Was Dragon Ball Z Your Gateway Drug to Anime?

@Aegon said:

@AjayRaz said:

it was cardcaptors for me. i didn't really watch all that much dbz

Cardcaptors as well. I liked that jester outfit her friend made her.

the outfits in that show were all kinds of nice. unfortunately, looking back at it now to see how horrendous the opening theme (despite having nostalgic quality) and english dub actually were isn't the most pleasing thing, though. i always loved the episode where she goes to her school (i think?) late at night to capture the shadow card.

Nope, for whatever reason it just never grabbed me. My love affair with anime was kicked off by a double wammy of Macross 7 and Love Hina.

Ever since, my favourite anime genres have been soppy romantic comedies and 'real robot' style mecha action series. Not that Macross 7 was the most straightforward of 'real robot' series, but the whole 'Mecha as military vehicles' thing did more for me than 'Mecha as supernatural McGuffins'. Not that I don't enjoy the occasional 'super robot' series, but they're not really something I'd seek out.

Oh, and Macross 7 is awesome. Suck it, haterz! (I kid; while I love the series, it isn't particularly difficult to understand why someone may take issue with the concept... or the animation. I mean, I personally love the idea of a rock band fighting vampires with weaponised sound, with a pathological pacifist as the lead of an action series, but I can see how some people may not think it's so hot. No defence of the animation, though: even for the era, it kinda sucked.)

@MikeGosot said:

@DonChipotle said:

Mine was Sailor Moon. I still maintain it as one of the best anime. But then I still watch magical girl shows so I might be a bit biased.

Yeah, mine was Sailor Moon and Hamtaro. I don't watch a lot of anime nowadays, and i don't remember much of these animes, but they got me into watching DBZ and Yu-Gi-Oh, and then i searched for mangas, and now, i usually read mangas full of gore. From magical girls, to body fluid-focused mangas, i changed a bit.

for some reason, I couldn't watch Hamtaro without getting really sleepy; I never liked it. I think the shows that really got me into anime was Cyborg 009, DBZ, Naruto, and M.A.R. (More or less, stuff that was on Toonami)

I had already seen Animes before DBZ but when I saw that one I couldn't believe how good it was/is. I had seen Cowboy Bebop, Vampire Hunter D, Princess Mononoke, Sailor Moon, and a bunch of other ones; but DBZ was different to me. The show was fast, the drawings were awesome, the story lines were fun; oh n the characters, man those characters were badass. I have never connected to a cartoon like DBZ before and I've yet to find a better cartoon show. If I were to rank my anime favs it would end up like this 1.DBZ 2. Cowboy Bebop 3. Princess Mononoke.

Yes... it did

Cowboy Bebop was my first. Ghost in the Shell SAC got me to stay.

Nope, Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop was my gateway drug.

I've never seen a lot of the DBZ anime, it never aired over here so I've mostly just read the manga. I was really into the style of Sailor Moon as a kid but it wasn't until Pokemon started airing and I say its stylistic similarities that I learned about "anime" as a thing.

I'm off to watch the transformation sequence on youtube now.

I would say my friend did (or manga) She introduced me to manga and then I watched the anime of the manga. I did watch DBZ before hand but it didn't want to make me go find others.

That and Gundam Wing on TV got me into it when I was a kid.

Growing up in the early 90's all the anime I watched was leftovers from the 80's. Robotech in particular was one of my favorites as a kid though at that age anime wasn't a thing it was all just cartoons. DBZ didn't get real popular till I was in like middle school. And the brief couple of years I was heavily pulled into anime it was almost entirely from everything Toonami ran except DBZ (which don't get me wrong I loved at the time) and the stuff the Action Channel ran on Friday nights like Akira, Macross Plus, and Bubblegum Crisis and some of the more random mature stuff that would pop up here and there.

Got into some of the obscure stuff every now and then but most of the anime that ever really appealed to me was the stuff that made it here already pop culture approved. My favorite anime is still likely Cowboy Bebop after all these years for example. And I havn't watched any anime in years unless its rewatching something. Last time I got into anime was when me and a roommate would download fan subs of Death Note after the Japanese airings and then subsequently hated the American dubbing of it months later.

i guess, but i don't watch too much anime.

Pokemon, Digimon, Monster Rancher, MedaBots and some others that escape my mind were the first ones I can remember watching.

Dragon Ball Z helped me start watching Gundam Wing and then Ronin Warriors. Man, if only Ronin Warrior was big money on Amazon, I'd totally buy that series as well. I also watched some Digimon and Pokemon. Never put 2 and 2 together that these were probably considered anime and were in the same vein as DBZ, Gundam Wing, or Ronin Warriors. Guess I never really considered anything anime until later on in my life.

it was pokemon for me.

