VegettoEX Dot Com

Category: Dragon Ball

  • DB Manga Review Bonus: #17’s Dialogue

    In preparation for the “Manga Review of Awesomeness” on the next podcast episode over at Daizenshuu EX, I’ve been working like crazy on my notes. One of the things I’m going to bring up works well with a little image comparison, so I figured I’d share.

    In Viz’s English translation of the DragonBall manga, this is one of #17’s first lines after being awoken/activated by Dr. Gero:

    17_dialogue_viz

    “Good morning, Dr. Gero…“. It’s a pretty straight-forward, more-or-less accurate translation of the original dialogue. Here’s how it is written in the original Japanese version:

    17_dialogue_jp

    Like I said, it’s a pretty accurate translation. What #17 says is, “ohayo gozaimasu, dokutaa gero-sama“. There’s one little thing that’s “missing” in Viz’s “translation”, though, as accurate as it is: it’s that “-sama” suffix. It’s not really necessary to translate, but it comes into play a little more than you might think. While you can clearly imply that #17 is being overly-polite (to the point of it being a ruse), it’s really driven home by the fact that he actually uses the “-sama” suffix… which he would never otherwise use for this jerk-face of a doctor that forced him back asleep. It’s that one specific formality that leads Dr. Gero to initially trust him (and also #18).

    In the end, it’s not a huge lost-in-translation issue, but it’s certainly an interesting one, none-the-less.

    Like this kind of stuff? Hell, you’re probably already checking out our weekly podcast about that there Japanese cartoon from the 80s/90s about monkey aliens hitting each other after staring at each other for an episode. At least it’s good fun, huh?

  • Proud To Be Downloading: The Financial Conundrum For FUNimation and the DragonBall Franchise

    I’m not here to attempt to sway your thoughts any which way on whether it’s OK to download licensed stuff. We all have our own well-formed opinions by this point, and whether or not they have the basis in any sort of professional experience or simply life experience, they can be hard to change once we get set in our ways. Instead, I’d like to share just a small dose of what kind of sentiments are out there, and what “the man” needs to do (has to do? should do? maybe should consider doing?) if they want to cement that sticky audience that will stand by their side, support their products, and make sure they actually have a business model going forward.

    I suppose it’s kinda funny that the example I’m going with is the DragonBall franchise, and specifically that in North America as distributed by FUNimation.

    Let’s ignore any and all thoughts I have about FUNimation as a company from my fan perspective. That is entirely irrelevant to this discussion. This is a business conversation, a new media conversation, and a marketing conversation… all things I have knowledge of and expertise in completely independent of my hobby/fandom.

    I ran a quick search on Twitter this morning for “dbz” just to see what was out there. In addition to the pain of seeing such a huge audience and struggling with getting our site and podcast into their consciousness (insert Cartman “HOW do I REACH these KIDS…?!” quote here), I could clearly see the business side being discussed… without these kids even knowing they’re talking a little inside baseball. Here are just a few examples of what I saw:

    @Ryan_Toro_69 DBZ season nine. Thirty bucks. 39 episodes. Final season…..WAT DO I DO?!?

    @FHD210 Downloading Dragonball. Never saw that one, only DBZ and GT. And Cities of the Underworld: fascinating documentaries

    @OnslaughtSix I am now awake! Dragonball finished, which is an amazing feat after how long I’ve been trying to download it. On to DBZ!

    @iEgg Just got a sudden urge to watch the Android Saga in DBZ… <3 DBZ! LOL! Anyone know where I can watch it online free?

    While it may be a small sample size that does not statistically speak of the entire population, I felt from a quick looksie-through that it was representative enough for the purposes of this discussion. Note how only one of the four was considering paying for the privilege of watching the series. The sense of entitlement is overwhelming, and is completely accurate to the overall aura you get browsing around the internet.

    That’s not to say that FUNimation isn’t catering to those people. With announcements like the recent agreement with Toei Animation to stream new episodes of One Piece for free, and near-simultaneous with their Japanese broadcast (subtitled in English)… FUNimation has certainly been a leader in this field, and is throwing their weight around as one of the few remaining domestic anime juggernauts (which essentially equates to them and Viz) to get the times a-changin’.

