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DB30YEARS: Special Dragon Ball 30th Anniversary Magazine
Kanzenshuu, the leading Dragon Ball fansite, provides an in-depth look at and celebration of 30 years for our favorite Japanese manga and anime series.
160 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 23, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 19, 2021
I’ve been a fan of Dragon Ball for some twenty years now. It’s a franchise which just keeps giving and giving, even when we may not want it to. Kanzenshū is considered the leading website in English on all things Dragon Ball, a truly comprehensive place where you can find out just about everything there is to know about this manga and anime juggernaut, the godfather of shōnen stories as we know them, one that’s helped shape our world so much that the contemporary battle-anime landscape would look significantly different had Toriyama not decided in 1984 to introduce us to an odd monkey-tailed boy and a blue-haired girl trying to shoot him in the face.
In 2014, for the franchise’s thirtieth anniversary, Kanzenshū decided to issue a special edition magazine to celebrate it, compiling memories, reviews and opinion pieces. Most of the information presented in it may be considered obscure by the casual fan, so I’m happy to say *BRAG ALERT* I was already familiar with most of it.
Some of my favourite entries are the ones in which fans describe their first exposure to Dragon Ball and the ensuing madness of becoming obsessed and falling deeper and deeper in love with it in a mad dash to gain more information, a near-impossible mission in the late nineties. The special magazine features roughly fifty different entries, but I’ll mention only the most striking ones.
Julian Grybowski, better known as “SaiyaJedi” in the fandom vernacular, wrote some of the most memorable pieces. I especially enjoyed his entry on some of the characteristics of Dr. Slump being reused in creative (and less creative) ways in Dragon Ball, as well as his outline of the manga’s stretch in Shōnen Jump in which he essentially celebrates the story’s imperfections and Toriyama’s scatterbrained, largely improvisational approach to storytelling, criticising subsequent editions’ attempts to fix all the inconsistencies and perceived mistakes, as if narratives have to be perfect in order to be enjoyed. He also provides us with an almost hauntingly beautiful and philosophical take on the events covered in Jaco, urging the fans to evaluate it not only as a fun, standalone manga, but also in relation to the larger Dragon Ball mythos.
Heath Cutler, one of the founders of Kanzenshū, also provides the readers with some intriguing and insightful entries. I especially enjoyed the one on the division of the story into arcs or sagas, depending on your persuasion, as well as the one on his personal take on the Dragon Ball fandom as a whole, where he outlines exactly what makes this particular franchise special and why it suffers from such polarisation, how its uniqueness in the West provides it with both some advantages and near-crippling drawbacks. He also takes us on a fun little ride into the world of the dreaded filler content and the reasons behind its plaguing the Dragon Ball anime to such an infuriating degree.
Scott Frerichs, better known to fans as “KaiserNeko” of DBZ Abridged fame (which I somehow still keep hoping will come back and cover the final arc), wrote a compelling piece that feels very personal and intimate, about who Son Gokū is and what he means to us, comparing him to the ensuing shōnen protagonists and describing his influence on them. It comes as no surprise that so many are modelled after and inspired by him, given how influential Toriyama’s magnum opus is for younger mangakas.
Most of us Dragon Ball fans know Toriyama took inspiration for the early plot developments, character designs and character names from the sixteenth-century Chinese novel Monkey: The Journey to the West. What most of us don’t know is that the anime staff incorporated some of Son Wukong’s adventures into filler arcs and episodes and that’s where Mike LaBrie, “VegettoEX”, comes in. He gives us both an overview of some of the story beats present in the novel and their implementation into filler content, as well as offer us different ways of accessing and consuming the original work.
Meri LaBrie in turn treats us to a familiar story, one of a fan discovering a piece of fiction they’re about to become obsessed with for the first time. Those early days of becoming a fan, especially if they take place in the early or even the pre-internet era, are extremely evocative and nostalgic. I’ve been there, traversing the clumsy terrain of the early world wide web, on a hunt for whatever piece of information I could get my hands on. It’s easy nowadays to forget what being a fan in the nineties and early noughties was like. We’ve become so used to having all the info in the history of humanity available to us, just a click away, that we sometimes forget how precious those early days were, even when we take into account the fact we tend to view them through rose-coloured glasses.
Jake Schutz provides an extremely riveting take on Dragon Ball’s hierarchy of deities. He explains how Toriyama came to utilise divine beings and aliens – is it a job, a status, a permanent state of being, an inherent trait, a title passed down – tracing the history of divinities in Dr. Slump and the reception of godlike beings in the West where, more often than not, these terms would go through a watering-down process so as to become more palatable to a different culture with very different stances on what a god is supposed to be, do and look like. For my part, I love the way Toriyama depicts godhood, making all these insanely powerful deities perverted lechers and lazy gluttons, not that much different from us.
