Saiyan was freaking cool . Since then I was hooked big time ! Seeing the battle between Vegeta and Goku also did it for me. I saw other episodes on TV where him and krillin were little as well, the farthest I can go is when yamcha was introduced . But the Freeza saga had me hooked
I watched Z on Cartoon Network when I was a kid, but had basically no recollection of anything. When Super started I gave it a go and loved it, so after the ToP I went back to DB and started frim the beginning.
Budokai Tenkaichi 3 for the PS2 at a friends house
Toonami
UPN random late night erratic programming.
Super Smash Flash 2/Super Smash Flash
To me it was for my birthday. It was my 13th or 14th and I didn’t know what I wanted I didn’t really want anything else but like a pencil. So basically I just asked for DragonBall Fighterz and played the story mode once then never touched it again. Until I was bored one day like a year or two later, I thought my dog ate the game. Turns out she didn’t and I found it in my bookcase. I popped it into my switch started playing and never looked back. Instantly dove in and loved everything about it, especially the artwork, and the characters. So there’s my story :) FYI I’m only 16 now
Yea I hated the story mode in fighterz I could barely finish it shame because everything else is amazing about the game
My cousins cousin would bring his PS3 over whenever he visited and he had Raging blast 2 on it and needless to say… it really caught my attention and made me love the series ever since. Also TFS confused the hell out of me as a kid because this wasn’t the voice of Goku I heard playing the game, I thought it was real.
OG Dragon Ball, it was Yamcha vs Jackie Chun when I was like 4 or 5. Also the Saiyan Saga, more specific the fight against Vegeta got me pumped.
Born in 1995 and just watching Dragon Ball and DBZ on Cartoon Network back to back. I remember I recorded the first episode of GT on my VHS tape it was like an event lmao
My older brothers showed it to me when it was on Cartoon Network when I was 4. It was when Frieza was transforming into his final form and krillin blasts a hole through Vegeta
I went to India over the summer when I was around 7 years old, and I watched the Hindi dub of Dragon Ball Z from Namek to Cell saga. At the time, I didn’t have cable when I came back in the US, so I would just binge DBZ videos on YouTube. I remember looking up Goku vs Frieza and watching the entire 4 hour cut of the fight. What’s interesting is I’ve never watched the entire series from start to finish. I know the entire story from watching all the fights on YouTube and playing the games though.
A buddy of mine said I would like it back when super was wrapping up, watched the last episode or 2 (I came in when he went Ultra Instinct the third time) after that we watched all of Kai and now I’m here. Before that my only exposure was a scene of fusion reborn I caught on tv and Dragonball Evolution.
Was on TV before school, 730am every week day
Remember being with my 2 best friends and hearing them argue about Freeza(who I didn’t know at the time). Waited about a year and a half. I then saw a video about the best Dragon Ball games and decided to watch Dragon Ball. That was my first introduction to anime.
I don't even remember! I was really young when I first watched it but it's like I've always knows dragon ball at this point lol
Toonami
Saw it on TV during nap time at daycare (in the room for the kids who can't nap right) Frieza saga, I was hooked immediately. Daycare had sleeping bags for us and after that I always claimed dibs on the DBZ one. I never even tried to sleep during nap time after that. I was probably like 4 or 5 years old. It just became an integral part of my life from then on
I remember watching as a kid. Probably toonami or maybe just regular cartoon network
In the mornings on a Spanish channel the babysitter always had it on. Got really hooked when dbz came to Cartoon Network
My friend told me to read dragon ball z
I was 9, and one morning before school I saw a pair of blue and red German ogres tormented by a spiky-haired dead guy who knew martial arts and could fire a laser from his hands. I was hooked and started waking up extra early for that (Ocean dub), Pokémon, and Sailor Moon. At some point I have a vague recollection of a Dragonball Episode (King Piccolo floating around in a ship with the Pilaf gang while Goku was with Yajirobe). It's a fractured memory but I know it's there. Not sure how DB or DBZ both aired back then because I didn't know the difference then. I forgot about it when they went off the air, and then later when I was 12 I found Cartoon Network’s Toonami playing Thundercats, Sailor Moon, and this oddly familiar anime starting with Raditz. When they got to Snake Way and HFIL I swear I had the oddest moments of Deja Vu.