I actually didn't care for DBZ as a kid (and still don't, really). I used to be one of those "Anime is for jerks" guys (if you dig through my forum posts from three years ago, there's probably still some evidence of that somewhere). I watched the Persona 4 animation out of curiosity though, and actually really liked it. After that, I dug in a little deeper, watching stuff I missed  before, like Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Samurai Champloo etc. I'm no expert by any means, but I've gained some respect for the format. There's a long list of stuff I want to watch, but I'm so busy now that I haven't been able to. Normally, I'd put it up on my 2nd screen and watch while doing homework, playing games or whatever, but it's tough, because I like to watch in Japanese, and reading subtitles kinda requires my full attention.

Yes I loved that show as a kid, but I've only really watched more western appealing anime's since then like Cowboy Bebop, Death Note and Ghost in the Shell. Most anime's still baffle me and are completely impossible to get into. I really wish there were more anime's like Cowboy Bebop and less teenage high school girls fighting monsters in short skirts.

No the show that did it for me was Big O. It came out right around when DBZ was aired on Toonami but I had no real interest in DBZ. Yu Yu Hakusho also drew me in pretty hard too.

No. Since i was wathing anime in 92 with Gforce gurdians of space A english dub gatchaman. I was only 3 then in 94 watched Cyber Cyber City Oedo 808 which is a violent anime.....i was only 5. in those two years i watched Akira. Aswell as alot of other anime. Legends of the four kings. heroi legend of arslan. Shadow skill. Ghost in he shell. I wasnt aware i was part of the World release for it.

Come 2000 when DBZ was shown here in the uk. I had already watched a few hundred. So no.

@benspyda said:

Yes I loved that show as a kid, but I've only really watched more western appealing anime's since then like Cowboy Bebop, Death Note and Ghost in the Shell. Most anime's still baffle me and are completely impossible to get into. I really wish there were more anime's like Cowboy Bebop and less teenage high school girls fighting monsters in short skirts.

Yeah, but like with most entertainment mediums, most of the content is garbage. That together with the fact that it's mostly geared towards reeling in people of Eastern culture makes it a tough sell.

I remember Voltron, Robotech, as well as Astro Boy all being on at that same time period around 1984-87. Voltron was kind of popular at school, but it was overshadowed by the immensely popular Transformers, and also G.I. Joe. I remember being the only one that liked Astro Boy, while most of the other kids would trash the show. The same for Robotech, except no one really talked about Robotech. Transformers and G.I. Joe were titans of cartoons and toys in the mid to late eighties, and anime really couldn't compete.

My gateway to anime was Akira and G-Force: Guardians of Space.

I liked Dragonball Z but it never encouraged me to move onto the harder shit. I think it was really a combination of Toonami, Digimon, and JRPG's that gave me the sickness. That and my brother bringing home a tape of the first 3 episodes of Evangelion, because people still thought it was the best thing ever back then.

No, I was actually turned off of anything anime because of DBZ. I had watched Pokemon and Digimon and .hack://SIGN. But I was never really into anime. Wasn't until I had watched Angel Beats then I really start to dig the anime scene. I had watched other shows before that like Cowboy bebop and GitS,but Angel Beats led to Clannad, and that opened the flood gates to more shows.

A gateway drug that didn't serve as a gateway to anything but Cowboy Bebop and FLCL, sure. But I love me some DBZ. Seen every single episode, literally.

Oh, actually I guess Akira and Samurai Champloo as well, so yeah I suppose it did.

Other way around helped me stay away from that shitty trash

Yes, yes it was.

I remember being into Dragonball as a kid. Also, believe it or not, this...

Heck no. I watched DBZ when I was in high school, but I had gotten into anime well before then.

Dragon Ball Z was my favorite anime for a good long time ten years ago. But when I was a kid the first anime I ever saw was Samurai Pizza Cats! Which was immediately followed by Dragon Ball. I didn't develop a love for anime till many years later when other anime's started to drift onto TV. I grew up watching Pokemon and the like and my love for anime grew steadily. Now I watch anime on a nearly daily basis. But my taste's have changed greatly; now I'm into more story driven anime's or ones with crazy animation, IE Katanagatari. Though I do enjoy a romantic comedy now and then to break up all the action stuff I watch.

Nope, Robotech. I am old.

Nope. My introduction to Anime was Transformers back in the 80's, then Sailor Moon, then Dragon Ball Z.

