published in Viz’s Shonen Jump later that year! I must admit it was nostalgic to hit all the same beats as before: a resident badass character catching my eye (for DB, it was Piccolo; Zoro for OP), Oda’s art style influencing my own, doing whatever I could to acquire more of it, and even running into the same source for some of my information. I had been a longtime fan of Greg Werner’s “Ultimate Dragonball Z Information Site,” and over the years we had developed a friendship. I was pleasantly surprised that he too was very much into One Piece. It was like history was repeating itself, but this time was different. I was into what was already the “new” Dragon Ball in Japan, and I wanted to be proactive about it. I wanted to help others get into this amazing series, just as others before me helped me grow to love Dragon Ball so much.
Since then, I’ve been active in the One Piece community, watching it blossom. I’ve met some of my greatest friends through our love for One Piece, which echoes the series’ overarching theme of friendship pretty well. However, one similarity is a constant between every One Piece fan I’ve met: we were all Dragon Ball fans first. I’d like to think that we all know good storytelling when we read it, so naturally it makes sense that both series would share fans cut from a similar cloth. And when Toriyama and Oda collaborated with each other for the special one-shot Cross Epoch, it not only brought each series’ characters together, but the fans as well. A defining moment, if there ever was one.
So yes, by now you must know that I love One Piece. But know whenever I say that, I’m also saying, “I love Dragon Ball.”
ALEX (“The Dude”) is a longtime Dragon Ball fan and regular contributor to the Unofficial One Piece Podcast at: onepiecepodcast.com
In the Mood for a Melody
A transformation into BGM superfan
By Kenneth Locke
It was 2000, and I was finally starting to get into this anime series on Cartoon Network that my sister and her gaggle of girlfriends wouldn’t stop talking about. Dragon Ball Z wasted no time digging its claws into me, even though I had only caught a handful of scattered episodes—from different story arcs—effectively stifling whatever hope I had of figuring out context or continuity. I happened to catch the tail end of the Cell Games arc as it was first airing, and at last real curiosity took hold and motivated me to hit the Internet, not only to find out which parts of the series I had seen, but also to see if fans had anything to say about the Japanese version, and how the FUNimation dub compared to it. I had already stumbled upon Dogasu’s English-to-Japanese Pokemon Page (now known as Dogasu’s Backpack) some months earlier when I was first getting into Pokemon, and immediately became fascinated by the concept of comparing a dubbed, imported series to its original-language version.
It was through this fascination that I came upon Chris Psaros’ DBZ Uncensored. Here was a fan whose passion for the source material shone through in his episode comparisons, and some of my favorite moments were those where he’d gush lovingly over the original Japanese version’s background music (known to many anime and video game fans as BGM, for short), which was composed by Shunsuke Kikuchi, and how this score measured up against the replacement one created by Shuki Levy for FUNimation’s first stab at the dub (and later the Faulconer Productions score).
To make a long story short, in his eyes, the Kikuchi score won, no contest. Where both of the U.S. scores were fully electronic and had a tendency to meander, only occasionally producing something resembling a melody (an opinion I didn’t entirely share, though later I would personally hold to the notion that Faulconer’s team at least gave their work much more thought and heart than Levy did), the Japanese score had a grand, sweeping orchestral presence, with only limited amounts of synth. At least that was the impression I came away with after reading Uncensored; I had never heard the original for myself, aside from a handful of quick snippets in the form of video clips offered for a short while on what was then known as Daizenshuu EX. The more I read of Psaros’ compelling thoughts, the more I ached to experience the vintage DBZ in its entirety.
Some months later I got my hands on a massive fansub set that contained everything from the Captain Ginyu arc clear to the end of DBZ. This gave me my first fleshed-out experience of what the music was truly like. It may come as a huge surprise to those who know me online, but the Kikuchi score actually wasn’t “love at first sound” for me. It was instead an acquired taste. I’m not sure what I was expecting after reading everything Psaros had to say about it, but it wasn’t something that sounded to my ears like it belonged in the ‘60s or ‘70s. Talk about old-school! There was so much emphasis on blaring, in-your-face brass, with frenzied strings placing second...er...fiddle, backed up by the high-pitched squeal of a flexatone here or the conspicuous BOING! of a Jew’s harp there, and bringing up the rear was the near-omnipresence of a rattling vibraslap, reminiscent of classic spaghetti westerns. I found the whole ensemble odd. Not altogether unappealing, just odd.