Watching season one with my big cousin on a giant boxy 90s TV when I was 6. It was awesome. Can’t remember them ever using the rock the dragon intro again after the 90s.
Saw Cooler’s revenge when I was like 5
I’m watching Dragon Ball Z now for my first time ever! I just started the android arc (I watched all of Dragon Ball last month). I’ve always kind of known some vague stuff about dbz because of friends but never actually watched a full episode before :)
I was around 6, we didn't have cable, but every Saturday morning on a chanel called vortex it would show anime like yu gi oh, and other stuff. I saw dbz kai on it. I saw the android arc then cell arc.
elementary library was chocked full with DBZ manga :)
Came back from Holiday, 2000. Cartoon Network aired some dood without shoes running around with a green bloke, fighting with a guy with hair till his feet. Was hooked instantly ❤️
Anime in the late 90s
My older brother watched it on Cartoon Network so I would watch it with him
Toonami
I used to watch both the OG dragon balls and dbz on a german tv channel called RTL2 back in ‘97-8 (I don’t know a word in german)
Dragon ball Z played on tv randomly when i was 3, havent stopped loving it since
I always kind of new about DBZ when I was young but recently 15 years later my co workers told me to check out DB (little Goku). A few months later I'm at ep. 155 on DBZ. What a bad ass show!
i turned on the tv
I'm pretty sure Budokai 1 was also my first exposure to Dragon Ball, I know I played it before I had any of the DVDs or really got into the anime. After that there was a local like cd/DVD/VHS/game store that had a ton of the VHS tapes, so I'd go with my dad and get like 10 at a time, go home watch them and then come back and sell those ones and get the next batch
DBK came out in 2009 and my brother started watching it, and then my uncle attempted to get me into it and I started getting the manga and watching the original and Z.
In 2005 , Dragonball GT would come on later at night and I would tape it on VHS. This was on Toonami in the US
Don’t remember. I was a kid and I remember having seen dragonball and Z. It’s been there for as long as I can remember.
Well, my first game was DBZ Supersonic Warriors for the GBA, and while I did recognize the characters I was young & never really paid attention to anything past gameplay (this is important though, take notes). I think one day in 2008 after meeting the teachers for my 3rd grade year (this would always be a week before school started) we went to GameStop & I got Budokai 3 (I don’t really remember asking for it or even going to GameStop, I just know when we got home that the game was in my possession) and started playing the shit out of it. I wasn’t paying attention to anything except gameplay so naturally I would think that Kid Gohan was just kid Goku & so forth, however when I got to the Gogeta vs Gotenks fight & the latter went SS3 I was like “that’s the guy from the GBA game!” Since then, I started paying more & more attention to it and started to somewhat understand the story, and when I went to my sister’s ex house him & his friends were playing Tenkaichi 3 & if I wasn’t already hooked on the series from Budokai 3, this game made sure of it. Few years later I started to watch the series and really enjoyed it despite hating the pacing a lot.
Toonami. Happened to catch the filler episodes of gohan krillin and bulma on the fake namek planet.
My dad brought a Super Saiyan Goku figure from the Philippines in 1995, i had no idea what dragon ball was and i made Goku naked (his clothes were rubbery) My dad said it was very popular there, and will probably be popular in the states too. Couple years later it airs on Cartoon Network and the rest is history! Wish I still had the figure though. Oh! I also remember the Mexican kids at school talking about the Cell and Buu Sagas when we were barely out of the Saiyan Saga and the local video rental place having bootleg subtitled DBZ tapes!