Due to the thirtieth anniversary’s temporal proximity to the release of the Battle of the Gods movie, it’s hardly surprising many of the magazine’s contributors decided to focus on that element, covering their emotional states, expectations, hype and reaction to the movie. One of the best has got to be Julian’s description of the frenzied state of Kanzenshū’s staff, covering events from when the first hints at new material got strategically dropped to the viewing itself. Even though all of this took place in the early 2010s, long after the dark ages of the internet, this entry still manages to capture what being a desperate fan is like when information is scarce, how one’s expectations, wishes and predictions combine to create a veritable frenzy, perfectly reflecting what discovering Dragon Ball for the first time was like for many of us.
My favourite piece though has got to be Lance Rumowicz’s take on the character of Bardock. He’s better known in the fandom as MistareFusion and is, in my totally biased opinion, the single greatest Dragon Ball content creator in the English language. His Dragon Ball Dissection is a gem for any fan of this franchise and his piece on Bardock demonstrates all the intelligence, common sense and insight he tends to bring to his videos on a regular basis as well. Every Dragon Ball fan owes is to herself to check out his content and enrich her knowledge of this story.
I fully intended to read this magazine shortly after it got released, but I find myself reading it only now, in 2021, closer to Dragon Ball’s fortieth anniversary than to its thirtieth. And that got me thinking – the contributors whose pieces I read all mentioned the hype surrounding Battle of the Gods, but many also mentioned their excitement about the upcoming movie. That movie turned out to be Resurrection/Revival F, an abomination of a narrative that served no purpose whatsoever other than to milk a popular character that really should’ve stayed dead. I found Battle of the Gods to be a pleasant, enjoyable movie, nothing more and nothing less, all in all – nothing particularly special. However, when compared to Resurrection F, it may as well be the Godfather.
Since then, over the course of just a few short years, we also got the Dragon Ball Super manga, the Super anime and another movie, featuring Broli/Broly no less. Nowadays, we’re all hyped for that upcoming 2022 movie we still know next to nothing about, making all sorts of wild predictions, much like the Kanzenshū staff did for Battle of the Gods nearly a decade back. What I’m trying to say is that, in just three short years, we’ll find ourselves celebrating Dragon Ball’s fortieth anniversary. And all I can say about that is that I hope Kanzenshū releases an even longer and more comprehensive edition. How could they not? Look at how much new material we got in the span of just a few years. Like I said, Dragon Ball is a franchise that keeps giving, even when we don’t want it to, ahem, Resurrection F, ahem.
In 2014, for the franchise’s thirtieth anniversary, Kanzenshū decided to issue a special edition magazine to celebrate it, compiling memories, reviews and opinion pieces. Most of the information presented in it may be considered obscure by the casual fan, so I’m happy to say *BRAG ALERT* I was already familiar with most of it.
Some of my favourite entries are the ones in which fans describe their first exposure to Dragon Ball and the ensuing madness of becoming obsessed and falling deeper and deeper in love with it in a mad dash to gain more information, a near-impossible mission in the late nineties. The special magazine features roughly fifty different entries, but I’ll mention only the most striking ones.
Julian Grybowski, better known as “SaiyaJedi” in the fandom vernacular, wrote some of the most memorable pieces. I especially enjoyed his entry on some of the characteristics of Dr. Slump being reused in creative (and less creative) ways in Dragon Ball, as well as his outline of the manga’s stretch in Shōnen Jump in which he essentially celebrates the story’s imperfections and Toriyama’s scatterbrained, largely improvisational approach to storytelling, criticising subsequent editions’ attempts to fix all the inconsistencies and perceived mistakes, as if narratives have to be perfect in order to be enjoyed. He also provides us with an almost hauntingly beautiful and philosophical take on the events covered in Jaco, urging the fans to evaluate it not only as a fun, standalone manga, but also in relation to the larger Dragon Ball mythos.
Heath Cutler, one of the founders of Kanzenshū, also provides the readers with some intriguing and insightful entries. I especially enjoyed the one on the division of the story into arcs or sagas, depending on your persuasion, as well as the one on his personal take on the Dragon Ball fandom as a whole, where he outlines exactly what makes this particular franchise special and why it suffers from such polarisation, how its uniqueness in the West provides it with both some advantages and near-crippling drawbacks. He also takes us on a fun little ride into the world of the dreaded filler content and the reasons behind its plaguing the Dragon Ball anime to such an infuriating degree.
