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Dragonball Book Review - The Dragonball Z Legend: The Quest Continues

August 28th, 2008 Derek Padula No comments

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The Dragon Ball Z Legend

The Dragon Ball Z Legend

The Dragon Ball Z Legend: The Quest Continues

The Dragonball Z Legend: The Quest Continues says right on the cover “An essential source for every anime fan”. To that, book cover, I say you are wrong. Entertaining perhaps, but certainly not essential, even for Dragonball nuts.

The books design is a series of Q & A. Fifty-Four (54) questions related to series’ trivia are posed and then answered in a couple of pages each. Unfortunately while the answers tend to be fairly on target, more hardcore fans will recognize numerous errors, and this gets frustrating after a while. Luckily the questions are varied and the answers are comical. Read more…

Dragonball Book Review - Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide

August 27th, 2008 Derek Padula 3 comments

Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide

Pojo's Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified

Pojo's Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified

The Dragonball Z Collectible Card Game (CCG) premiered in 2000 with the Saiyan Saga starter decks and booster packs. There are now over eighteen expansions and several rare and promotional cards to play around with. The CCG’s purpose is to play mock battles in Dragonball with your favorite DBZ characters and abilities, mixing and matching fighting styles and combat techniques to come out the victor. Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide details the origins of the game, the various cards, and strategies from winners of national tournaments.

The book starts off with a nice introduction to the Dragonball series and is a suitable primer for those unfamiliar with the topic. Of course there’s no substitute for watching the show or reading the comic book, but it sets you up for the rest of the contents. It follows with a description of the various card types, such as Physical Combat, Energy Combat, Non-Combat, Dragon Ball’s, Battle Grounds and Locations, and Mastery cards. It then breaks those down into different fighting styles, including Red, Blue, Black, Orange, Saiyan, and Namekian along with descriptions of what makes each one unique.

Overall it gives a pretty good idea of what the game contains, but it doesn’t actually include the rules, so you’re left trying to piece together how the game is played from the descriptions of cards and strategies therein. I suppose this is because the rules change frequently with each new release of cards, and it would have been difficult to summarize all of the rules into a few pages, but it would have made a lot more sense to me if they had tried. Read more…

Dragonball Book Review - Dragonball Z: An Unauthorized Guide

August 26th, 2008 Derek Padula 1 comment

Dragonball Z: An Unauthorized Guide

Dragonball Z An Unauthorized Guide

Dragonball Z An Unauthorized Guide

Fair warning… This review is scathing, and it makes me feel bad to have written it, but it’s also very true and needed to be said. With that mentioned…

To paraphrase a seminal comedy of our time, Billy Madison, “Nowhere in this book’s incessant rambling and incoherent nonsense does it even come close to forming an intelligent thought. I am now dummer for having read it.”

Truly, Dragonball Z:An Unauthorized Guide should never be read, by anybody, including DBZ fans. I don’t even know where to begin with this book other than to say that it consists of over 200 pages of random observations, incorrect assumptions, little to no facts… and insights from a 10 year old. Read more…

Dragonball Book Review - Dragonball Z Extreme

August 26th, 2008 Derek Padula 2 comments

Dragonball Z Extreme

Dragonball Z Extreme

Dragonball Z Extreme

Dragonball Z Extreme is a fun and brain teasing activity book fit for young children and young adults, especially DBZ fans.

This book is licensed by FUNimation, the American owners of the DBZ anime brand, so it’s filled with images of characters from the series. This really pulls you into the Dragon World and makes all of the activities feel very engaging. Read more…

Dragonball Book Review - Pojo’s Unofficial Total Dragonball Z

August 24th, 2008 Derek Padula 1 comment

Pojo’s Unofficial Total Dragonball Z

Pojo's Unofficial Total Dragonball Z

Pojo's Unofficial Total Dragonball Z

At the time of its publication (2000) Pojo’s Unofficial Total Dragonball Z was the best DBZ book on the market. Even now, in 2007, it’s not so bad. It’s not quite a book so much as a glorified magazine, but it’s a worth a read if you need to read everything DBZ related. If not, I would recommend the newer version, Pojo’s Unofficial Absolute Dragonball Z, which came out three years later, simply because it’s the fresher fish in the market.

Aside from its own merits, this book serves as a walk down memory lane of the year 2000 in American anime and television based pop culture. It captures the influence that Dragonball had on the American telescape with its success on Cartoon Network’s Toonami and Adult Swim, the release of a Collectible Card Game, VHS and DVD obsessions, and video game imports all the rage. Read more…