Hey, this is Steve Bloom, and you are listening to the Geekcast Radio Network. and welcome to the Cyber Dragon Ball. I'm your host, Steve, or I should change my name for this show, Majin Phillips, and joining me is... I would be Master Birdman, because I'm the perverted older man who will teach you the Kami Kami Ha or the Turtle Dragon Wave, and that's how I roll. Hey, and you wouldn't be that much different from Master Roshi, so... Yep. It's only when you see porn.
So, I guess jumping into the gist of this show is, this episode is going to be a light overview of our experience with Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and so on. Each episode will more or less take a stance of, in the vein of our review shows, we're going to be doing this in Saga. Because we all know that it can take, you know, 20 episodes to get to the end of a particular saga. Depending on how much screaming they get through. So we're
going to go that route. So like the, you know, the Raditz, you know, Saiyan saga and then the Vegeta saga and so on. I have an official breakdown on another. I just have to dig it out. Too lazy to do it tonight. I mentioned to you off air that I happen to have a Pojo Dragon Ball magazine. 1996. This particular issue I have, it's the 515 character bios. It is from May 15, 2001. I still have this magazine. It's in pretty damn
good condition, which is actually funny. I've had it in a notebook for years because I used to write Dragon Ball Z fan fiction. You friggin' nerd! Yeah. Well, what's funny is when I was in middle school, my friend that I had during that time used to write... In collaboration with me, we'd write Dragon Ball Z Mega Man X crossover fanfiction. Then we'd introduce slowly our own characters into the mix. He at one point passed the series on to me, and then I continued it.
I finished one of his fanfics, and then I continued on beyond that. Then I had this whole mapped out plan, and then I never executed it. So I had this magazine as a reference guide. So what are your experiences or how did you get into the land of Dragon Ball? For me, it started back in the 90s. I was in high school, probably about grade 9 or 10. I remember hanging out with my friends Brad and Ben. And at the time, my parents had satellite, but they didn't have cable. I
know you could have one or the other. And I didn't get a chance to see a lot of really cool cartoons. So my friend Brad, I think it was, it was either Brad or Ben, loaned me a VHS tape of Dragon Ball Z. And it was something they recorded off of a channel up here in Canada called YTV, which would be equivalent to your Nickelodeon, more or less. And I was like, holy shit, what the hell is this? And it was so cool. So I started
boring. more and more tapes from ben at this point and he loaned me all the tapes up until just before goku goes super saiyan in frieza and i never saw past that until years upon years later and it wasn't until i went to an anime convention uh anime north in 1998 i remember this because i bought a bunch of cds off a guy who had dragon ball z in these little 2x40 window thumbnail clips that were real player format and they were subtitled you couldn't yeah you
couldn't oh wow real player crap on these things and i was like oh my god this is so cool and then i saw like the majin buu stuff i saw all that happen and then the final wouldn't call it nail in the coffin experience with Dragon Ball is there was an RPG company in the 90s, Talosian or Talosian, I don't know. They're the same people that make Cyberpunk 2020. They produced a Dragon Ball Z RPG. An actual pen and paper role -playing game. Which is the most unbalanced
thing you can possibly imagine. Like, you were literally throwing attacks that could range in the hundreds of dice and just The game mechanics are complete garbage, but the fact that they had it was amazing. And even back then, they had the age -old question, could Goku beat Superman? And there's actually one section in one of the books where it says, in all technicality, Krillin could hand Superman his booty in a super -powered sack. And that's the exact quote from the book.
