I Watched Dragon Ball Z for the First Time, Because Fuck It
Dragon Ball Z is a huge deal to many of my friends, and really, many people in general who run in the cultural circles and fandoms I like to think I’m a part of. Whether it’s video games or hip hop or all kinds of mediums and genres in between, DBZ has touched a lot of things I care about deeply. It took a global pandemic to finally get me to watch it.
I never had any particularly strong reasons not to give it a shot. Sure, some of it was definitely the caveman logic of “Anime bad. Anime fan annoying. Dragon Ball Z probably sucks.” But I think it had much more to do with the fact that there’s a window where certain entertainment’s going to affect you the most, and when it comes to art that deals in only the broadest of emotions like DBZ, I missed that window by several years. I simply didn’t have that childhood exposure to it, and it never aligned with my interests as I got older. (The only anime I liked as a kid was Pokémon, and even then, I was more into the games than anything.)
I had no real interest in watching DBZ. Then I moved in with my roommate, who’s a massive fan of the show. When she asked me if I wanted to watch it, a voice in my head said, “Fuck it.” Maybe I was vulnerable, what with quarantine having just begun, and maybe it was partially out of good roommatesmanship. But whatever the reason may be, I have now watched Dragon Ball Z. I’m a man now.
Housekeeping
Let’s rip the band-aid off. I watched Kai.
If you’ve never seen Dragon Ball Z and for some reason you’re reading this article anyway, Dragon Ball Z Kai is, essentially the abriged version of the show that eschews a lot the material and condenses the story down. Apparently, it’s controversial among fans. Or at least it seems that way to me because my DBZ fan friends were not happy with a lot of what was cut or changed.
I realize this isn’t the “real” version a lot of DBZ fans know and love, and to be fair, I’ve heard about some stuff that got cut that sounds, for reasons we’ll get into, right up my alley. That said, I feel like if I had watched the original uncut version of the show, I would’ve been much more down on the show overall because, well…
I Hated the Constant Stalling and the Show’s Approach to Filler
I said in the Adventure Time/Steven Universe article that I wanted to continue down the beloved kids show rabbit hole, and I’m happy to say that I have. Since that article, I finished Regular Show and I’ve now seen Over the Garden Wall, Gravity Falls, and a few others. In fact, I write this days after finishing my first ever watch of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
On the whole, I liked it a lot, but it took me a little longer to get on board because I had to adjust to an older model of television that wasn’t as friendly to the streaming world as the one we have now. Specifically, the idea of doing twenty plus half hour episodes per season as opposed to twenty plus ten minute episodes feels, to me, like something from the past. When you have a season running that long with that episode length, filler and weaker material is an inevitability.
You may see where I’m going here.
The reason I’m bringing all this up is because the complaint that “DBZ has too much filler and it pads its story way too goddamn much” can be made about a lot of shows, especially ones you weren’t there to appreciate when they first aired. Avatar has plenty of what can be called “filler,” as does Steven Universe and, to a certain extent, Gravity Falls. Moreover, I’m sure there are nuances at play that I don’t know about that could effect my enjoyment. Differing aesthetic values in storytelling or the nuances of the television and anime industries in Japan.
However, the filler on Avatar doesn’t feel as much like filler to me, and what is technically “filler” on Steven Universe is some of the best material in the whole show. (The “filler” on Gravity Falls is only technically filler because of the way the seasons are structured, but that’s a point for another article.) No filler on the planet feels more like filler than the filler on Dragon Ball Z. Avatar, at least, does the most with what it has, and even its weaker material is pretty good. DBZ, at its worst, barely makes an effort to try to hide how little is actually happening.
Try to remember that I have not internalized this stuff. I’m coming to this show as a 28 year old who doesn’t like most of what he watches anyway, let alone an anime show aimed at younger audiences from a different decade. Of course I wasn’t going to have as much fun watching one fight drag out over episode after episode. Posturing and fighting can be fun, but what isn’t fun is when you repeat it over and over again.
It was in these moments that I wanted to stop watching all together, particularly, in the Frieza and Saiyan storylines. (The only reason I kept pushing forward was because of my roommate.) It looks like Goku’s going to win. Then he doesn’t. Then he’s almost killed. But then it turns out he does win. Repeat forever.
To the show’s credit, it does get better at filler as it goes along, particularly in later seasons where instead of dragging fights out for multiple episodes it’ll do some weirdo shit like making Gohan a literal superhero or traveling inside of Evil Buu’s body. But if we must have filler, it’s best to use it to tell stories, and not just to stall. Unfortunately, DBZ takes multiple seasons and dozens of episodes to learn this, and even then, it could’ve done a lot better.
