Dragonball Z: History of Trunks

[Captain Crimson]

DBZA? Here's an unpopular opinion, that I could put into the other thread. I think they're overrated.

[Arson55]

When I first saw 'History of Trunks' on Chuck's site I was like, 'That's probably as good a point to just jump into DBZ as any. At least it's a self-contained story.' And then as the review was going on it changed to, 'man, I haven't seen this since high-school. This has more weird little DBZ-isms than I thought.' and then to 'This should not be your introduction to Trunks. You really need to see Future Trunks first for this to make any sense.'

Of course, DBZ would never be something I'd ever pick for Chuck to review. Maybe that's just because I only ever watched it because it was on TV when I got home from high school, and I mostly just thought it was okay, occasionally reaching the high points of pretty good. But there just doesn't seem to be enough to DBZ for Chuck to really sink his teeth into. DBZA was awesome though.

[AllanO]

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.

I think I have a similar view of the two parts of the series. I watched the whole first season of DB in that original dub and then a year or two later DBZ shows up and I watch the first episode and go wait is this a continuation of that wow it is, very different. I watched a few episodes but eventually stopped following it with any consistency and just picked up a few random eps here and there. I was vaguely entertained by DBZ but not enough to really make sure to watch it or anything.

So I've seen enough that I got most of the references and plot points going on in this video. I would say that DB and DBZ are just inherently pretty silly, so while you can get a better grip on oh yeah x does y to z, not sure it ever stops being ridiculous more you learn what to expect and the shock wears away.

I enjoyed Chuck's take on this movie.

There is a worse introduction to the series, if the first thing you encountered was "That time I got reincarnated as Yamcha" that would be trippy, this adds dropping you into the middle of a story, with massive time skips with little explanation and parodying a completely different anime with a bunch of equally weird but different genre conventions. https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/dragon-ball-that-time--got-reincarnated-as-yamcha

[JinTheBlue]

There's a lot of discussion on where if anywhere to begin with dragon ball Z, and honestly I don't think there is such a thing as a good starting point. Hell even going for DBZA with it's much shorter run time, and constant jokes still takes a good eleven or so episodes to get good, and by then you know the memes, but might find the show hard to watch. Dragon Ball was written by an auteur Manga artist, being told "we don't care what you make, your last series was gold, just give us anything". There were times where there was more or less input from editors came through, but Dragon Ball was Akira Toriyama's weird vision, left to mutate as the series went on. By the time we get to Z, it was a weird retread of various far eastern myths, mainly, but not exclusively journey to the west, full of sci-fi tech and quaint farming towns with talking animals, a two rivals learn at the same dojo martial arts story, cross country trip fighting a colonialists military, with an number of odd digressions against various mini bosses, a two dojos fighting each other martial arts story, an alien invasion story, but instead of aliens they are demons(that are actually aliens but we won't confirm that for another three arcs), and finally a martial arts story about a man trying to avenge his father's death. Here in the west we missed all that and picked up with Dragon Ball Z, where an episode in our lead is told that he is an alien, and you're just supposed to roll with it.

Is Dragon Ball good? Yeah. Is dragon ball approachable? No, and that's half it's charm. What it lacks in continuity, and explicit meaning, it makes for in creative vision, and the occasional drop of insight into the creators world view. Removing an episode of dragon ball from the series is like removing a tile from a mosaic. It may be kinda nifty, and if you ask someone familiar with the whole they might be able to point out their favorite tile, but that single piece is meaningless without the whole.

[cdrood]

My first exposure to DBZ was during the Namek Saga. A local station was showing two episodes each weekday morning. I was getting up to work out and would watch the show. I realized after about two weeks that the main character was still working out on that damn ship while those two kids (took a while to realize Krillin was an adult) were getting their asses kicked.

History of Trunks is about as continuity intensive as you can get. We're dealing with alternate timelines and time travel in the backstory to this backstory.