Scott Frerichs, better known to fans as “KaiserNeko” of DBZ Abridged fame (which I somehow still keep hoping will come back and cover the final arc), wrote a compelling piece that feels very personal and intimate, about who Son Gokū is and what he means to us, comparing him to the ensuing shōnen protagonists and describing his influence on them. It comes as no surprise that so many are modelled after and inspired by him, given how influential Toriyama’s magnum opus is for younger mangakas.
Most of us Dragon Ball fans know Toriyama took inspiration for the early plot developments, character designs and character names from the sixteenth-century Chinese novel Monkey: The Journey to the West. What most of us don’t know is that the anime staff incorporated some of Son Wukong’s adventures into filler arcs and episodes and that’s where Mike LaBrie, “VegettoEX”, comes in. He gives us both an overview of some of the story beats present in the novel and their implementation into filler content, as well as offer us different ways of accessing and consuming the original work.
Meri LaBrie in turn treats us to a familiar story, one of a fan discovering a piece of fiction they’re about to become obsessed with for the first time. Those early days of becoming a fan, especially if they take place in the early or even the pre-internet era, are extremely evocative and nostalgic. I’ve been there, traversing the clumsy terrain of the early world wide web, on a hunt for whatever piece of information I could get my hands on. It’s easy nowadays to forget what being a fan in the nineties and early noughties was like. We’ve become so used to having all the info in the history of humanity available to us, just a click away, that we sometimes forget how precious those early days were, even when we take into account the fact we tend to view them through rose-coloured glasses.
Jake Schutz provides an extremely riveting take on Dragon Ball’s hierarchy of deities. He explains how Toriyama came to utilise divine beings and aliens – is it a job, a status, a permanent state of being, an inherent trait, a title passed down – tracing the history of divinities in Dr. Slump and the reception of godlike beings in the West where, more often than not, these terms would go through a watering-down process so as to become more palatable to a different culture with very different stances on what a god is supposed to be, do and look like. For my part, I love the way Toriyama depicts godhood, making all these insanely powerful deities perverted lechers and lazy gluttons, not that much different from us.
Due to the thirtieth anniversary’s temporal proximity to the release of the Battle of the Gods movie, it’s hardly surprising many of the magazine’s contributors decided to focus on that element, covering their emotional states, expectations, hype and reaction to the movie. One of the best has got to be Julian’s description of the frenzied state of Kanzenshū’s staff, covering events from when the first hints at new material got strategically dropped to the viewing itself. Even though all of this took place in the early 2010s, long after the dark ages of the internet, this entry still manages to capture what being a desperate fan is like when information is scarce, how one’s expectations, wishes and predictions combine to create a veritable frenzy, perfectly reflecting what discovering Dragon Ball for the first time was like for many of us.
My favourite piece though has got to be Lance Rumowicz’s take on the character of Bardock. He’s better known in the fandom as MistareFusion and is, in my totally biased opinion, the single greatest Dragon Ball content creator in the English language. His Dragon Ball Dissection is a gem for any fan of this franchise and his piece on Bardock demonstrates all the intelligence, common sense and insight he tends to bring to his videos on a regular basis as well. Every Dragon Ball fan owes is to herself to check out his content and enrich her knowledge of this story.
I fully intended to read this magazine shortly after it got released, but I find myself reading it only now, in 2021, closer to Dragon Ball’s fortieth anniversary than to its thirtieth. And that got me thinking – the contributors whose pieces I read all mentioned the hype surrounding Battle of the Gods, but many also mentioned their excitement about the upcoming movie. That movie turned out to be Resurrection/Revival F, an abomination of a narrative that served no purpose whatsoever other than to milk a popular character that really should’ve stayed dead. I found Battle of the Gods to be a pleasant, enjoyable movie, nothing more and nothing less, all in all – nothing particularly special. However, when compared to Resurrection F, it may as well be the Godfather.
Since then, over the course of just a few short years, we also got the Dragon Ball Super manga, the Super anime and another movie, featuring Broli/Broly no less. Nowadays, we’re all hyped for that upcoming 2022 movie we still know next to nothing about, making all sorts of wild predictions, much like the Kanzenshū staff did for Battle of the Gods nearly a decade back. What I’m trying to say is that, in just three short years, we’ll find ourselves celebrating Dragon Ball’s fortieth anniversary. And all I can say about that is that I hope Kanzenshū releases an even longer and more comprehensive edition. How could they not? Look at how much new material we got in the span of just a few years. Like I said, Dragon Ball is a franchise that keeps giving, even when we don’t want it to, ahem, Resurrection F, ahem.
January 17, 2024
DB30YEARS: Special Dragon Ball 30th Anniversary Magazine. Es una revista en inglés publicada por Viz Media en 2014 para celebrar el 30 aniversario de la serie de manga y anime Dragon Ball. La revista contiene una variedad de artículos sobre la historia de la serie, sus personajes, sus creadores y su impacto cultural. También incluye entrevistas con el creador de la serie, Akira Toriyama, y con varios actores de voz que han trabajado en la serie.
