The Dao of Dragonball Blog

The new Dragon Ball Book website

Hi everybody,

If you’ve been to The Dao of Dragon Ball’s main website recently you may have noticed the complete overhaul to the layout and design.  That’s because it’s all brand new!

I decided to go with a big, simple and easy to understand design that would help explain what the book is all about and provide enough incentive to make a buying decision.

The site now has a much cleaner layout and a beautiful color scheme that is easy on the eyes.

There are also web 2.0 functionalities involved, like the AJAX contact form, and I plan to add a few more in the future.

Perhaps you remember the old site, with a huge and lengthy index page, the bright orange color scheme and the separate pages for English and Japanese.  Well, one of the readers (who speaks fluent Japanese) mentioned that the Japanese sections were incoherent nonsense.  Thank’s Google Translate!  So that section is gone now.

And while I initially liked the long sales letter on the home page, it turns out that nobody was reading it!  A lot more people are sticking around with the new design.

I’m really happy with the way the new site looks and functions and I hope you guys like it too!

Goku Waits Patiently

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for your support on the site and to those who have pre-ordered the book.  All of you are being very patient and I want to give you a progress update.

Right now I have two chapters left to finish before the rough draft of the book will be complete.

The first chapter is Immortal and Invincible.  It will discuss the history of eastern martial arts and the mind body cultivation practices of Daoism, along with a practitioner’s quest for physical and spiritual immortality.  It will also unveil how a body can, from an eastern paradigm, attain invincibility.

Both immortality and invincibility are themes in Dragon Ball, and I think this will be a very interesting chapter for fans of the series.

The second chapter is Divine Combat.  This chapter will reveal the history of combat and hand to hand battles in the myths and legends of various cultures around the world, and how martial arts has always played a role in our culture, including our modern society, right on up to DBZ, martial arts flicks, anime, the Matrix and beyond.  The connection between legendary battles in heaven, the deliverance of martial arts from gods to man, and the progress of martial arts in our civilization will be made very clear.

I’m sincerely trying to complete these chapters before the end of October, with an e-book release in November or December.

There are so many steps needed to complete a goal like this, and I’m becoming a better writer and person in the process, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to improve.

Of course I want this book out more than anyone and I would like to once again thank all of you for your patience and support.

Vegetto Smashes Majin Buu with a Double Axe Handle

In this Dragon Ball explorative essay we’re going to focus on the martial arts technique known as the double axe handle. This iconic technique is found throughout the Dragon Ball series and has both a rich history and symbolism.

Dragon Ball is a comic book and anime filled with fighting and all kinds of different martial arts styles.  Yet many of them share similar techniques, and the double axe handle is one of the most identifiable.

These are the questions we will answer in this article:

• What is the double axe handle?
• What are its origins and history, and how does it relate to Dragon Ball?
• What are the histories of East Asian martial arts, Buddhism, and the Lightning Bolt Clasped Hands style of combat?
• How do eastern philosophies and this technique fit into the fights of DBZ?
• Why is the double axe handle used so often in Dragon Ball?
• Outside of Dragon Ball, where else can the double axe handle be seen?

Read on to find out! Read more…

Nope. It really is Over 8,000 in the original comic. Read the report to find out more.

I’ve put together a brand new special report that will help you learn all the details on the Dragon Ball internet phenomenon “Over 9,000!” that is found all over the web, and I’m giving it away for free with The Dao of Dragon Ball book.

Included in this over 9 page bonus item is an in-depth analysis of the pop cultural history of “Over 9,000!” and it’s connection to the Japanese DBZ source material as well as its connection to ancient Chinese, Indian, and Japanese cultures.

The report cannot be found elsewhere and is yours free just by giving The Dao of Dragon Ball a shot. If you decide the book isn’t for you, then you still get to keep your bonus item.

You can pick up a copy of the report at the main DBZ Book website.

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…

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

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 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 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…

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…

The DBZ Blog is Live and Connected!

… That’s all I got so far.