    FUNimation is certainly offering up a decent chunk of anime for free viewing via locations like their YouTube channel, but I’d argue that the DragonBall franchise is one series that they are not taking seriously. Perhaps CEO Gen Fukunaga’s age-old quote about making so much “Poke-money” off the series remains true, and they don’t need to address it. Perhaps Toei’s involvement makes it impossible to explore every avenue that needs exploration. Regardless, if the above Twitter quotes are any indication, fans want to watch the series, they want to watch it now, and if FUNimation isn’t there to provide this service, then the pirating will continue.

    I’m not naive. I may not have any desire to get into the scene and find it thoroughly disgusting from top to bottom, but I know what’s out there. I know how many groups are subbing DragonBall Kai. I know that groups have taken Dragon Box masters and have released dual-audio MKVs with the original Japanese track and FUNimation’s English dub. I know about the custom subbing projects on the invite-only torrent trackers. Again, if FUNimation isn’t going to step in… the fans are going to take control of the property. It’s already near that point, and there will come a concrete point in time when FUNimation won’t be able to regain control.

    At the end of the day, I have one main suggestion for FUNimation: give your fans more incentive to support you. Your Twitter account is a great start, but the responses I see are half-hearted pandering and senseless corporate-talk. Look at companies like United Airlines — they have even created their own (albeit silly) new phrase, “Twares” (think of them as something like “discount fares distributed via Twitter”), to provide an amazing incentive for that “sticky audience” to… well… stick around.

    FUNimation is losing as much control over the DragonBall franchise as they are making money off the DBZ season boxsets. Their 15-year-old licensing nightmare with KidMark (now Lionsgate) is destroying their ability to capitalize on people wanting to go back and explore the rest of the series. Their lack of online, streaming episodes is driving people to go to inordinate lengths to sack away terabytes of digital pack-rat-ery.

    We all know that the domestic anime industry needs an overhaul, and one that might not come in time to save it. I may be incredibly biased in my perception, but it seems to me like DragonBall goes above and beyond the “anime industry” and is simply a cartoon that people remember watching as kids, and want to re-experience. As much as the fandom side of me finds incredibly disgust with the DBZ season boxsets, they were exactly what the doctor ordered on the brick-and-mortar side. Unfortunately for FUNimation, brick-and-mortar grows increasingly irrelevant with each passing day.

    I’d love to help ya’. Hit me up at @vegettoex. I’ll probably end up making baseless and impossible demands like re-calling all currently-existing DVD sets and replacing them with Dragon Box masters in an equally-appropriate price-per-episode ratio that the old sets used, not to mention hiring our own community to localize future English dub and video game scripts just so we can stop some of the information nightmare nonsense we live with every day… but hey… that’s a hardcore fan for ya’.

  • Across The Net: Daizenshuu EX Feedback

    Over in my Twitter feed I occasionally share some of the more hilarious or enthralling comments I’ve seen about our podcast (and even just Daizenshuu EX as a site in general). I figured I would throw a few together in one place for easy reference.

    With no real qualifying description on where the hate comes from, and yet being a member of our forum for over a year at that point, Adam / JAPPO wrote on 23 March 2008:

    Ummm….. thanks?

    (oh and yes I am. I hate daizex, for the record).

    With a little bit of reasoning behind it (but not doing the additional reading to show that we do in fact agree with their statement), ShadowRaditz89 wrote on 12 April 2009:

    I don’t like Daizex, they are too opinionated and refuse to acknowledge when they are wrong.

    …

    Toei Animation officialy lists it as an OVA. Because Daizex disregards this, I don’t acknowledge them as a reliable source.

    With some snide-looking eyes, Amerowolf wrote on 10 February 2009:

    Thanks to rachetcomand for the news tip, oh, and Daizex, but you know…MFG is better than those guys. >_>

    Under fire from other IGN board members, pmc64 wrote on 07 April 2009:

    i don’t have an account there. I don’t think anyone there likes the dub anyways. Haven’t you ever listened to the podcast? they loathe the dub.

    With their head on straight, jjgp1112 responded:

    Mike himself said that Dub fans make up a good amount of the board, and has a strict policy against acting like assholes toward Dub fans and Funi fans like how you do all the time.

    In yet another example of people thinking what they want to think and hearing what they want to hear, King wrote on 09 March 2009:

    I know Daizex will burst for anything that the japanese will pump out, even though the japanese kind of did the same thing like the U.S did…BUT IN JAPANESE VERSION.