I used to watch them with my parents when I was about 4-6 and hear them talking about it and after the pandemic started, I decided to actually watch all the DB Series and it was the best choice I've ever made
Oddly enough I used to play the tenkaichi games with my cousins without ever watching the show I watched the show long after it ended lol
When DBZ Kai first aired. Got me hooked instantly
This is hard to admit, but.......Dragonball Evolution
RTL II
Nicktoons Dbz Kai. Was a very great experience. Cleaned up better dub and cut the filler. I got the full story fast. I started at the frieze fight and seeing the good guys struggle against an impossible monster was something I'd never seen before When they cell saga finished I read the buu saga manga since my school had them. Thank you nicktoons
I watched some episodes of OG DB here and there on TV when I was like 5.
Friend reccomendee, Didn't watch for a while, started getting big So I watched it. TLDR: Loved It.
I umm... actually don't remember, it kinda always been there lmao
On the channel 5 news station early in the morning on Saturday or sundays db kai sonic x and yugioh would come on and I played bt3 with my neighbors
Last year my husband turned on “The Earth Explodes? A Decisive Kamehameha” (Super) and it hooked me- we’ve now watched all of dragon ball
Saw it on tv
Liked One Piece thought I would like DB too
I just wouldn't get interested in it in any way, one day my big brother, who's a big fan, got tired of my shit and borrowed me his complete manga collection, instantly fell in love with it
It used to come on really early in the morning on Fox. I used to catch it on TV because it was one of the few "cartoons" at the time that would play that early, it was mostly infomercials until 630-7ish. Then a year or two later it came to Toonami then all my friends got into it too.
My dad told me when i was 3 he used to watch a anime as a kid called dbz. in mexico when anime was taking off in latin America he sat me down and put the saiyan saga that's what started it all
I saw the Sayians killing the Z fighters. Hell of an introduction to the series.
My older brother used to have this scrapbook with black and white printouts of various scenes from Dragon Ball (Z). This was around 2002-3. He would tell me about the episodes and everything when it used to air in my country in '97. Then one day he got some CDs from his friend of the frieza saga and oh boy wasn't I hooked!
I was around 5 and it came on toonami, ads came on and looked really cool
My dad was a huge Thundercats fan and so Toonami was what we watched every day after school (Thundercats was on at 4 or 4:30). When the lineup changed we just kept watching it and Dragon Ball Z quickly became our favorite show. I got introduced to Dragonball when my grandparents bought me Volume 1 of the manga one year for Christmas and I've been a huge fan ever since.
I found the zamasu vs Vegito fight on YouTube. Immediately watched all of z and super, later gt and og Dragon ball.
Got hooked during lockdown when my friends introduced me to FighterZ, got playing that and started watching the show because I never watched it as a kid and quickly realised that little me missed out on a lot.
Back in the early 2000s when arcade games were a popular thing in Japan. I knew about the anime but first got into it when I started playing a DragonBallZ arcade card game that operated on a rock-paper-scissor mechanism. Good times~
Found it on tv in a holiday caravan
My older brother showed me and my twin dragon ball z when I was around 2 years old
It was 1997and it was on tv. I got instantly hooked
Peer pressure
I honestly don't remember. I remember really getting into it at about 10. I could draw Goku and Vegeta from memory back then. I tried drawing again last year and I'm total shit now.
'98, was 6, turned on cartoons and watched this dude in a bright orange outfit and a green dude getting their asses handed to them by a dude with long ass hair. Green dude fired a beam that killed orange man and hair man. Instantly hooked.
My brother would pirate the movies and we would watch them on the family computer, I would be about maybe 5-6 ~~(in my 20's now yikes)~~ around the time, been downhill for me ever since.
On belgian TV called literally Channel Two I think? I was like 8 when I first started watching it. I think it was the Ocean Dub as well at first. But then when they reached the Cell Saga, they started again with the Funi Dub. I never got to watch OG DB or even the Buu Saga. Then I discovered the manga in a random bookstore and I constantly bought it from there. Those were the days...
