That crazy that the whole Mexican Government organized public screenings of the final episodes of DBS Man if only the government here in the US had that kind of appreciation for Nerdom.
@@MrWolfchamp-xi3cu that occured against the will of Toei,,and there were consequences. Specifically on what Dragon Ball content is licensed in Mexico. Its a totally different culture. But its very difficult to get away with that in most countries
You can tell who hasn't watched the video by how many people commented that it only failed in the US, when Max specifically says that this is about the multiple failures in the US within the first minute.
...It's because we were trying to give it a Z out of 10 and spelled Z wrong. (But seriously I have nothing to do with that review, please don't get mad at me for whatever we give it.) -Max
This made me realize that early on Dragon Ball Z didn’t make any sense we watched it cause it looked cool lol. Can you imagine if Naruto started at Shippuden
@@sosakobe1538 we liked the action of DBZ. The Shippuden comparison is bad. Dragon Ball and DBZ are entirely different types of shows. Dragon Ball got low ratings internationally, while DBZ generally ranked up 20+ million views. As such mostly just DBZ replayed. Naruto Shippuden is just more Naruto with slightly worse pacing
Exactly! Then again, Star Wars started with Episode IV and we got The Lord of The Rings movies before The Hobbit. If something's cool enough, people will catch on. -Max
@@Zeldafan-zy1pb they're the same show. That's like saying Shippuden is different from Naruto because the tone shift. Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, Naruto and Naruto Shippuden continued a story that never ended with the title changes being exclusively anime.
@@Zeldafan-zy1pb dragon ball didn't at all got bad ratings it was a massive success worldwide not just in japan the success didn't started with z the world is not usa
USA has the highest sales of DBZ merch outside Japan. Its why Toei gives high priority in marketing to USA audiences. Also, the 10-20 million views of DBZ on USA TV exceed Japan's max
@@MantashaMonsterif we put 50 non anime fans in a room an showed them a picture of goku and asked them to”what is this characters name” how many people out of the 50 do you think would give the correct answer
Among my friends there were always discussions on what would happen during the next episode and then we would go on the internet and look at clips of DBZ fights on RU-vid and look at forums which usually argued about power levels and Goku vs Vegeta or Gogeta vs Vegito. That was peak childhood tbh.
It’s weird to think of an alternate world where Dragon Ball is popular everywhere except the English speaking countries. It almost became a Dorameon, Captain Tsubasa, and Saint Seiya situation.
I watched the DBZ that aired in 1996 with the Ocean dub, but in NYC we had china town where bootleg VHS tapes began circling around schools. So even though the dub hit a wall when Goku arrived at Namek, a lot of us New York DBZ fans just began watching the Japanese version. But, due to kids trading tapes we all watched it in an even MORE scrambled way than the average American. I went from Goku arriving on Namek to watching SSJ3 Gotenks, Bio-Broly and SSJ4 Goku VS Baby. We were comfortable with the continuity because it was epic and the amount of questions it stirred up gave a lot of room for rumors and imagination. By the time DBZ went to Toonami, a lot of us had already watched most of DBZ, GT and all the movies too. Japanese was my favorite and I loved the Ocean dub voices but by the time Toonami came around the iconic funimation voices were too strange/weird for me (hate them to this day).. but I still tried to record as much as possible on my VCR. Best thing about Toonami's DBZ was those sick intro edits
In 1995, my family was in and out of the hospital a lot because of my ailing grandfather. Funny enough, that's how I was able to catch those first few episodes of original Dragonball by Funimation. No one knew what I was talking about when bringing it up in school. Though I was able to get my friend interested in checking it out and we both became fans of those few episodes. We managed to collect a couple of the VHS tapes but that was it. Eventually it either went off the air or we kind of lost interest. Fast forward to when DBZ airs for the first time and my friend calls me up like "Hey.. remember that show with that kid Goku? It's back, but he's an adult now??" We were then hooked on Dragonball once again, scouring the internet for anything about it and buying cards and toys from Japanese hobby shops. It was an absolutely wild time trying to piece everything together, but god did we enjoy every second of it.
I learned how to read Chinese on my own because of my early teen obsession with Dragon Ball. English translated manga wasn't as widespread in Canada back in those days and the only way for me to tune in is thru VHS recordings of Cantonese dubbed episodes and the manga translated into Chinese. It influenced me so much that I can read Chinese and that says alot considering I'm a Canadian-born Chinese. I eventually landed a translating job for Jackie Chan and worked on the fully subtitled Hong Kong DVD release of "The Myth" and "Rob-B-Hood". That actually comes into full circle with the whole Jackie Chan/Toriyama connection.