    Thankfully, Jacob was around and actually listened to what we said when he responded:

    Not really. As the usual panel (plus!) explain in the latest podcast, just because it’s a Japanese production they won’t give it a pass. They’ll give DBE one viewing to be fair, just they did FUNi’s orange boxes and will Kai, but if the product is displeasing…

    We smiled a bit when Brent contributed to a post on Bethesda’s Blog on 30 January 2009:

    I listened to the MKast podcast while Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe was still in development, and I listen to Daizenshuu Ex’s and Major Nelson’s podcasts every-so-often.

    We were a little confused when MDUNNER28 originally wrote this on 30 March 2009, but then they kept talking about our show with each subsequent post, so I suppose they learned to like us…?

    Episode 170 of Daizenshuu EX is available. If you can get past the hosts’ goofy elitism, it’s a pretty good show.

    Based on this comment (along with a few others) that vashkey made on 11 April 2009, Meri and I did a little aside on Episode #0174 of the podcast to once again re-iterate that just because something’s Japanese, it doesn’t mean it gets a free pass, it doesn’t mean we will automatically like it… and in fact, by the way… we aren’t completely in love with it. Once again, people hear and read what they want to hear and read.

    It’s almost ironic though if you keep up with the daizex website. They bash the Funi remaster so much, but they’ve been praising Kai. I watched the first couple of episodes of the Funi remaster before watching Kai and alot of it is the same when it concerns cropping. In alot of scenes if not all Kai matches up the Funi remaster perfectly. Daizex’s predisposition is pretty obvious.

    We were tickled with our description as “nifty” when Seleria wrote on 11 March 2007:

    Hinode gave me a link to this nifty site called Daizenshuu EX, where there are scans of Dragon Ball artworks by other famous mangakas.

    Over on the “Profile” page of Rumic World, Harley wrote:

    this is a Dragon Ball site I browse through fairly often. I’m not a huge Dragon Ball fan, but I like to visit well made series-specific sites.

    On their links page, Kanzentai wrote:

    One of the best old school sites and it’s probably the only one left! This is one of my personal favorites because it has such unique information, and the largest DragonBall music database ever!

    Hey… thanks, guys! 😛

    All in all, it’s incredibly interesting to see the types of responses and comments that are out there (and the style in which they are written). Every single last bit of feedback should be taken to heart in some capacity, but when you have been doing this sort of stuff as long as we have been doing it, you start to recognize which ones are legit and constructive, which ones just didn’t do their homework, and which ones are just not worth your time. There are so many more that I have seen over the last eleven years, and I wish I could have saved more of them. I’m sure they’re still out there on the internet somewhere, and I’ll come across another batch for another blog entry at some point in the future.

  • People Hear What They Want To Hear

    I came across the following video on YouTube the other day while going through the referrals for website traffic on Daizenshuu EX. The description is basically nothing more than a link to my site, and the title certainly caught my attention (“TRUE DRAGONBALL FANS WOULD GO SEE DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION”), so I figured I was in for a doozy.

    While I don’t think MadThad0890 quite explained what he was trying to say all that well, I think he’s fighting the good fight in one respect, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the live-action movie.

    Enough with this “not a true fan” nonsense.

    While I have zero interest in FUNimation’s English dub of the series, I do not see this upcoming live-action movie as becoming a huge part of my extended fandom, and (insert a whole bunch of other things here), like MadThad says, that doesn’t make me or anyone else “less” of a fan. We’re all on equal ground. We’re all a bunch of people on the internet getting together and talking about a series that, quite frankly, next to zero of us have had or ever will have any stake in its production or even its further success. We gain nothing from it even existing, beyond perhaps our own continued friendships and camaraderie.

    I may have been running my site for well over a decade (including the podcast portion for over three years), but that does not make me any “better” or “more” of a fan than FUNimation’s self-described nine-year-old born every day that pops in an edited, dubbed-only DVD to watch Broli smash up some folks. It certainly makes me a different kind of fan, and I don’t see myself being able to hold a sustained conversation with said nine-year-old, but I’d argue that his (or her!) excitement in watching a crappy action scene in one of my least-favorite animated DBZ movies genuinely rivals my own excitement when, say, a new $200 music boxset is announced.