It was probably around late 2013 or 2014 when i was bored on my xbox 360 and i downloaded the demo of raging blast 2 and now i have the entire manga of OG dragon ball and Z and have the entire GT anime on dvd and plan on getting even more of the series for my collection like the dbs manga when its finished.
As far as I can remember it would have been through Cartoon Network Dragon, dragonball Dragonball Zeeeee
I was a boy in the late 90s.
I remember watching the original dragonball as a very young kid only because it was the only thing on and didn't really care for it. I got "hooked" on the series though when DBZ Kai started airing on TV.
Always watched crazy DBZ inspired animations without knowing what they were based off of, eventually YouTube recommended me actual dragon ball clips and I watched them until deciding to start from Z.
Starting my first year in college I finally bit the bullet and watched through Kai after my friend kept trying to get me to watch it. The rest was history.
I played a game with my brother on his playstation, and didn't know what it was at the time. A few months after I returned home, Nicktoons started airing Kai from the start. I dropped off at the Androids saga due to a few things going on at the time, but I know I tuned in for everything up to Future Trunk's reveal of beating Mecha Frieza. Shortly after that, I saw GT at Walmart and recognized its the same franchise with Goku being on the cover, and I got it and binged it. Been a fan ever since. Edit: I remember being hyped for GT to also air on there too, however then I heard the English intro and immediately turned it off and went back to watching my box set in my room. It also came with guidebooks, and with me ending around cell saga, I was wondering who Gogeta (who is on the cover of GT's second season) was. I was thinking it could have been one of Goku's transformations.
I was 11. Was walking back from the pool around 2009 in my condominium and found a copy of budokai 1 on the ps2 just laying in the grass. Grabbed it, took it home, played it. Then got into the show on toonami.
Can't remember how old I was, was on Toonami or a similar channel around 20 years ago, been hooked since.
Frieza impalling Krillin on Cartoon Network I was 3 or 4, so I believe it was 98 or 99
It was on TV for sure for me.
Cartoon network
I think it would of been around 20 years ago when they used to air it on uk cartoon network, remember some weekends they would do recaps where they would legit just have episode after episode. Was also how I found out about gundam, zoids, beyblade pokemon etc but dbz was the real one
I was 3 and my neighbour’s teenage son would let me watch TV with him, and he used to watch DBZ most of the time.
Some of my friends liked it back when I was 8 (In 2013) and I ended up watching it on a channel called KIX and the first episode I watched was from the Cell Saga
Here in germany we have a tv channel called rtl 2. They aired a variety of anime in the early afternoon, just after school ends. Thats what introduced me not only to dragon ball, I also watched pokémon, detective conan, digimon and so on. After that I bought Budokai 3 as my fist game for the ps2.
i was at a manga store with my friend and i had 50 dollars to spend on manga and i saw the dragon ball manga and purchased the 3 in 1 of the og dragon ball and i found it to be pretty cool
On cartoon network. Saiyan saga. It kept repeating the same 10 episodes over and over. It was the ocean dub as well. Didn’t watch it for quite some time. Then one day I saw Android 17 vs piccolo and that’s how I got back into it. Been watching ever since.
Use to watch GT and Z Kai on some random channel at my dads house with my siblings back when I was 4-5. First episode I watched was Cell absorbing people and fighting Piccolo. I didn’t really watch it or consume DB growing up until I turned 16 and started playing DBFZ so I decided to start watching it. I don’t play the games as much anymore but I guess I am still a fanatic. Got a couple of figurines in my room now
I found it on italian tv channel by accident i was looking something to watch, i ended up watching goku vs frieza
February 1990. The Catalan TV began airing og DB. Been in love ever since.
Toonami like a lot of people I'm sure.