I'd like Chuck to understand that kicking a 13 year old into a whirlpool is practically a day at the beach compared to Gohan's training. After watching his father die (it happens a lot on this show), he's kidnapped by his dad's enemy who dumps him on top of a mountain and leaves him there for 6 months, alone. The theory was that if he a managed to survive, he'd be worth actually training to fight the aliens who were on their way to Earth. Oh yeah, HE WAS FOUR YEARS OLD at the time.

[cdrood]

You don't climb a beanstalk. You fly up to the floating headquarters of the magical cat who grows the beans.

[Rocketboy1313]

I don't think I have ever liked "Dragonball Z".

I have never been able to get behind the, "get angry to win" idea which seems to power the whole franchise at some point. (I could never really get behind the Hulk either).

[Nevix]

I am a DBZ fan... and I'm watching!

But I'm watching with the understanding that History of Trunks is more suited to someone who has seen Dragonball Z at least through the Cell Saga, to know the rest of the story, for context.

I shall update with another post, or an edited post, once I finish watching.

EDIT: This really shouldn't have been Chuck's introduction to Dragon Ball Z. Good review, but not a good one for a first outing into DBZ.

Could someone toss a pile of money at Chuck so he can review the rest of Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood? I think he could use a little bit of a break from anime insanity, for more comprehensible anime insanity.

[Cheerilee]

Just popping in to say that, yeah Chuck, you understood pretty much everything just fine.

In DBZ, people fight using ki/chi energy, which was something that the old man in the sub taught most of them. He used to be the world's strongest fighter, but now he's just old, which explains his impotent desire to jump into the fight.

"Over 9000" (besides being a meme) refers to a measurement of ki energy. A normal person who doesn't know how to access ki energy has a basic fighting strength of 1. Goku (at one point) had trained his ki energy until his fighting strength measured over 9000. In DBZ, if you're not using ki energy, you might as well not even bother. In DBZ, a kindergartner with ki can absolutely destroy an MMA world champion, no contest.

In the regular series, at the start of the "Androids" story arc, this guy called Trunks popped out of nowhere using a time machine and said that the world was about to end, so they've gotta change the timeline, Doc Brown style. It was an excuse to add a new character, while selling the threat of the Androids.

It was explained that Trunks is the future son of Goku's asshole frenemy Vegeta, and Trunks has the yellow hair powerup, which was something that Goku had only just discovered, and could only be attained by having the right alien blood in your system (either from Goku or Vegeta, since all the other aliens are dead, see History of Bardock, lol), having enough ki energy, and then experiencing the pain of loss. Trunks is like "Yeah, my timeline got pretty messed up."

This movie was just backstory. A chance to take a look at the post-apocalyptic timeline that Trunks had come from. It was also an unexpected chance to see Gohan as an adult (with the yellow hair powerup), since he was just a kid in the main timeline. Those tonally-jarring bumpers are actually showing the faces of baby-Trunks and child-Gohan from the main timeline. I think it's supposed to be a "WTF? Is *this* what we're doing in today's episode? Isn't this kind of dark?" sort of thing. Bear in mind, the Dragonball series creator was primarily a gag comedy writer, pushed into creating endless fight scenes because his audience wanted them.

And yes, those beans are magic regeneration beans that can heal any injury. In the main timeline they've usually got quite a lot of them and they practically eat them like candy. In this post apocalypse, Gohan's only got one bean left in the bag, and it probably could've regenerated his arm (they're literally magic), but he gave it to Trunks instead. I guess Goku shouldn't have eaten one after every workout to accelerate his muscle growth (he did that once).

[Maximara]

I tried to get into Dragonball Z and I found out why so many people call it Drag-on Brawl ZZZZZZ. In the 10 worst anime to live in there is the joke "Seven Years Later... Eta Fifty Episodes to screw in a lightbulb" and yes that pretty much sums it up. On a side note Dragonbal Z is loosely based on Journey to the West