And I'm thinking, man, that's really weird. So, yeah, that's mostly my experiences with early Dragon Ball. However, though, as the years have gone by through doing This Week in Geek, I've actually become friends with a number of the Dragon Ball Z voice cast. I'm friends with Sean Schemmel, who plays Goku in the Funimation dub. I'm friends with Kyle Hebert, who was the original Dragon Ball Z announcer. He plays Gohan. Teen Gohan. He was also Ox King in the Dragon Ball
Z Kai dub. I want to say he plays Pycon as well, but I want to say that might be Chris Sabbath. And randomly, Chuck Hubert. I did some work for him way, way back. And you may know him as Garlic Jr. or Android 17. So yeah, it's been really weird. I've always had the peripheral of Dragon Ball Z in my life. Best experience is when Goku stole my mic. I was recording at a convention back in 2007 or 2008, and I'm interviewing Sean, and I have this device called a Morant, which
is like a digital field recorder. And he's like, hey, you, Birdman, hold on a minute. I'll be right back. And he literally takes my mic and runs away for like 10 or 15 minutes. And it's just him babbling in it as Arnold Schwarzenegger,
as Nicolas Cage, as Christopher Walken. He's just... saying random shit for 15 minutes like giving us like really weird like um audio promos for our show he called me steve he called me mike e honda dodd and steve a film negative sailor and it was just very very very odd and uh sean is a one -of -a -kind man let me tell you that much um and yeah that's that's dragon ball in me Okay, and for me, I remember watching back
when Ian James Perlite was Goku. I remember being pissed off when it became Sean, and then going back, I'm like, you know, Ian wasn't all that good. Well, and I don't think it was even him. Like, it was just, it was that dubbing studio that did it. And he, I think he did well for
what it was, but you could tell it was him. like i was like oh it's megaman and and cheetor and and i was like oh okay it's he's playing goku too and then when uh you know because all i think as far as i got was like just the vegeta battle like before namik um with with him playing goku and then they changed it to sean shemel and i was to begin with was a little peeved and wasn't happy about it but then I can't imagine anybody else besides Sean Schimmel playing Goku and Chris
Sabat playing Vegeta. I remember when they changed the voice from Brian Drummond, who played Vegeta, to Chris Sabat. I was like, man, that's really weird. And then even looking back on that, I can't picture anybody else playing him either. But the meme, it's over 9 ,000, sounds way better with Brian Drummond. I don't know why. It just does. Oh, yeah. Well, I think it was the guttural, It's over 9 ,000! Like, just... So, I mean, it
was just... It was crazy, but that's why it was such a popular meme, was just because of the strength and intensity that went into that voice. I also remember when they changed Krillin's voice, and I remember thinking, I don't know which one I like better. They actually both sound kind of totally appropriate for the character. But I remember specifically when those voices all changed. It was like halfway through Namek. And you're like, hey, where'd Sheetor go? And all
this crap. And everybody's voice was so different. Yet, consistently, I'm pretty sure the woman who did Gohan did it all the way through Cell. I'm pretty sure it was still her. Colleen something. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm... I... This show, like... There was a point in time that when I watched, I used to record the episodes on VHS because most of the time I wouldn't catch them because they would come on right around dinner time at home. So I would always miss the episodes and
I'd get so mad if I missed one. And I was like, I can't miss it, blah, blah, blah. Back in the pre -DVR days for you people, you had to actually program a VCR and hope that the tape recorded. and hope that somebody didn't change the channel on you. So I had that. And then in school, I knew so much about it because, one, the internet was kind of, you know, it was kind of getting
out there for the most part. I frequented so many Dragon Ball Z sites and soaked up as much information as I could on the show that I was the go -to reference guy at school. for younger and older students that wanted to know anything about the series. So I was kind of that go -to.
