Saiyan Showdown Documentary
In 2005, Dragon Ball was still enjoying great success in the United States. The series was airing on Cartoon Network and FUNimation had established itself as a super power in the American anime industry.
The “Saiyan Showdown” documentary was made during the time when Dragon Ball Z was entrenched in the minds of fans.
FUNimation had decided to redub the first 67 episodes of Dragon Ball Z with the current FUNimation cast, to replace the original Ocean Group dub from 1996. The new versions were going to be called The Ultimate Uncut Editions, and the Saiyan Showdown was a bonus video that came with the first disc of the series.
Attending Anime Expo
I’ll be attending Anime Expo from July 1 to July 4, in Los Angeles, CA.
If you’re going to Anime Expo this year and want to get together, then drop me a line on the contact form or via facebook.
I’m going as a journalist for The Epoch Times, and also because it’s a good opportunity to be nerdy and have some fun.
For those who don’t know, Anime Expo is the largest anime and Japanese pop culture conference in North America. Hundreds of thousands of people come every year during the 4th of July weekend. Next year I want to be there to promote my Dragon Ball book.
I’d love to meet with you so we can talk about Dragon Ball or simply hang out, play games and become friends.
And it will also be interesting to see what type of a presence Dragon Ball has at this years conference. The last two years have been rather sparse, aside from an occasional cosplayer.
Hope to see you there!
Dragonball Book Review – The Dragonball Z Legend: The Quest Continues
The Dragon Ball 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. continue …
Dragonball Book Review – Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide
Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide
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. continue …