I first was introduced to dragonball z when my family were traveling leather merchants at biker rallies. 6 kids a great dane a chihuahua and my parents all in one rv. My oldest brother would buy the vhs as soon as it was dubbed and we would all crowd around a 12 inch tv to watch.
Thanks IGN, this was a great video. Can you believe, my friends and I ( all mid 30s now ) went through the exact same thing in India during the 90s and early 2000s. We could only watch until Goku fights burter & Jiece, we also got confused with merchandise ( especially all the future trunks and grown up Gohan stuff ) We also managed to get the remaining episodes from guys who were in college then ( high level weebs who had the episodes until buu saga finished ) We all went through the same trajectory hunting lore. Man those were the days. I’ve been enjoying reading super now, after not touching manga since 2015 and that along with this video is very comforting for me today.
Glad that you went over the proper history of licensing. Should also be noted though that Funimation was a new company in 1994 that only got the license after being initially rejected, because its founder, Gen Fukunaga, had an uncle at Toei. In other words…
Imagine if Dragon Ball had a proper, established licensee back then. Probably a lot of the head-scratching, bizarre localization choices that still infect the western meta today could have been avoided.
maybe whosoever was creating those action figures heard that vegeta had a move called galick gun and thought that it was a actual gun he was using and not the standard energy based attacks.😂
Even weirder, the figure of Trunks (kid, not future) came with a Panzer Faust -- a WW2-era rocket launcher that DOES appear in early Dragon Ball, wielded by Yamcha was a desert bandit, but the Trunks figure couldn't hold it because his arms were posed with his hands on his hips. From what I can tell those guns were original sculpts for the Irwin Toy line, and they were based on weapons that appear in Dragon Ball, but included in totally nonsensical ways. -Max
@@IGNmy theory is that they had an excess of guns versus their matching original figures from a completely different line and had to get rid of them so they just stuck them in the Dragon Ball Z ones.
Dragon Ball was already big in america, in latin america and Brasil was a bomb sucess. The only country with most problems was in the U.S. than other country. This video show mostly those problems in that country only, change the title honestly to "how DBZ almost failed in U.S.A" instead.
00:53 well in my case I happen to turn the channel on to toonami one afternoon after school and saw this blonde man fighting this gray alien girl. And was hooked immediately. I had to wait to when until they stopped at nameks destruction and back to the beginning of a before I filled in all the blanks…that was 30+ years ago. Been watching all the way through super ever since and I STILL to this day haven’t seen the original dragon ball.
Toriyama's formula for success is simple. "FIGHTING IS FUN" And Toei liked that and they milked the manga series even more. And Bandai Namco liked that and said hey this is a great start of another line of video games and toys.
I first encountered Z & hated it. I had to watch the OG series before I could appreciate Z. To this day, I still believe OG DB is the best the series has ever been. Z is an undeniable classic & now I love it. However, without the first part of the series, it has no foundation. GT is an underappreciated gem; it might be my favorite part of the series.
No it was never a failure it was very Lucrative in Japan. Its just there was Worry the West wouldn't accept it. It was huge in the west so much so that Japan started buying the single Dvds back in the day because there was no DragonBall home release at that time in Japan
Z airing 7am Saturdays on local Fox affiliate in mid/late 90s… Huge fan for a decade or so, while Funimation tried to figure it out. Peter Kelamis was best Goku dub, IMO.
Dragon ball is so under utilized and needs to be run by another owner. They take waaayyyy longer then any other anime to produce and also in almost any other categories aside from hot topic shirts
The difference in style between the first half of the series and Z make it nothing like starting in the middle of a book. Ones a comedy and the other isn’t
Lmao no it didn't, stop using clickbait titles to generate clicks, DB and DBZ were a big success throughout their entire runtime, there was no indication of any failure whatsoever.
Geez calm down lol, the title is sensationalized to help show appreciation for its success via production history, every show has had challenges. Wouldn’t that make it even better, knowing it’s been fire-proven?
IF THE TITLE OF THIS VIDEO WAS ALL I HAD TO SAY IN THE VIDEO THE VIDEO WOULD NOT BE FIFTEEN MINUTES LONG Please, PLEASE, just actually watch the video instead of yelling at a headline that was extensively workshopped to get the point across while also making you curious what the video had to say. -Max