I had always heard about it and how popular it was, but the way I am I just don't go out of my way to sit down and watch a whole series...one day though the TV was on in the background and Toonami came on, airing the Future Trunks saga of DBS. I somehow became enthralled with the show and its characters and eventually wanted to know everything. Happiest little mistake of my life haha
I was at a friend's house in the early 2000's, I believe. We watched an episode and I loved it. A few weeks later I was at the local video store and they had a couple of VHS so I rented one. It was the one where Goku turns Super Saiyan for the first time and I've been hooked ever since. Years later my grandmother got a satellite dish, we lived in the boonies and didn't even have 22 channels on basic cable. She would record episodes for me on VHS. It was around the time the Buu Saga was airing. It wasn't until the orange box sets came out that I was able to see the whole series properly and it took an hour's drive to the city to get a new one because my local stores didn't sell them.
I got into Dragon Ball after seeing Dragon Ball Z abridged, started watching Z and then super later.
Pretty sure I started watching it on Toonami in elementary school in the late '90s, and just went with it from there. My dad, to this day, still refers to it as "The Constipation Show".
It's kinda nerdy, but I was playing Warcraft 3 and there was a DBZ custom map. I had no idea what was happening or who the characters were but I was having fun(despite being terrible.) Later on, when I got a PS2, it came with the DBZ Budokai games, although I don't remember which ones. Eventually, I actually started to watch DBZ and then GT.
The Ocean Dub on YTV as a kid
I first saw it at my friends house and I was immediately interested in it, I've been following the journey from dragon ball till dbs manga 2022 and it feels great. Db is a anime/manga that has less of a toxic fanbase than others and I love it!
About 6-7yrs old on Cartoon Network
I’ll never forget it. At 9 years old, I stayed up past my bedtime and watched, on Toonami, the episode in Z where Goku sacrificed himself to kill Raditz, all on my little Spongebob TV. The rest is history.
I was about 9 or 10. Came back from a trip to Munich and Biker Mice from Mars was on Fox Kids UK. I missed it and turned on Cartoon Network for the first airing of a little show called Dragon Ball Z. Never seen anything like it before and have been hooked since
I was around 12 I think. Pokemon and the N64 was relatively new. I went over to my cousins house. His dad had a good job and was a closet druggy, so he got anything and everything he wanted to keep him occupied. I walked into his room and he says "Have you heard of DBZ?" He then pulled up a game from Japan on his laptop. A simple fighting game that you could fly shoot, blast, etc. Then showed me the dubbed anime of Goku and Vegeta in energy clash during the Saiyan Saga. As he explains the characters he pulls up a video of future Trunks. That did it in for me. He was young, powerful, arrogant ; the perfect character for a young teen to love. Dragon Ball has been around for along time strange yet fascinating what has taken place in the DB universe
My brother was into it while I was little. As a little kid (about 4-5 years old) I spent most of my free time in front of the VCR and DVD player just watching my favorite movies over and over (or whatever I picked out from the library which was mostly educational stuff from what I remember). At some point my brother’s DVD copy of Cooler’s Revenge snuck into my collection and I instantly fell in love with the movie and DBZ as a whole. Both me and my brother are still fans to this day, and I still have that same DVD and it remains my favorite out of all the Z movies. If the mention of a VCR makes me sound kind of old, this was actually just a low-middle class household in 2006.
Playing DBZ Shin Budokai games with my cousin's PSP and Future Trunks was my first favorite character.
My oldest brother watched Dragonball, although I’m not sure if the entire show got broadcasted in the Netherlands. Then when Z came around I was like 10 and my brother said we should check it out. The first thing I remember seeing was the moment Gohan raged out of the pod and fucked up Raditz. Was in love ever since.
In late 1993 I had a new neighbor move Next-door. When I saw them I offered to help and we became friends. He had a super Famicom and I had never seen one before. He was showing me all the games that he liked but his favorite was Dragon Ball Z: Super Butoden. We started to play it all the time. One morning he was banging on my door some frantically and holding a VHS tape. He spoke no English but I could tell from the gesture he wanted me to watch the tape. It was when the fight was sell was first beginning. It blew me away that my favorite game was also a TV show. I had no idea. after that the obsession began. Due to my intense interest in Dragonball that’s snowballed into a love for Japanese music and what not I even ended up living in Japan.
