Dragonball Z: History of Trunks

[Captain Crimson]

This is like trying to get someone into ST with a DS9 episode, or SW with a book set midway into the NJO series. There's so much heavy continuity here, it's very hard to sift through.

[RobbyB1982]

This is like trying to get someone into ST with a DS9 episode, or SW with a book set midway into the NJO series. There's so much heavy continuity here, it's very hard to sift through.

Worse than that. Despite the ongoing continuity, most random DS9 episodes until the final stretch sit on their own okay. You don't even need to have seen TNG for the most part to follow it, they are designed for standalone syndication and give you the info you need to follow them and introduce the cast fresh every episode.

Given that its an alternate history timetravel episode, it's more like trying to start them with the DS9 episode The Visitor, or Far Beyond the Stars.

[Captain Crimson]

This is like trying to get someone into ST with a DS9 episode, or SW with a book set midway into the NJO series. There's so much heavy continuity here, it's very hard to sift through.

Worse than that. Despite the ongoing continuity, most random DS9 episodes until the final stretch sit on their own okay. You don't even need to have seen TNG for the most part to follow it, they are designed for standalone syndication and give you the info you need to follow them and introduce the cast fresh every episode.

Given that its an alternate history timetravel episode, it's more like trying to start them with the DS9 episode The Visitor, or Far Beyond the Stars.

The irony being it's the kind of time travel Mr. Chuck could really get behind, rather than the kind seen on Parallax.

[kpod]

If it's any consolation to Chuck, I was laughing out loud at his discomfiture about halfway through. He may not have had any idea what he was talking about (and as others have pointed out, he did an admirable job figuring out what he could), but that didn't stop him from being his highly entertaining self regardless.

While Path to Power would be a decent intro to the Dragonball world, I suspect it would leave even more questions than answers regarding THIS episode.

[Edvarius]

Eh, it's not like Chuck really got anything wrong. Superpowers can come with a chromatic change (heck, it's not even limited to Saiyans anymore), it's an alternate timeline, after a bunch of punchy shooty stuff Trunks finally figures out he's in over his head and goes back in time to try and sort things out there. Honestly it's not like this is the deepest series. This is really the only part that tried anything complex with the whole multiple timelines thing, and even there they avoided the paradox problem by just making the timelines separate, so that anything Trunks does in the past has no effect on things when he comes home.

[sandangel]

This is one where the show is straight up taunting Chuck with how impenetrable this episode is. The driver's ed episode is more accessible, and that one had nothing to do with anything in the show.

[Wezlum]

As far as being jumping on a point for a decades-old, well-established, memetic series like Dragonball Z goes, History of Trunks is the absolute dead last, bottom-of-the-barrel episode I would show as an introduction to it.

And maybe that was the point.

Chuck got punk'd. He got punk'd HARD.

I would've gone with the 'Wrath of the Dragon' movie, if I was serious about bringing someone in. It's probably the best "vertical slice" you could get of the whole show.

[ninjadeadbeard]

What I wouldn't give to see Chuck watch and review the Abridged series.

[RobbyB1982]

What I wouldn't give to see Chuck watch and review the Abridged series.

Nah. That wouldn't work at all. For starters, he'd be making jokes about a series making jokes about another series... and that NEVER works.

Also, DBZA kind of relies on having some familiarity with the source material for the exageratted versions and injokes to make sense.

[Taurian Patriot]

This is definitely not the best introduction to the series, like a couple of the other earlier movies might be, but at least it's not the worst. It explains itself more than any individual episode does, which is nice for someone who doesn't have the time or interest to settle in for a whole story arc.

That's been my experience, anyway. My first encounter with DBZ was a VHS tape sent to a friend's family by a Japanese exchange student they'd hosted. Among other shows, it included two episodes of the fight with Buu (where Vegeta blows up and Goku drops in for a few minutes to kill time), and the Broly movie, all with audio that was accidentally recorded over by a couple Eurythmics albums just in case everything wasn't surreal enough already.

Even if we had the benefit of watching a translation though, most of the characters' actions wouldn't have made any sense without some kind of plot summary or character bios or such. I'm not sure there's enough information across even several episodes for a newcomer to figure out the deal with the magical pink bubblegum man, why Goku's hair keeps getting bigger and blonder, or the fact that half our protagonists are space aliens of some sort, the same way Chuck was able to get the basic premise of this movie.