La revista está dividida en tres secciones principales:
Historia: Esta sección ofrece una visión general de la historia de la serie, desde sus orígenes como un manga en la revista Weekly Shōnen Jump hasta su adaptación a anime, películas y videojuegos.
Personajes: Esta sección explora a los personajes más populares de la serie, como Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo y Bulma.
Creadores: Esta sección presenta a los creadores de la serie, Akira Toriyama y el difunto Shunsuke Mitsuda.
La revista DB30YEARS: Special Dragon Ball 30th Anniversary es una lectura obligada para cualquier fan de la serie. Es un tesoro de información sobre la historia, los personajes y los creadores de una de las series de manga y anime más populares de todos los tiempos.
La revista está dividida en tres secciones principales:
Historia: Esta sección ofrece una visión general de la historia de la serie, desde sus orígenes como un manga en la revista Weekly Shōnen Jump hasta su adaptación a anime, películas y videojuegos.
Personajes: Esta sección explora a los personajes más populares de la serie, como Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo y Bulma.
Creadores: Esta sección presenta a los creadores de la serie, Akira Toriyama y el difunto Shunsuke Mitsuda.
La revista DB30YEARS: Special Dragon Ball 30th Anniversary es una lectura obligada para cualquier fan de la serie. Es un tesoro de información sobre la historia, los personajes y los creadores de una de las series de manga y anime más populares de todos los tiempos.
July 23, 2020
It took a few years to finally read this, but I’m glad I did. A wonderful celebration of the DragonBall fandom.
January 16, 2016
When I was about 14, my younger brother started introducing me to the cartoons he watched on a breakfast program called Cheez TV. This show aired on weekdays between about 7:30am and 8:30am for probably close to ten years here in Australia. For those of us who didn’t have pay TV (cable), this show was basically our first introduction into anime out here in the wild west of Australia (I have so many, mostly guy, friends my age who have very fond memories of this program). Anyway, my brother introduced me first to Pokemon, then to Digimon, and then finally Dragon Ball Z. I’m not sure why, but that last one stuck, and over several months, I watched, and then re-watched Dragon Ball Z’s Cell Saga (still, to my mind, the best saga of the show). I feel absolutely head over heels with that show, and to this day, Dragon Ball Z remains one of the few shows I can watch over and over again and still enjoy. It was probably the first thing I ever felt passionate about, getting into buying the mangas, DVDs, reading and writing fanfiction, and going to conventions (I have met and have the autographs of Sean Schemmel, Mike McFarland and Chris Sabat, so suck on it, people!). As I got older, I left fanfiction behind for writing my own fiction, inspired by my favorite group of aliens, humans and hybrids (for the record, Vegeta is my favourite character – he inspired a lot about my lead character in my novel series; Bulma was my first female role model because, you know, she’s awesome). I probably hadn’t watched any DBZ for about five years, when the same younger brother came up to me earlier this year and mentioned that they’d made a new DBZ movie, 18 years after the show finished its run in Japan (which in of itself was probably a good five years before I ever watched it in its English Funimation dub). I watched Battle of Gods (the new movie) on youtube that night, and feel head over heels all over again, reminded as to why I loved that crazy show. I’ve since re-watched most of the show (well I’ve re-watched everything from the Trunks saga to the end of DBZ, the Bebi saga and part of the Dragons saga in DBGT, the first two sagas of DB, and bits and pieces of the rest), went to see Resurrection F twice in the cinemas and started watching Dragon Ball Super as soon as it started airing in Japan in July. Heavens, I’ve started reading and writing fanfiction again! The show that I grew up with, that so many other kids grew up with around the world and across at least two generations has had an amazing revival, and its awesome. So back into trawling the Internet for DBZ related material in my late twenties, I discover two awesome things: 1) Dragon Ball Z: Abridged (funniest thing on Earth), and 2) that 2014 was the thirty year anniversary of the start of DB. Looking into the second one, I discovered this magazine, a compilation of articles by fans about how they got into DBZ, and what they love about it, as well as further details on the Battle of Gods premiere (they had a premiere for a DBZ movie!!!), and all sorts of other tidbits. It was a fairly fast read, and an enjoyable one for a giant nerd like me. So while my family continues to make fun of me for my totally lame immature enjoyment of a ‘cartoon’ (I struggle to explain anime to them), and while men in the US (where I’m currently on holiday) comment excitedly on my DBZ t-shirts (who knew that was the way to get male attention!!), I will continue on my love affair with the little show that could about a group of unlikely defenders of the Earth. A recommended read for any fan of the Dragon Ball franchise.
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