    You’re probably wondering what the title of this post has to do with anything, though. That’s a great question, so let me explain.

    I think MadThad is trying to justify his own position by using us as “evidence” without actually understanding our “position” (if we even have one), and is basically reading and hearing what he wants to read and hear.

    They don’t support the movie at all. At all.

    Now that’s just not true. Especially when you listen to my review of the “Junior Novel” and Julian’s review of the movie on Episode #0168 of the podcast, you will hear that while we think of it as an entirely separate entity… and quite an absurdly ludicrous one, at that… I wouldn’t really call that not “supporting” the movie “at all”. As I’ve mentioned time and time again, I would love for there to be a live-action DB movie that is done fantastically, respects the source material, takes its own necessary liberties, introduces the franchise to a whole new audience, etc. Unfortunately, it sounds like Evolution is not going to be that movie, so while I support it in theory, now that I think about it, maybe MadThad actually is correct in saying we don’t support this movie.

    But if I recommend going to see it just for the sake of seeing how much of a spectacular disaster it is, is that considered “supporting” it? It sounds like it’s nowhere near the level of The Legend of Chun-Li in its terrible-just-terrible state, with Evolution being more along the lines of having fun with how terrible it is.

    You know what? Just like in the first podcast episode of WTF EX when Jeff and I couldn’t come to a conclusion after an hour-long discussion, I think the process of writing out this blog entry has thoroughly confused me… and I’m the subject of debate, here!

    Long story short, as I’ve noted over on our message board, I think what the DB web community has always needed, continues to need, and will always need… is exactly what shônen is all about: we need friendship and understanding in an open forum. I’ve been around long enough to see every single name in the book thrown around, every half-thought-out argument tossed in as evidence or proof, and thousands of fans come and go. If we’re going to make it another 25 years, we’ve gotta stop telling each other who’s the bigger fan…

    … because if you’re the one saying that, there’s a good chance you won’t be sticking around with us. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

  • “Daizenshuu EX” In The Media

    OK, so “media” is somewhat laughable when you consider the source this is coming out of, but let’s be honest… seeing your site mentioned in print, no matter what that print form may be, is a pretty awesome thing.

    We are cleaning out a few things in the apartment as we get ready to eventually move into the new house, and I have been pulling together all of the various magazines I have sitting around. I came across this:

    daizex_beckett_01

    Back in March 2001, an issue of Beckett DragonBall Collector had a two-page column called “DBZ Online”. It was mostly a feature about FUNimation’s official DBZ website, but the very end of the column had a little box for other (fan-created) websites that fans could visit. Lookie, here! What’s that second site listed…?!

    daizex_beckett_02

    Again, it’s laughable when you consider the source and the companion link (“Da Black Gohan”? Really? This is where you want to send people?)… but you can’t help but smile to see your stuff given some attention somewhere.

    These Beckett magazines were always of dubious quality, even though a couple halfway-authoritative people signed on to do some translation and writing work. For example, in this particular issue, Greg Werner (of The Ultimate DBZ Info Site) wrote articles about DragonBall GT (two years before it would be mentioned by FUNimation in the US) and a follow-up translation of the timelines featured in the daizenshuu and Perfect File books.

    Long story short, it was great to find the magazine again and get a decent scan up online so I won’t lose it. I wonder if the people on Wikipedia working on the DBZ articles will now consider Daizenshuu EX a credible source since it’s been listed/featured as an authoritative reference in a media source. *insert snarky smirk here*

  • Search Referrals Across The World

    Following up a little bit on my post about rankings on Google a little bit, I just wanted to share another behind-the-scenes doo-diddy with Daizenshuu EX. I have always touted the site as a “global fandom” resource. The Japanese version of the DragonBall series is the sole version that can be (and is) appreciated throughout the entire world, and that is our audience. As a testament to that, what I specifically would like to share is a list of the last twenty search engine referrals’ origins by country as I’m looking at them right now, with 15 of the 20 specifically looking for a variation on either “daizex” or “daizenshuu ex”:

    • Brazil
    • Japan
    • Croatia
    • United States
    • Japan
    • United States
    • Australia
    • Italy
    • Japan
    • Netherlands
    • Australia
    • Germany
    • Japan
    • United States
    • Netherlands
    • Spain
    • Denmark
    • Italy
    • United States

    That’s just beautiful, and I feel like we’re actually accomplishing something…! Let’s get Daizenshuu EX as a household name in Uzbekistan, and I think I could call it a day.