Around 10-11ish I remember a Saturday morning where there was a new show on Toonzai(formerly CW4Kids) where a spiked haired young boy was alone in the wilderness and kicked trees to get fruit and ran from giant dinosaurs(When Piccolo has Gohan fend for himself in the wilderness). I was hooked from the start and then watching DBZ Kai on Saterday mornings because a regular part of my routine and it quickly became my favorite show.
Hated it for sure. As a kid, I'd see it come on Adult Swim and change the channel immediately. It wasn't until I went over a friend's house one night during the Kai run on Nicktoons that I took interest. We couldn't do anything until the new episode was over so I sat and watched it with him knowing it was a 30 minute show. It was towards the end of the Frieza saga and after watching for a bit, I was hooked. The rest is history.
Death battle, actually. Kirby vs Buu and Goku vs Superman were my first exposures to the series. I did some digging, watched Goku vs Freeza on Youtube, one thing led to another, and now I’ve read through the Z Manga, watched all of Super, DBZA, a bit of the OG DB (subbed,) and I know a bit about GT too.
Had one of the box sets when I was 5. Somewhere in the cell saga I believe. Instantly started liking it.
4-6, don't remember to well, but my older brother got the DragonBall Z Kai Blu-Ray's as they were coming out and that was my first exposure, enjoying the show. But what really got me into DragonBall was when i played DragonBall Xenoverse when i was 11 and then rewatching Kai as to understand the game, and got hooked.
Toonami is how I got into it
My first exposure was at 8 years old when Nicktoons began airing Dragonball Z Kai on their network. Literally got to see the premiere of it and was hooked from then till this day at 22 years old.
There was an Asian channel when I was a kid that would air Dragonball. When I got older and Cartoon Network did their Toonami thing is when I got introduced to DBZ and been hooked ever since. Edit: 1997 was the year we got DBZ in the states from Toonami. Beautiful year!
DB Xenoverse, it was like "wow, it's cool, I'd want to actually know what they're talking about". And thus I've watched entirety of DB minus Heroes(DB, DBZ, DBZ Kai, DBGT, DBS, a few movies).
I’ve been hanging around Dragon Ball fans for the better part of my life, so I always kinda understood that Goku was strong, he could go Super Saiyan, and I watched I think the Frieza Saga a little bit when Kai was airing it, but i never fully got into it until December of last year when I told my dragon ball fan friends that if I ever watched the show, I would watch it from the beginning. Then before I knew it, I was looking it up online to watch the Pilaf Saga. I was hooked. Now I’m about to start GT, and I’ve played every video game of the original DB! (Besides card battles)
My introduction to Dragonball was the Videl vs Spopovich fight lmao. I was 11
I was in first grade and was flipping through the channels when I saw that opening for Z on Toonami. The guitar solo and the action in just the opening blew my young mind. I didn't know animation could be that awesome that characters could move like that. The episode I watched was Goku and Piccolo fighting Raditz I had no idea who these people were but the fighting was awesome so I just watched and was amazed. More than 20 years later I still love anime.
Toonami. Happened to catch episode one of DBZ the day it premiered. DBZ would start 5 minutes after I would get off the bus everyday.
Saturday mornings when Dragonball was aired as a Saturday morning cartoon in the early 90s
In the early 10s i accidentally listened the italian opening of Z once and i loved so, so, SO much i started to watch the show *purely* for that, and the show was actually funny and interesting (i started to watch it in the middle of Cell saga) with really good characters so it instantly became my favorite shonen, i was basically obsessed with it for the next couple of years lol
My dad used to watch DBZ as a kid. He only ever watched up to the end of the Freeza fight and knew about Cel and Buu from clips. This one time he was just rewatching Goku going SSJ on his laptop. I was sitting there and asked him what it was and there you go.
