Dragonball Z: History of Trunks

[Makeshift Python]

My God, that American dub. It's not really the dub voices that bother me, but that they replaced the original Japanese background score for something that sounds like it should be on a program for toddlers.

But yeah, I gotta say this was also hilarious for me to watch because I had never actually seen this TV special, so I can actually see from Chuck's point of view of just how off kilter the whole thing is. The original Japanese dub probably would have been less perplexing to watch.

As for what the proper jump in point is, I actually didn't start watching this show until it was in the middle of the Namek saga, around the Spring of 2000. My friends had been hyping it up at school, so naturally I wanted to see what the big deal was. I think this was actually my very first experience watching a TV show with a serialized storyline. I realized instantly that this was a continuation of sorts, and since I didn't have any option of starting from the beginning (the old days when DVD/streaming wasn't an option), I figured I had to just watch and grow familiar with it over time. Eventually I did, and became pretty invested by the Androids/Cell sagas. I imagine a lot of viewers had the same experience. It's like a soap opera, nobody is going to expect you to start from the beginning so you might as well just familiarize yourself with what's happening and see if it clicks for you.

That said, I'm not really familiar with anything else beyond the original 1986-1996 DB/DBZ run. Only saw the first three films which turned me off from seeing the rest once I realized they were non-canon. Didn't see any specials. I even feel DBZ went on a lot longer than it needed, so I certainly didn't need even MORE of it with GT.

[SuperJyls]

dbz has always been dumb

[Nealithi]

Okay so I was in agreement with the entire first page of comments here. Why this episode.

But I do think I have a comparison for Chuck. You just got dropped into Marvel comics during Days of Future Past. You never met a single X-man nor New Mutant. You have no idea who Kitty Pryde is and why her sending Rachel Summers into the past is important. Because that is a parallel to this episode. You dropped into a confusing arc with no foundation in any of the characters.

Oddly Chuck showed me why 18 would eventually change sides. She was bored with existing just to destroy everything and being a doomsday device. That was a detail I had missed.

And Chuck if you read this. The Dragon Ball thing started pretty tongue in cheek then had some very serious bits later.

[Captain Crimson]

A bit off topic, but still related... imagine how powerful a Saiyan/Kryptonian would be?

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

The review wasn't bad, I don't get why people think it was some huge mistake for this episode to be selected by someone.

[Aotrs Commander]

I dunno, guys; I found Chuck's complete bafflement to be rather charming, myself!

(I'm hardly a DBZ expert (the last majority of my knowledge comes from TeamFourStar and a wiki after the UK stopped showing the DBZ (at about mid-Buu) I'd watched sporadically from about mid-Freiza).)

But yeah, it's like probably the single worst point to be someone's first DBZ exposure.



I'm a big preponent, that said, of that you don't NEED to know all the backstory going into something, if it's good enough to hold your interest, you can go back and learn all that latter and be like "OHHH!"

I can only directly point at my own exposure to Pokémon the anime and Naruto (both, ironically, because I was ill and desperate for stuff to watch.) Naruto, in particular, I started in at the beginning of the Chunin Exams arc, wherein there is a HUGE amount of characters showing up or introduced and I had NO idea what was going on... But it held my interest, so I watched it the next day... And week... And finally followed the series through DVD releases from start to finish which took over a decade! Sometimes going in blind in the middle isn't unilaterally terrible.

(Now, whether you can argue that History of Trunks really fits into that mould is another question...!)

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

Eh... I dunno about that. I wasn't hugely familiar with it all (to the point that I did not realise how CLOSE TFS got to sound-alikes until I heard the nonOcean dub (the Ocean dub I think being the one in the UK). I think they were funny enough that it can stand on its own, even if someone more familiar of it got more of the jokes. (Like Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, of which whom's pregenitor series I had watched precisely ONE episode and went "oh hells, no, ta." But LittleKuriboh made YGOTAS stand alone for someone with not only no knowledge, but no interest in the original show.)

[Thebestoftherest]

The review wasn't bad, I don't get why people think it was some huge mistake for this episode to be selected by someone.

It would be like if your first episode of Star Trek was Yesterday enterprise.

Or your first Marvel movie was infinity war.

Or transformers the movie was your first take of g1.

Or if the first time you ever seen anything Star wars related it was the Rebels episode fire across the galaxy.

Some stories are written with the assumption you are even a little familiar with the work at hand.

[Beastro]

Much as I'm a huge, huge Dragonball fan, if we were going to toss anime movies at Chuck, I'd rather get him on something like Galaxy Express 999 or Tank Police or Green Legend Ran or Akira or Lily Cat or Robot Carnival or the like.

More in the spirit of Akira, the first two Patlabor movies stand out for me as good ones fit for Chuck's style, but I'm being biased here as someone who isn't much of an anime fan who loves those two.

What does not help is that Dragonball (without the Z) is a completely different show to everything that came after. The humour, the style, the look, the plot. Its only similarity is the names of the characters and nothing else.

What this means in practice is that legacy plot points from the days when talking shape-shifting pigs in Chinese uniforms, flying turtles, mafia rabbits who can turn you into a carrot, cities full of anthropomorphic animals and a level of fanservice that simply does not exist any more i.e. Bulma in a Playboy bunny outfit are now forced to mesh with a show that is now just a straight up battle manga/anime that is set on what is largely our Earth.

The anthropomorphic animals are the biggest difference to my mind. OCCASIONALLY you will see one nowadays, but in the background, as a bit of an Easter Egg. A far cry from when every other person Goku met was an inhuman creature.

In other words, TL;DR, that turtle is a relic. If Dragonball started with Z - and really, in many ways it kind of does - that turtle would never have been written into the plot. Or Oolong for that matter.

This was what I was smacked over the head with as a kid trying to watch DBZ. I'd caught the first show here and there at night and enjoyed its quirks. A year or so later, though I heard about DBZ from friends at school and and checked it out expecting it to be more of the original show only to quickly realize it was too much a juvenile teenage boys fantasy of try-hard manly badassness that lack the previous shows endearing silly qualities.

[CmdrKing]

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

Eh... I dunno about that. I wasn't hugely familiar with it all (to the point that I did not realise how CLOSE TFS got to sound-alikes until I heard the nonOcean dub (the Ocean dub I think being the one in the UK). I think they were funny enough that it can stand on its own, even if someone more familiar of it got more of the jokes. (Like Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, of which whom's pregenitor series I had watched precisely ONE episode and went "oh hells, no, ta." But LittleKuriboh made YGOTAS stand alone for someone with not only no knowledge, but no interest in the original show.)

in line with the first page of the topic here, if you want to jump into the middle of DBZA blind, one of the movies is a better starting point: the movies are out of continuity anyway and while DBZA actually plays with that, it also tends to spend a minute establishing what's going on "now" in the story so there's something to ground you with.
Their version of History of Trunks meanwhile is also something you really, REALLY need to have seen the Android arc to that point to pick up on.

that said you can probably jump onto DBZA at the start of each arc rather than needing every prior episode, which is... less true of the original.

[Darmani]

Yeah, he really should have waited to do more of it. This point in DB's story is fairly complex and people unfamiliar with the franchise would be utterly lost. Then again most were exposed through DBZ first and didn't watch the original half, so maybe it wouldn't be that hard. Still, weird place to start.

More complicated. think the escalation and retcons and shifts in Fast and furious and it.. I think run a bit longer by this point.