@Aegon said:

It was for me. There were great Western cartoons when I was a kid, but DBZ was so different. You had people flying around in this power fantasy, beating each other up for real. Limbs flying off, blood, death. Enemies could become friends. I suppose this made me a lot more open minded about checking out some anime my friends would tell me is great. Also Pokemon, Digimon, Medabots and Yugioh. I don't watch much anime now, maybe a few things here and there that grab me, but I definitely watched a lot more back in high school.

What anime made you interested in the genre?

DBZ made me focus so much in real life training. I would pretend I was Vegeta and push myself to the limit.

@NinjaBerd said:

Probably showing my age, but Galaxy Express 999 was my opener.

That was the first anime I've seen though I doubt I knew it at the time. I just remember that being something I randomly discovered on tv one night during the summer and being interested in it because it didn't look like anything else I had seen at the time. I would say DBZ was the first anime I actually would watch on a regular basis and knew was anime and between that and gundam wing was what got me started down the road of watching more of it.

It, Cowboy Bebop, and Trigun introduced me to anime.

I think it was Speed Racer for me. My dad got me into it, he watched it when it was first brought over. Dragon Ball Z was definitely the first time I heard the term anime though.

Not in the slightest, I started my anime interest with the true greats; Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Ninja Scroll etc, I was like 8 or 9 and watching super adult anime and it was mind blowing and very much shaped my tastes and interests as both a person and an artist. I was aware of DBZ at the time but it would be about half a decade or so later until the show gained its mass awareness in US and even this was over a decade past its original Japan debut. I didn't really take a huge interest in it still until the uncut dvds began releasing.

Generally speaking I'd say One Piece overall is a superior series to DBZ, but then much of what makes it great was inspired by Toriyama's work anyway.

Pretty much. I think I was in middle school when it appeared on Toonami. 'Twas my first significant experience with anime.

I would have to say it was probably Ranma 1/2 and Saint Seiya.

@ani604 said:

Well the only anime I watched was DBZ when I was little and I didn't bother looking into other anime lol

I was a weird kid

You Wa Shock~! Waaah tatatatatatata!

Yeah, I was 10 and punching dudes to make their heads and torsos explode seemed super cool.

I think so. I honestly do not remember, but I think it was a combination of that and Sailor Moon. After that, I feel like I just naturally gravitated towards other anime because they were and still are very different than American cartoons so when I would see a commercial or something I would go, "this looks like DB/DBZ or Sailor Moon and I like those shows so I guess I'll like this too."

I dunno, my memory is garbage. For all I know I was raised in a tube until I was a teenager and my memories are something I made up to fill in the gaps.

Nope, it was technically Doraemon but the first anime I watched and understood as anime was probably Ninja Scroll.

@Sesiras: Trigun was a damn revelation when I was a kid.

Also Ninja Scroll(movie). Blame a very irresponsible babysitting cousin for that one. My 8-9 year old brain was completely fried.

@crusader8463 said:

Pokemon, Digimon, Monster Rancher, MedaBots and some others that escape my mind were the first ones I can remember watching.

Thanks for reminding me about this. That show was cool as hell.

No, technically it was Akira. I watched it with my brother when I was maybe 11-12. I thought it was very cool but didn't really get it. I went back to it later and felt like I understood it more. Not that it's really all that deep, but I feel like I grocked it better as an older teen.

I also watched a lot of anime that was shown on the Sci Fi network. I couldn't recall specific titles if pressed, but I remember that as well. That was all before DBZ.

Oh and Sailor Moon was big when I was in high school, at least among my group of friends. I think the only reason I started watching DBZ at all was because it was on during that anime block on Cartoon Network with Sailor Moon. And Sailor Moon was more my style anyway, and led me to finding shows like Revolutionary Girl Utena, which is my favorite anime to date. Well, that and Big O I guess.

I don't watch much anime anymore though.

I was definitely watching Pokémon and Sailor Moon before Dragon Ball Z. I may have been watching Tenchi Universe, too. I remember Tenchi in Tokyo, too, but I don't remember if that was a pre-DBZ thing or not.

@Cianyx said:

@crusader8463 said:

Pokemon, Digimon, Monster Rancher, MedaBots and some others that escape my mind were the first ones I can remember watching.

Thanks for reminding me about this. That show was cool as hell.

I know right? It was such an under rated show. I loved the concept of it so much and wished every time I saw an episode that it was real! It was what made me join my Robotics club at school.

mine was Trigun. Then DBZ Rurouni Kenshin and Gundam Wing. I lucked out having a friend with an anime fan mom who showed us Trigun and Akira