The Biggest Surprise of the Show was Goku
The most specific information I knew about Dragon Ball Z before watching the show was a few character names, what going “super saiyan” meant, and that generally speaking, the show features a lot of angry people fighting each other. But on a more general level, I knew the iconography. If you said the words “Dragon Ball Z” to me, a very specific picture would’ve come to mind. The image of Goku or Vegeta with their arms crossed, their heads tilted down, their eyes looking up, and their expressions very angry. (If it was Vegeta, he would’ve been smirking a little too.)
Maybe it’s because of certain corners of the internet where I dwell or because of who my friends were growing up, but I saw this image over and over again, be it in memes or Vine compilations on Worldstar or t-shirts you can buy on the boardwalk. That image, more or less, was what I thought the show was. Beefy dudes gettin’ mad and beating the piss out of each other. (And now that I’ve seen the show, well…)
Because of this image, I developed a certain idea of who I thought these characters were, particularly Goku. Before watching the show, I assumed that Goku was going to be a brooding soft spoken hunk with a heart of gold who never loses the fight. You know, most action movie protagonists of the last few decades.
So I was shocked to learn that this couldn’t be further from who Goku is as a character. Sure, he has the heart of gold. Kind of. But mostly, he’s just a goofy happy-go-lucky dumbass.
I know this isn’t how it sounds, but I don’t mean that as a criticism. It was just unexpected. If I did want to talk about the problems I have with Goku as a character, it’s that he’s a shit dad and a horrible husband who has trouble relating to anything that isn’t related to fighting, and this quality sometimes makes him intensely unlikable.
There’s man-children, and then there are men who literally act like children, and Goku leans very far into the latter category. At first, I found him off-putting. However, over time, I found this characterization increasingly more fascinating and funny, especially later when the show gets more self-aware.
It works (for the most part) because there’s more to it than the fact that he’s dumb. One of my favorite moments of the show is when he explains the fusion dance for the first time. (I think the editing’s slightly different in Kai, but you get the general idea.) While it’s necessary to learn the dance for the sake of saving the planet, it also looks exceptionally silly, and Goku has zero self-awareness of it.
It’s not just that Goku is an idiot who’s often played up for laughs. It’s that he’s also free of shame or self-loathing. Someone perpetually unbothered. Someone Tony Soprano would refer to as a “happy wanderer.”
In a way, Goku’s presence undercuts a lot of what we understand as “cool” when it comes to our action movie protagonists. We think that action movie characters, to borrow more of Tony Soprano’s wisdom, should be Gary Cooper. “The strong, silent type.” A dude who does what he has to do and shows little emotion while doing it.
But what if you really had nothing to prove? What if you were so powerful that you don’t really have to worry about how men are expected to behave because you’re basically a kung-fu god? What if you didn’t have any pride, not because you don’t have values or things that matter to you, but because you simply didn’t have to care anymore?
Or to put it even more simply, would Gary Cooper have the balls to do the fusion dance? Probably not.
Vegeta is Without Question the Best Part of the Show
There’s a certain kind of character I’ve always loved that’s always been difficult for me to briefly describe.
To put it a little too simply, the kinds of characters I’m talking about are sticks in the mud. Grumps. Characters that are so unshakably earnest and humorless that it becomes, in and of itself, a kind of joke.
Two characters that come to mind that fit the mold of what I’m walking about are Nelson Van Alden from Boardwalk Empire and Lucius Vorenus from Rome. Nelson Van Alden begins the show as an agent for the Bureau of Prohibition. He’s hyperbolically puritanical (he’s pretty much a literal puritan as far as his religious beliefs are concerned), he’s perpetually angry, and he’s prone to needless violence in the name of righteousness. (It also doesn’t hurt that he’s played by Michael Shannon. Maybe we should just call these characters “Michael Shannons.”)
Vorenus, a centurion in the ancient Roman army, has a similar personality. While not as harsh as Van Alden, his values were still unceasingly rigid, he never questions his loyalty to the military, and he’s so inflexible that he frequently has trouble with basic everyday interactions with normal people.
These are both characters allowed to be as severe as they are because they’re from another time and space. Even in the politest of societies, it’s hard to imagine either of these characters advancing because their personalities are so intensely stern. As a result, both shows have a lot of fun at their expense. In Van Alden’s case, by putting him in frequently humiliating situations and in Vorenus’s case, by pairing him with Titus Pullo, the exact opposite of him in just about every way imaginable.
Vegeta, another character from a different time and place, might be the best representation of this character I’ve ever come across.
Vegeta isn’t just a stick in the mud. He’s the stick in the mud. He’s not just a grump. He’s the grump. He only smiles to rub something in your face, he’s so valiant that he’ll gladly enter a fight knowing he’ll die just because of the principal of it, and any time he feels even slightly inferior to Goku he has a full blown mental breakdown. If you ever wondered why pride is one of the seven deadly sins, look no further than Vegeta. I thought he was hilarious.