And then I'd have to sit there and explain all the differences in the sagas and their powers and who has this and who does what and how some of their names are after vegetables or after musical instruments or just various factoids like that. Definitely one of the highlights of my childhood. And then I actually ran a Dragon Ball Z website, which actually spawned from writing
the fanfiction. So to begin with, it was called Majin Phillips and Baby Gojitos, or Bilby Kilburn's Dragon Ball Z GT website, which later on got renamed to the Cyber Dragon Ball. To shorten it up. Hence the name of the show. And then I changed it later again. To the Dark Dragon Ball. When I was running it solo. But I got bored. And went on to Transformers by then. But I also watched all of the Dragon Ball Z Saga. So there was nothing left to watch. Because I don't acknowledge
GT. I think GT to a certain extent. Does get kind of a bad rap. I do kind of like Pan. Actually. I think that that and the Super Saiyan 4 were about the only positive thing about the show. Super Android 17 was kind of cool, but Baby was stupid. Yeah, Baby was stupid, and I liked that Trunks got to play kind of a front -running role to kind of replace his dad, in a sense, and kind of Gohan and some of those other guys. So it was a nice dynamic. I wasn't happy about him
being a kid again. Yeah, I thought that was a bit of a step backwards. But then again, I guess I'm happy having Goku alive than be an angel 500 years in the future sort of thing. So I was better. I was more happy with that. But I don't know. I mean, it's funny. I never much cared for the original Dragon Ball series. Like the one that was all kind of cutesy. Yeah, I'm not really a fan of that either. But the dice have
some pretty cool fights in it. In fact... One of the things that really got me more into Dragon Ball than anything else was the video games. Almost all of them were done by Atari, I think. The one that I liked, and I think it was the best. I still think it's the best Dragon Ball Z game, and I'm really sad that I sold it. It was for the PS2, and it was called Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3. That had a... Yes, it was. That was such an awesome game. You went
through the entirety. of every Dragon Ball fight. You also went through several what -if scenarios. And you get to do some of the GT. The only other game that comes close would be Dragon Ball Z Xenoverse, and that came out last year for the next -gen consoles. And it's an amazing game in its own right, too. I haven't... I haven't had a chance to play it yet, although I do own it. I bought that game actually used, so that
was kind of nice. And then I bought one before that, and I can't remember for the life of me what it was. It wasn't that, but it came out. Raging Blast? Maybe? You'll probably recognize it when I say it. It was one of the... I would recognize it, but I can't. The last one that was released for the PS2 was Dragon Ball Z Another World. It was garbage and a half. Raging Blast and Raging Burst... Sorry, Burst Limit and Raging Blast both built upon similar mechanics. They
weren't bad games. They weren't great. It took the series to go back to Xenoverse before it got good. And let's not even talk about the Dragon Ball Z Kinect game, which is so ridiculous. In fact, I remember getting the press kit for that game. You got a scouter with it, fake Goku hair, and a headband. And I remember just looking at this mail. The FedEx guy hands me this Dragon Ball Z envelope. I'm thinking, what the hell
is this? Yeah, awkward day is awkward. I remember sitting around my apartment at the time, because I was still in college with this, looking at my friends. And I'm like, all right, so who wants to be the first asshole to try this? And everyone's like, nope. I don't know if you remember any of the imported emulators of the Super NES games. I remember playing those in my high school cafeteria because someone was too cool to have a laptop running it in my high school cafeteria. We played
that during lunches. Yeah, I used to play some of these games back when I was... Because I used to run an emulator site, so I used to get those all over the place too. They... There was one with cards. You had to play with cards to decide the moves that you did. And it goes all the way through Super Saiyan and defeating Frieza and then that's the end of the game. And then there was a couple other fighting games that were on
the Sega Genesis that was like... It's almost like a Hyper Dimension or something like that. But it was such an awesome game, and that's where I learned to button mash for the first time. And then I started figuring out how to actually play. Because I'd never played a fighting game until Dragon Ball Z. And to this day, that is the only game I will get that is a button mash fighter game. Because I enjoy the tournaments
