This surprised me greatly! This was a show when I was a kid, and even then it was reruns! The manga was first released in 1989 when I was barely able to speak.

When I did get around to watching the anime as a young child of about... I'd say 11 or 12 maybe? It profoundly influenced me. Perhaps not long term, but at the time, my way of life almost revolved around it. It was perhaps the first time I ever experienced a kind of addiction to something.

I'd rush home from school in anticipation of the next episode. It was such an exciting show.

For those unaware, it's a Japanese anime about some monkey-human aliens called Saiyans, who landed on earth after destroying their home planet in a civil war. The protagonist, Goku, I think arrived as a child, unaware of anything and superman-style was taken in by humans or something?

Meanwhile, the Prince of the home planet came to earth with goals of conquering Earth for his own. The two of them fought over a long period, but bigger enemies from around the galaxy and then Universe came to fight too.

It's essentially just a ton of fighting, with each fighter getting invariably stronger every time they start to lose. It's extremely repetitive and formulaic in that way.

Famously, some of its fights lasted a LONG time. When Goku creates this 'spirit bomb', which is a giant ball of energy collected from all the souls and lifeforms around the planet (or beyond I dunno), it took a full FIVE EPISODES to charge up.

This wasn't a time in life where we can binge these things or even fast forward. We had to watch it on TV, and then come back the next day, or, heaven forbid, wait for the weekend to pass before the next episode on Monday occurred, where Goku would still be charging this spirit bomb up. Meanwhile some distraction fight is going on to fill the time.

It was ridiculous.

So, knowing my luck, guess what happened?

On the day of the episode where he launches the spirit bomb, my step-grandfather came to visit. He immediately sat down in front of the TV, during the time Dragonball Z was on, and changed the channel to GOLF.

GOLF!!?!

I, of course, really wanted to watch the spirit bomb launch, as it had been building up tension for seemingly forever. But no, apparently he was the guest and he gets to watch what he wants.

Being the very shy, quiet child I was, I did not kick up a fuss. I just slowly got up and walked solemnly up the stairs, into my bedroom, put the pillow over my head and started screaming into the mattress until my face went red lol.

It's one of the few memories of my childhood I actually remember with crystal clarity. I don't think I ever felt such tormented rage before, and probably not since, either. I was pissed

I was crying and punching the pillow... until I heard my dad's voice call me and I suddenly put on my quiet calm tone again and was like 'yeah? yes I'm fine, ok I'll be there in a minute!'

And then I had to tuck it all inside as if nothing ever happened.

Come to think of it, I don't think I ever watched that now historically famous episode. It's not like it came on terrestrial TV again, and by the time I had things like internet and access to the entire planet's database for free, I had long grown out of it and forgotten about it.

But I don't think I ever forgave my step-granddad for that crime against humanity.

The Show Must Go On

And now, I find, to my somewhat peculiar delight, that the story is still going! The mange is still pushing content out, and that Goku and the Prince Vegeta and all the others are still there, levelling up, getting stronger each passing moment.

It's absurd to think about.

The only reason I know is because various social media shorts latched on to my eyes staring for one second longer than usual, and started feeding me clips of the new stuff.

I'll be honest it looks pretty good. The animation is pristine now, the fight scenes look gorgeous. They look the same in terms of choreography and all that. Some moves are giant energy beams, others are energy balls, and others are a hundred small energy balls, and others are hand-to-hand, too-fast-to-see kinda thing.

Similar to the Marvel Universe, the DBZ universe has had to expand into more and more extremes, limitless boundaries.

When I was a kid, it was the 'Strongest on the planet'. Then it was various parts of the galaxy.

Now? Well, I haven't watched the show, but I've been clicking on the clips and enjoying putting the pieces together into a mosaic of what's going on.

It seems they just didn't bother toning things down or de-escalating. They just kept pushing forwards!

At this point, the main characters are literally fighting the Gods of the Universe, the Gods of other universes, and making friendships with The Supreme God of The Multiverse, Zeno.

There's a constant emphasis on how strong everybody is, and Zeno, although not a fighter technically, can and does erase entire universes with the blink of an eye. There were a total of 18 multiverses, and Zeno wiped out 6 one day when he decided there were too many.

Every other lesser god is up for grabs in battle, although it seems the top like... 5 are still significantly out of reach by mortals like these Saiyans.

But Saiyans are seemingly without limit themselves, being able to fight gods and even become gods and utilize various god powers.

It's all very absurd but I delight in the fact it's taken the show the better part of 30 years to climb to these heights. Hell, even the creator recently passed away, and designed the Destroyer God, one of the recent additions, after his cat.

I think the whole franchise has a lot to offer. There's still character growth, for example. Vegeta, the original enemy, has come a long way, with a large story arc of redemption where he ends up allying to defeat a greater enemy, and before long he had a wife and children, driving them to go shopping.

He had discovered his lifelong guilt for the atrocities done by his species, destroying multiple planets, had been holding him back, and only once he could empty himself of that guilt could he realise his true strength, which has a kind of moral lesson in it for us humans.

He also, over a very long period, grew out of the shadow of Goku, who was always one step ahead in strength and power, and managed to carve his own path, which turned out to make him catch right up to Goku.

Arguably one of the most powerful beings in the universe happens to be Goku's son, Gohan, who turned out to be mostly a pacifist and refuses multiple times to fight. He doesn't train at all really, and yet manages in emotional moments to surpass his father significantly, a man who trained every day of his life to become the strongest in the Universe. To Gohan, some things are more important.

The reason he is so powerful is mostly genetic. He is a mix between Saiyan and Human, and that combines with the fact he was born of Goku who evolved himself to be extremely powerful, which then passed down to the baby, giving it an inherent advantage.

Abundant Evolutions

These evolutions are ridiculous too. When I used to watch it, I think I only ever got as far as 'Super Saiyan 3'. Basically Super Saiyan is when they go blonde, and way stronger. Which then levels up to 3.

But it has since gone far beyond that and even deviates according to each character.

'Ultra Instinct' is one of the techniques from the Gods in which your body is able to move completely autonomously, whether or not you're aware of an attack - thus freeing you up to attack as an aside.

Vegeta, however, learnt an alternative path to suit his personality called 'Ultra Ego' which, as far as my understanding goes, increases in strength indefinitely the more damage he takes. I think that's the most recent update in the manga only. Presumably his next task is to learn to tank as much damage as possible without dying, so even stronger enemies will be surpassed if they keep attacking him.

All the bad guys also have their own evolutions, and the most recent enemy I've heard of called 'Granola' (sp) simply used the dragon balls to make a wish (the balls behind the name of the show) to become the strongest in the Universe to get revenge on another bad guy, but at the cost of reducing his lifespan to 3 years.

The O.G. bad guy who forced Goku and Vegeta to team up, called Frieza, is still a big name in the show now, with his own triple evolution now being expanded to seemingly have multiple robot versions of himself, a Golden Frieza, and now it seems a Black Frieza who is yet to be defeated:

It's quite fascinating that a single antagonist can survive a show for literally an entire human lifespan at this point.

So it's all getting pretty intense, especially when you remember there are multiverses of Gods involved at every step, now.

But yeah, I enjoy world building. It's a really geeky thing, but I find it really fun to see where people go with their ideas, and I wish I had the artistic talent and imagination to create such things myself. Looks like a ton of fun.

I doubt I'll ever watch this new stuff in full, it's kind of a pain to sit through more than a minute of every character going 'ARRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHH' as they charge up their powers, which is what 80% of the entire screen time consists of. But still, nice to know its managed such sustained success and has become a staple in Japanese culture (I saw these characters in Tokyo multiple times everywhere last year)