I have two favorite Vegeta moments. The first, which is my favorite moment of the show, is when Vegeta murders Nappa and then licks his lips in a highly sexualized manner. But my other favorite moment comes at the very end of the series, when Vegeta has to convince every human being on the entire planet to channel their energy to Goku so he can defeat Buu. (Environmental subtext intentional. Also, apologies for the weirdly edited clip.)
In order to complete this task, he has to appeal to the hearts and minds of every human being. So naturally, he calls them idiots, threatens them with their deaths, and gets even angrier when, for no apparent reason, nobody does what he says. All of existence is on the line, and he has to strain just to say “please.”
Of course, unlike Rome or Boardwalk Empire, DBZ is a mainstream anime, and story moments like this aren’t out of the question. (Or at least it seems that way to me.) But even if this weren’t the case, Vegeta still has a trait to him that the others don’t, which is a deep sense of insecurity. It may have seemed liked I was exaggerating when I said Vegeta has a meltdown every time he feels inferior. I wasn’t. The only variable in each of his freakouts is the extent of the ranting and the self-loathing.
Vegeta wants to be the greatest fighter in the world, and he wants this more than any character has ever wanted anything. When he can’t have it, it’s the end of the world for him. However, because he’s the only character to have such a deep character flaw, he’s also really the only one that has an emotionally palpable arc. Goku’s the same guy from start to finish, and the only change for him is that he gets stronger. Vegeta, on the other hand, learns empathy and eventually realigns his values.
Towards the end of the show, Vegeta realizes why he’s never been, and probably will never be, superior to Goku. I can’t find the exact quote, but he says something along the lines of, “I never fought for revenge. He fought for himself.” (Again, not the exact quote, but it’s hard to find exact quotes for this show what with all the translations and so on.) Is it the most profound thought? Not really. But it demonstrates a level of self-reflection no other character in DBZ is capable of showing.
` If Dragon Ball Z has one saving grace, it’s Vegeta. Maybe he’s not the most complex character, but he commits to his schtick so deeply that it’s hard not to love him on some level.
Also, there’s a moment where Vegeta implies that he had a family just to compete with Goku and get stronger, which is pretty damn great.
All in All, It’s Too Inconsistent to Say That I “Liked” It
I expected to hate Dragon Ball Z. I didn’t. In fact, if I had to summarize my overall feelings for the show, I would say I’m a baby step above casual indifference. I had a lot of fun watching it, but I wouldn’t call it “good.”
On one hand, I found it frequently entertaining. I liked it when it was being over-the-top or when it was being incredibly self-aware later in its run. I like how much intricate work went into setting up the rules of the universe, and when the story needed those rules to not matter, I liked that instead of ignoring them it would create a ridiculous storyline or sequence of events where it would be addressed. I liked how Piccolo’s solution to the “Gohan turns into an unstoppable giant ape during a full moon” problem was to literally blow up the moon. Again, I really liked Vegeta killing Nappa and suggestively licking his lips. In short, my favorite parts of the show was the stupidity, regardless of whether or not it was intentional.
However, for every one thing about the show that I enjoyed, there’d be two things I didn’t. I hated a lot of the plotting. I disliked most of the Frieza and Saiyan arcs. (I hate calling them “sagas” for reasons I don’t quite understand.) I found a lot of the individual writing of the posturing to be kind of lame, as well as how repetitive said posturing was in the first place. I think Gotenks is one of the most annoying characters ever to be inflicted on a general audience. I didn’t like how a lot of my favorite characters were dropped to the sidelines when they didn’t have anything to do. (Mainly Piccolo and King Kai.) I didn’t like a lot of Goku’s lapses as a father or husband. I hated how shitty it was to all of its female characters. I hated looking at Mr. Popo and, in a general sense, I hate how the show’s default depiction of black people is essentially that of American minstrelsy. The list goes on.
If I find one thing oddly encouraging, it’s that it seems to me that most of my issues with the show are fairly common. Of my friends who are DBZ fans, it’s pretty much universally acknowledged that, say, the Frieza storyline sucks or that Mr. Popo is a goddamn problem.
However, in a way, that’s also the problem. I’m not a “hot takes” guy. In fact, I actively disdain a lot of people who make that their sole characteristic as a critic. However, normally, I’m able to find some sort of take in general. Some opinion that isn’t widely had. Something. With DBZ, I well and truly have nothing new to offer. I liked Vegeta, but so does seemingly everyone. I thought Goku can be a bit of a dumbass, but even the show goes out of its way to get you to laugh at his expense. It’s a lot of filler, but a lot of people don’t like this show, and a lot of them have said the same thing.
In the end, this tells me that the show didn’t really have much of an impact on me. I didn’t feel the need to think about it particularly hard or search for any new meaning.
That said, I still had a lot of fun. I’ll admit that I may have enjoyed it more than I did because I was watching it with my roommate. But even if I didn’t, I think I still would’ve felt like my time with the show was worth it, even if it’s only to understand some of those Worldstar jokes.