However, I simply could not deny the man’s talent for catchy earworm melodies, and the more episodes I watched, the more the score grew on me, until it eventually became—for lack of a better phrase—music to my ears. I remember one scene in particular: that of Piccolo’s first encounter with Cell. Having read so many of Psaros’ comparisons and noticing a certain recurring theme, I went into this episode expecting the entire scene where Piccolo walks through the eerily deserted Ginger Town to feature no music whatsoever, at least until the big reveal of Cell. As it turned out, I was only half-right. There was some presence of silence, but not before an unusual, threatening electronic piece with wah-wah pedals underscored the first moments of Piccolo’s investigation, then built up to a big, dramatic orchestral finish. That was when the silence seeped in, and of course when Cell began to step out of the shadows, another music cue kicked in. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the former cue at first; it seemed a little loud for the scene, especially since I was more used to the Faulconer score’s use of the subdued-yet-amply-creepy latter half of “Ginyu Transformation” here. But it didn’t take long for the Japanese cue to grow on me, and some time later I learned that it had been tracked (recycled) from the opening scene of the third Dragon Ball movie.
There were other cues I grew fond of, most of them used very prominently during the Freeza arc. One was used as the go-to battle theme, which after starting with a chime and a short build-up with strings, featured an electric guitar churning out a portion of Piccolo’s leitmotif in repetition, as a bass kept the beat. Frantic strings and brass punctuation rounded out the whole thing. Another great cue was typically used whenever Freeza came close to doing in the heroes, with a return to the electric guitar and desperate percussion all throughout. And who could forget the piece that so brilliantly illustrated the surprise and shock of Goku’s first transformation into a Super Saiyan? It began with a low-key, threatening piano that gave way to unsettling synth until the wind and strings took over, shrieking in horror one moment and spinning in a cyclone the next, the percussion thundering its way through two minutes of sheer confusion. Now that was memorable.
Finally, there was the inspiring theme signifying a slow rise to victory or a hopeful moment, usually involving Goku’s arrival after the other heroes had been mauled. It began very softly, with two muted instruments—what sounded like a piano backed up by percussion—stating three notes, which were collectively repeated twice in succession then quickly swallowed up by the silence. A second later there was a reiteration, then the two instruments were joined by a guitar, then the wind section. Everything combined to build to a heroic crescendo, ever so gradually, until an almighty sounding of trumpets wrapped it all up on a fist-pumping fanfare, filled with triumph. Every time this cue came on, I got chills. I needed this music in isolated form.
After I was done with the fansubs, I learned about the legendary 5-disc music box set, three discs of which were dedicated to BGM from Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. Whenever I saw this particular piece of merchandise brought up on forums and fan pages, it was always with
the air of one of two attitudes: either it was spoken of in a sort of written equivalent of hushed, reverent tones...or a maniacal explosion: “HOLY @#$% THIS SET IS A MUST-HAVE! YOU HAVEN’T LIVED UNTIL YOU OWN THIS THING!” So I tracked down a copy and found, to my dismay, that it was a far from complete collection. Sure, it had all three of the aforementioned cues used as Freeza arc staples, but the heroic piece was noticeably absent, as was the ominous “Piccolo meets Cell” cue described above. There was also a beautiful violin theme associated with Chiaotzu that I had been aching for, and my heart fell into my stomach when I heard merely a quick statement of the leitmotif, but not the full-length cue.
All the same, I spun those discs (especially 4 and 5) religiously, for months. Indeed, it wasn’t long after getting the set that I took a few sheets of scrap paper and wrote for myself an outline of every track on each disc (breaking down the contents of each suite), how long each cue lasted (as near as I could figure anyway, as tracks 2-13 on Disc 2 had the cues crossfaded and it was sometimes difficult to tell where one cue ended and the
DB30YEARS: Special Dragon Ball 30th Anniversary Magazine Page 10