of it. Well, I should say that the only other game that I would play is... smash brothers but this is for an actual fighting game this is what i go to and i did figure out what game i bought that it was ultimate tenkaichi i'm trying to remember if that one was good or not yeah it was okay i the expectations for it that i had were not as good as um because a lot of the the fighting a lot of the the the stuff you had it would either lock on aim or you would have that's
right i remember the fighting being incredibly frustrating in that game and that was part of the problem and then they had timed things so like you had to hit the the like you know xyz you know or or the certain colors or whatever of the buttons uh or x y a b or something in a random order and if you didn't it you'd get smashed by a hit or you you would have like a side scroller because you had to fight like hildegard and you had to fight like the the uzar and you
had to fight um uh like stuff from the from the movies in the game and i was kind of like and then it wouldn't let you get to like gt characters so you couldn't use or something like that super saiyan 4 Yeah, something like that. I think you could use... Maybe you could use Gogeta. I can't remember, but it's been a while since I played it. But I know you couldn't play the actual sagas of some of the stuff. And so it kind of... It didn't really mesh well with me. Whereas when
I played... Because I'd played sagas too at one point, and that wasn't all that great. But I'd played Budokai, Budokai 2, and Budokai 3. And Budokai 3 was good back in the day. And then all the Tenkaichis have been... Now, if you want to check out something really good, go on YouTube. There's a YouTuber known as ProJared. He's former ScrewAttack. He does a lot of things now with Dungeons and Dragons, I think. He's a really
good YouTuber. And he did a series when he was working for ScrewAttack where he goes through every Dragon Ball Z game up until, I want to say, Ultimate Tenkaichi. and it's really, really well in -depth. They talk about the car games, they talk about the role -playing games. There was a couple for the DS, actually. There was one for the Nintendo Wii. There was Dragon Ball Sagas, which was a role -playing game for the PS2 and the Xbox. And he goes through each title.
He goes through even the Super Nintendo ones. There was actually a Dragon Ball Z Tournament Fighter, which actually played, I think, at Evo for, like, a year or two. So that's how legit Dragon Ball Z got for a while. So if your listeners are really curious, I highly recommend you go check out his series on YouTube. I think it's five videos long, and I don't think they're any less than half an hour each. Huh. Yeah, I'll probably end up checking them out in my free
time. And I... I gotta check out Xenoverse since I actually own it now. Because I haven't played any of that game yet. I think I created a character and I think it's about as far as I went. My experience with Dragon Ball Z has been between the television show and I think for a little bit there I did collect the comics. Which I think was through
the Namek saga when I was collecting. I don't think I had very much, but I had enough to go through some of the first fights with Frieza, and then I stopped collecting, unfortunately, due to money issues. I remember the company that produces the manga, Viz, they sent me this huge omnibus, and it went through Raditz all the way to the end of Vegeta. This thing was like a small city's phone book. I couldn't believe how long the manga was. I never did get around to reading
all of it. I think I got halfway through it. I was like, man, okay, I might tap it out. Can't do it anymore. And then, well, obviously we saw how long the series was on TV. That's why I was really glad when they did Dragon Ball Z Kai and condensed the hell out of it. Yeah, I still have yet to watch the actual Kai setup of it. I'm one of the throwbacks to the original entire long, drawn -out saga. I actually like how it paces the first saga really, really, really well.
It cuts out so much filler in the Frieza saga, too. It also takes out a good chunk of Cell as well. I haven't kept up with it post -Cell, though. Just because I haven't had a chance to contact the company to send it to me. But I know it's been out for like a year or two now. But I remember Kai definitely being worth checking out, though. Now, have you had a chance to check out Dragon Ball Super yet? I'm... I've heard that the animation is batshit terrible. Some episodes will look
great, some will look like shit. And I'm not precisely sure why that is. The movies... See, that's really unfortunate because that's the first series post Resurrection of... Which I'm glad they actually released those theatrically.