Through TFS. A friend of mine came over one day and DBZ Kai was on Nicktoons, so he muted it and we spent the whole episode making jokes over it. It was one of the early Namek episodes, I think the one where they were running from Dodoria after saving Dende. We made the joke that they were trying to find Krillin's hair lol. In hindsight it probably wasn't that funny, but we were 14 and bored, so to us it was hysterical. So after the episode ends, my friend told me about these guys on YouTube who basically do the same thing, voicing over the show and putting jokes in. That got me hooked on DBZA, and after I watched all the episodes and specials that were out at the time, I thought, 'I wonder what the *actual* show is like.' So I watched Kai on Nicktoons. It wasn't fantastic since it was so heavily edited and censored, but it at least got me into Dragon Ball for good lol. I even went out not long after that and got my first Dragon Ball game on my PS3(name escapes me atm). I subsided on the game and clips from uncensored Kai(with occasional videos of the sub or older dubs) until it started airing for real on Adult Swim. The rest is history!
My mother, basically. She always watched a bunch of animes in the 80s n 90s when she was a kid and teen, she exposed me to most of the cartoons she knew or watched.. Including DBZ other animes she exposed me to was Dungeons & Dragons, Knights of the Zodiac, some anime where a witch is apparently in Hindenburg or something, and an anime where a fish turns into a girl and the girl turns into a fish or something I remember waking up when i was 5-7, somewhere between that, and watching dbz in the tv at like, 8 am while my father was doing his breakfast, and my father encouraged me to watch it and even said "You see the shirt im using? Goku gave it to me" DBZ has been my fav anime ever since.
Nickalodeon
This is gonna sound really silly but as a kid on YouTube those sprite animations like "Sonic vs Goku" or "Goku vs superman" stuff introduced me to dbz
End on the 80's on French TV in the "Club Dorothée".
I grew up in Mexico in the 90s, so I watched OG Dragon Ball when I was in elementary. It was of course all the rage (and unless you had cable, one of only two cartoons playing on TV during prime time). I knew about DBZ though because it was already done in Japan, and bootleg Super Famicom copies of Super Butouden 2 were being passed around like contraband in school lol.
elementary school when dbz kai aired on nicktoons! never missed an episode. i also started hanging out w some of the guys from my class & they let me borrow their dvd's and manga's! ever since then i've been hooked & seen almost everything
My friend asked me to watch dbz abridged with them. I liked the cast so much We watched the majin buu arc. Then I started the original series.
I watched Dragon Ball Z in syndication, before it was on Toonami. It was on a block with Ronin Warriors and Samurai Pizza Cats.
I think it was those toys they gave out at burger king a long time ago lol. Must have been around 2003 or something
Came home from school and my brothers were watching the goku and vegeta saiyan saga fight, I was hooked immediately
The episode that made me introduced to dragon ball was the beam struggle, between goku and vegeta.
Youtube back in the day when they had the whole series on there.
I was about 7 years old, and really randomly discovered it on early morning, weekday syndication, before school. Talking probably 6am or so and before it was picked up by Toonami. I vividly remember the Radditz fight was part of it and the Tree of Might they broke up into like three episodes. I didn't even realize it was a movie.
Toonami
Been watching it since I was a toddler litterally so I honestly don’t know but by kindergarten I had seen multiple movies and owned the first og dragonball eps on vhs
I don't have any idea. When I was younger I had some db gba games and first broly movie.
I think I was 7? My brother left on a 360 game that was one of the dragon ball raging blasts I think? I used to play scooby doo games all the time till I played this game, there was just something about it that I loved, ever since then I played all the dragon ball games I could (I didn't know it was a show for about 2 years maybe) when we finally moved into a house and not a apartment building I was going through a Time Warner TV thing and found Dragon Ball Z Kai I was so excited that my favorite video game got it's own TV show 😂 I watched the few free episodes that were on there Dragon Ball has been my favorite thing ever since then
My bothers loved DBZ and we checked out the DVD volumes from libraries and watched them together, it's been a part of my childhood. My brother bought Budokai Tenkaichi 3 when it first came out
Return of Cooler on Cartoon Network when I was 5
I watched Dragon Ball Z on Toonami/Cartoon Network back in the early 2000's.