  • Number-One Rankings On Google

    I saw in my search engine referrals the phrase “dragonball fansite” the other day (for Daizenshuu EX), so I figured I’d take a look and see where we placed with that. Whoa! Number one…?! Awesome! Out of curiosity, I tried a bunch of additional search terms/phrases to see which also brought us up as the first link on Google (at least while searching signed into my own profile; your mileage may vary). Here are a few that I am really proud of:

    • daizenshuu
    • dragonball fansite
    • dragon ball fansite
    • dragon ball podcast
    • dragonball podcast
    • dbz podcast
    • best dbz website
    • best dragonball website
    • best dragon ball website
    • dragonball website
    • dragon ball website
    • dbz website

    I don’t know if anyone actually uses those types of search phrases, but if they came to mind for me to use, perhaps someone else will do the same. There’s still a long way to go for us to show up for simple searches like “dragonball” or “dbz”, but hey… we’ve gone eleven years and have done this well. What’s another decade or so? We’ll out-last everyone and end up on top by default :P.

  • iTunes “DBZ” Placement

    Now that the holidays are pretty much over, I’m going to try and get at least a little something up here more often than not. Consider this one of those little things!

    iTunes is a very mysterious entity. We have only a vague, outsider understanding of how things are ranked. That’s why it is very important to optimize your shows with keywords in their title and descriptions. This is something I absolutely did consider when starting up the podcast for Daizenshuu EX, but the final decisions definitely aren’t completely working in my favor. That’s not to say things are “bad” or “not working”… let me explain and show you!

    When I started the podcast for the site, just like the canned intro says every week, I wanted it to be an extension of the website rather than its own separate entity. Sure, it can stand on its own (so can the website without the podcast), but they tie together and complement each other nicely. That’s why I decided against calling it something like “OMG DRAGONBALL DRAGON BALL DBZ PODCAST”, and simply went with Daizenshuu EX – The Podcast. We have “DBZ” in the description of the show (“DBZ discussions, reviews, and the latest news from…”), but…

    Consider when someone comes along and puts those keywords right in their title rather than just the description. There are a couple podcasts to go along with blogs for the upcoming live-action movie, and there’s something called Dragon Ball Z Universe! – The Podcast (which appears to be by a fan of our own website and podcast, but doesn’t really seem to be an actual audio podcast, and more like PDFs delivered via RSS every so often). This was all fine and good, since if you’re searching for “dbz” or “dragon ball” or “dragonball“, anything that came up would be entirely (OK, mostly) relevant.

    Now there’s a “podcast” simply called Abridged, which as far as I can tell is completely unrelated to the production any of the actual “Abridged” series out there, and is just some guy or gal collecting episodes and putting them up for download via an RSS feed (thus the “podcast”). This is completely fine; don’t misunderstand me. However, since the “Abridged” phenomenon is getting so huge, even though they don’t have any of TeamFourStar‘s DBZ Abridged episodes up in the feed yet, simply referencing those entities by name seems to be pumping up their “relevance” in searches according to iTunes.

    Again, don’t misunderstand me… I have no problem with these “podcasts” (which isn’t an entirely accurate term for some of them) getting attention and an audience. That’s awesome. Far be it from me to tell anyone not to create content and get fans! The problem lies with our own show, being what I consider the most relevant for those general search terms (we cover anything and everything DragonBall, as you know!), getting pushed out of the most-visible locations!

    When you do a search for “dbz” in the iTunes store, we used to show up as one of the two podcasts in the mini-section “Podcast” bubble at the top. No longer true!

    Now you have to click through to see us.

    In a further bout of confusion, we don’t show up at all for a search of “dragonball“, but show up as #43 in the general search for “dragon ball” (and still needing to click-through on the “Podcast” bubble to find us there).

    So let it be known that for ultimate visibility, it certainly helps to have a more generic name! That’s OK… in my delusional world, we’re the best at what we do ^_~. And hey, if YOU dig what we do, spread the word! Tell a friend! That’s what shonen is all about… friendship and camaraderie!