I was really surprised when they did that, when they did... battle of gods and then did this one although i do think it's kind of cheating where they just oh now your hair is blue is that all you got um but yeah super super saiyan god super saiyan ridiculous and then it turns out god's not as powerful as regular it's see that's one thing akira toriyama basically said He's like, don't ever pay attention to power levels
or anything. And it just got so confusing because even during the original saga, they're like Super Saiyan 1 is stronger than Super Saiyan 2, but 3 is the most powerful, but not as fast as 1, and thus not as powerful. I'm like, what? If I want to kick his ass, what do I got to do? Sort of thing. And I always hated that. Sometimes Dragon Ball, for as simple as it should be, They overcomplicated the crap out of it sometimes.
Uh -huh. Yeah, I... It was one thing that I kind of thought was stupid with since that movie came out was they were like, oh, it's Super Saiyan God, Super Saiyan. And then everybody can do it now. Yeah, I just... mind -boggling to me, but I did enjoy that film, despite the fact that it had kind of a really phony cop -out way of... Hey, Whis! I was... Yeah, they're like, Whis, fix it! It's just... I don't know. I wanted to choke somebody at the end of that film, but...
Yeah, it was great. I mean, I really enjoyed it, but then it had that, and I was like, eh. They pulled a Dragon Ball Z Eternal Dragon move without using the dragon. Because they used it at the beginning. So yeah, I mean, it was pretty good, though. With the duration of this podcast, obviously going to cover the sagas, but I thought we'd cover each film as well. That's the plan. Things may not turn out that way, but that's
the plan. And just because I'd like to actually sit down and converse about some of the films as well because I acquired them all over the last year and I've watched all of them numerous times. And besides the fact that the animation is inconsistent with the film. I love the dubbed soundtracks. Randomly they have like Finger Eleven and Disturbed in some of them. And it makes no sense. Although as a child that very much did influence some of my musical taste as a kid.
One of my favorite musical bits of Dragon Ball Z was the starting that they had while it was on Toonami. That's the best one. I don't like the theme song at all, but Rock the Dragon, that's awesome. Bring that shit back. I mean, that instantly, like, I can associate with it, and it's so catchy. You know what's weird, though? They actually released a special edition box set a couple years ago where they purposely restored just that. The intro is different. Every other thing was
the same, except that. I'm like, wow, that's kind of a cash grab. That's a smart cash grab, but it's a cash grab. I want to say it was also, yeah, it may have been the original Ocean dub too, yeah, up until things changed, and it was Rock the Dragon as the theme song. I always thought that was the superior theme song then, as opposed to the random Japanese guy singing. Yeah, Dragon, Dragon. It sounds... Like it's saying something bad when you play it on QuickTime in slow motion.
But it's so badass. I know. It's such a great, great theme. So being that this is just a overview of all of our memories and thoughts and everything, is there anything that you'd like to bring up that we may have missed in our gushing of the
series? I will bring out my Dragon Ball Z role -playing books because one of them, is incredibly rare and i picked it up for five bucks on ebay on amazon i've seen it going for four or five hundred dollars and one of the authors of dragon ball oh wow rpg actually wrote an unofficial book he had the manuscript done but he couldn't publish it because the company had lost the rights to it so he published the um end of the cell saga and the beginning of majin buu saga in a
book he called magical wishing dreaming spheres and it was the rules that would be compatible with the dragon ball z rpg i think i still have it but i was so happy that someone actually completed the series quote unquote in this but uh Yeah, to talk about character creation, some of the unique things the book would give you, I think it'd just be a fun trip down memory lane about a piece of memorabilia almost nobody talks about.
