DB30YEARS: Special Dragon Ball 30th Anniversary Magazine
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everybody had access to the original Japanese version. It seemed like DBZ on the web was ushering in a new Golden Age.
At this point, I felt like I was at the top of my game. My mindset was that if you were to measure my power level with a scouter, it would probably explode. I didn’t realize it was all going to come crashing down very soon.
With the increasing popularity of DBZ also came increasing problems online. The dot com bubble burst in March 2000, leaving advertisers to completely shut down their services and many DBZ websites unable to pay for their expensive hosting fees, along with many hosts fleeing the scene altogether.
Hosting fees got so expensive to the point where Planet Namek had to get rid of my site, forcing me to find hosting elsewhere. My situation got so bad to the point where a friend of mine knew a host and asked him if he could host my site…though that host was never heard from again. This was a common occurrence.
I jumped from host to host, only to be kicked off for excessive bandwidth consumption each and every time. Some people started a joke petition to prevent me from killing servers!
My site partner, Dr. Bond, and I eventually found a dedicated server that we were paying for out of our own pocket and we were hoping that all of our hosting problems would be put to rest. DBZ was already at Season 5 at this point with no plans of slowing down. In 2002, the fateful day happened again when I came home from class: I saw a “Bandwidth Limit” exceeded on my site which I was all too familiar with. We did everything to keep bandwidth down, but the massive popularity of DBZ was too much for even our $300 a month “dedicated” server. After getting incredibly sick of bandwidth problems and losing motivation to update the site because of them, it was finally time for me to call it quits and close Vegeta Insane/Ginga GIRI GIRI.
After my departure in 2002, while I stopped paying attention to the DBZ web, I never stopped being a fan of the series and still continued to collect the DVDs as they were coming out. I was surprised one morning in 2003 that Daizenshuu EX had come back and with the end of DBZ approaching on Cartoon Network, the U.S. fandom quietly died down. Many fansub and full episode sites had closed their doors long ago because of the DVD releases, many fans were already growing up and were moving on to other things, and the DBZ web had become a shadow of its former self.
However, 2003 marked a new revival of the DBZ franchise starting with the Dragon Boxes, which was the first time the series had a legitimate release in its home country of Japan. Just when things were quieting down in the US, things in Japan started rising again. The manga had seen a re-release as the kanzenban and several new guide books were made, giving us information that was completely unavailable before. Daizenshuu EX was the #1 source that constantly kept up with it on a daily basis, even with a much smaller DBZ web community. With barely any competition, it wasn’t too long until Daizenshuu EX had finally taken the rightful spot as the #1 DBZ fansite.
Years later, in 2006, I was invited to be a guest on the Daizenshuu EX podcast and slowly began checking out what had become of the DBZ web. The days of Planet Namek were long gone and DBZ had been over in the US for a few years. The series was still going strong with its DVD releases and the recent revival in Japan. During this time, I had discovered Kanzentai and told myself: “This is the site that I wish existed back in the day.”
The DBZ web had shrunk down to a more village-like atmosphere with Daizenshuu EX and Kanzentai being the leaders in place of Planet Namek. I felt the smaller atmosphere made it much easier to come back to, along with the fact that I was much older which made me appreciate it more than I did when I was younger. There was no longer any desire for me to achieve fame and I could enjoy things from the sidelines. I eventually brought back Ginga GIRI GIRI in 2010 as Ginga GIRI GIRI Kai, but more as an archive of my old and new work without having to worry about bandwidth problems, since I was paying for it out of my own pocket now.
Today, Daizenshuu EX and Kanzentai have merged into Kanzenshuu and it is still the #1 DBZ fansite going strong with over 300 podcast episodes, constantly updated news, accurate translations from the guide books, never-before-seen material, and much more. Planet Namek at its peak didn’t even contain 1/5th of the information Kanzenshuu has available.
As a longtime observer and participant in the fandom for over a decade, I’m happy to see that DBZ is still going strong with the fans who are still expressing their love for the series via sites, YouTube videos, etc.
With Kai, games (especially Dragon Ball Heroes), and the upcoming movie, it looks like DBZ on the web is going strong, even with a much smaller community. That passion and heart from the older sites can still be felt. Those fans who grew up with the series have families of their own; when I re-opened Ginga GIRI GIRI Kai, I spoke with Dr. Bond for the first time in years only to find that he had already gotten married and started showing his kids the series!
While a lot has changed, it’s great to know that the fandom is as strong as ever and DBZ on the web is here to stay.
RYAN ran “Vegeta Insane / Ginga GIRI GIRI” and now produces videos as a part of Battle Geek Plus.
Thank You
Thank you for celebrating Dragon Ball’s 30th anniversary with us!
We hope you have enjoyed reading these memories, articles, reviews, and critiques as much as we enjoyed putting them together for you.
Dragon Ball is such a magical series and it is our deepest hope that a bit of that magic has shown through in this magazine.
Thanks you to all of the authors and contributors for making this magazine happen, thank you for reading it, thank you to everyone who has ever worked on the Dragon Ball series in any capacity...
And thank you to Akira Toriyama! Here’s to another thirty years with your masterpiece!
- Mike, Julian, Heath, Jake (www.kanzenshuu.com)