Yeah, that'd be interesting. And then, like I said, I had this old Pojo magazine with some of their bios in there. Even though it references some sites that aren't around anymore. Like Planet Namek and some of those type sites. So yeah, I'll probably reference some of the characters in there at some point since it's got the entire bios. It's even got this interesting thing that it's their English to Japanese names. and their
dub names, and their alternate spellings. Yeah, I think I'll be really kind of looking forward to actually kind of hearing about this more. Because, like, for instance, Vegeta, like the Japanese name is Vegeta. And the English dub translated name is Vegeta, like vegetable. Vegetable. And then the alternate spellings is actually the same as the Vegeta. except they replaced the B with the V. And then there's three different spellings for the Vegeta, like V -E -G -E -T
-A or V -E -J -I -T -A or V -E -G -I -T -A. So it's like, there's a lot of, like Kame, Senen is Master Roshi, obviously, or Mutant Roshi, which those are, you know, everybody knows that. Oh my God, Steve, you know what we have to do. We have to do commentary for the Dragon Ball Z, or sorry, Dragon Ball Evolution. I have a theatrical one -sheet poster for that. Is that the Dragon Ball movie? And James Marsden and Ernie Hudson randomly. Oh, you're talking about
the live action movie. Oh, you will. I've never watched that. I have it, but I've never watched it. We are going to Mystery Science Theater the shit out of that. Yeah, it's... I would be interested in doing that, actually. Man, I'm almost tempted to drive down to Michigan so we can literally Mystery Science Theater 3000 this shit. My God. Yeah, it's so, so bad. But it's so entertaining at the same time. That's funny. I think it would be really funny to actually go over that film.
I have an intimate knowledge of the making of. I had to, in a not very proud moment of my career, had to ask for a lot of press material related to that movie. Like I said, I still have my theatrical one -sheet poster around here somewhere. Were you disappointed that you asked for so much on it? This is going to be my Zardot. This is going to be my Highlander 2, The Quickening. This is my beautiful disaster. It just happens to star Goku. Ish. Goku Light. Goku Ish. Goku Light.
Who's randomly a white kid now. And yet Yamcha is the only Japanese guy outside of Chao Yan Fat in the entire freaking movie. And Piccolo does nothing. Which is kind of messed up. The Ozaru as something. It gets so stupid. I remember there was a time when people wanted Jason David
Frank to star as Vegeta. in if there was a sequel like there was a really weird fan campaign around it and i think he responded to it on like several occasions but we'll get to that that just makes me laugh oh man so with that uh anything else you want to bring up look forward to us talking about this it'd be nice to get back into some anime type stuff and maybe talk about series that are similar to dragon ball at some point in terms of violence or content or even stuff
that's kind of dragged out and you know more than i would introduce you to some rather new stuff and hopefully you'll take a liking to some of it so we'll wait and see this is my goal for this podcast is to show steve some new and exciting things i have seen some anime My knowledge of anime is like anime light. I know like... I've seen a little bit of... You know, like obviously... I've seen Sailor Moon. I've seen like a little
bit of Outlaw Star. I've seen Cowboy Bebop. Basically anything that had shown up on Toonami at one point I've seen. My main knowledge ends with Death Note back in 2008. But with series like... Attack on Titan, Kill la Kill, Space Dandy. I'm looking to get back into anime in a very large way. So hopefully I'll be able to change some hearts and minds with this because it's an art form and a genre that I really used to love as
a kid. And maybe it's time now that I'm that older adult, I can get back into it and see it with a fresh set of eyes. I mean, right now I'm just going through Avatar. the last Airbender series, and hopefully going to move on to Legend of Korra. And I'm looking forward to going through that again. So hopefully, like I said, I will be able to show you some crazy stuff like Fist of the North Star, which is ridiculous yet amazing, and really cool series like Attack on Titan.
So stay tuned, guys. Lots of fun stuff, but mostly Dragon Ball and people screaming about power levels for the next X many episodes. Yep. Power level 9 ,000. Yeah, it's just priceless. So, yeah. Thank you for listening to the Cyber Dragon Ball and catch us next week as we... Soon! Maybe not next week, but catch us soon. Yes, for the next episode. Please find all my Cyber Dragon
Balls. Please. She's like, shut up. But I have not ordered pizza as Goku, because if I did, it'd probably be something like, yeah, I'd like all the pizzas. Just send me all of them. How many do you have left? A couple hundred? Yeah, put everything on it, send all of it, and just, you know, that'd be awesome. Okay, thanks!