Dragon Ball Z was the first truly "accepted" anime

[DBZAOTA482]

I'm not letting these Gen Alpha kids rewrite history.

A lot of Demon Slayer fans have been saying that DS made anime "mainstream" yet I'm thinking "wasn't anime mainstream for awhile now". Even as far as the 2010s, major stream sites like Hulu and Netflix had a wide variety of anime titles to choose from, and the media is all over local stores.... but that wouldn't have been possible without DBZ (and Toonami in general) opening up the floodgates first.


Generally back in the day, you would be made fun of for liking anime, but DBZ was an exception because it not only appealed to kids, but also teens and young adults, and... y'all know the rest.

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[Fantastische Hure]

But why are you saying this on a DragonBall forum?

 

[Yoshi]

Demon Slayer was and is a one hit wonder. That doesn’t mean it made Anime and Manga mainstream.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

One-hit-wonder what?

 

[Yoshi]

My bad. I misinterpreted the definition of one hit wonder. My opinion on it making Anime and Manga mainstream still stands though. Dragon Ball and The Big Three were mainstream Anime and Manga too, but they didn’t make Anime and Manga as a form of entertainment mainstream either.

 

[Warmmedown]

Goddamn, Gen Alpha are old enough to have a public voice now. I'm fucking middle-aged. Some book I looked at divided life into 18-30, 30-50 and so on. I'm like "bruh".

Anyway, I'm not sure if DBZ made "anime" mainstream or just DBZ itself mainstream. Being on hulu doesnt make it mainstream. Think of kdrama: it's on netflix, amazon prime and Disney Plus, but isn't mainstream. Squid Game was mainstream, but kdrama is still definitely not mainstream, even if kdrama is in the Netflix top 10 frequently. It's still not something people talk about (I could underestimate its popularity a bit, since it has mostly female fans which could be harder for me to gauge - same goes for kpop. Whereas anime was mostly males but now seems popular across genders). Anime though now is pretty mainstream, and in the UK that certainly only started happening around 2015, with the Gen Z crowd.

 

[Warmmedown]

The one time DBZ came up in school after like grade 2 or 3, was in year 13, when this kid was saying about dbz and how it was cool when you were 5 and pejoratively speaking about how some people our age like it (17 to 18yos). If anyone did anime it wasn't something I heard about. Yeh DB, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Shaman King and perhaps others were in the school library, but it wasn't mainstream in the school.

 

[Yoshi]

I definitely think that as TV Shows in the 2000s, Dragon Ball, Naruto, and Bleach were mainstream. One Piece was mainstream as a Manga, that’s why it was part of the Big Three at the time since that term referred to mainstream Manga.

 

[sei'taer]

I've heard "X made anime mainstream" every 5 years for the entire time I've watched anime.

Dragonball wasn't mainstream, Naruto, Bleach and One Piece weren't mainstream either. Hell it's only the past few years that anime has had massive box office appeal and mainstream sport crossover.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

Anime is main-stream now & that’s good, but DragonBall was main-stream & so was Pokémon & maybe Sailor-Moon too.

 

[Warmmedown]

One Piece didn't seem so mainstream. I knew a few Americans offline into it circa 2011, but it was pretty niche.

I wonder if manga will ever be mainstream. I guess it must be somewhat if places like Waterstones and HMV are selling it.
And for manga is it the same types of series that have gained popularity as with anime? Anime is the shounen stuff mostly, plus SpyxFamily. For manga is it the same? It would be interesting if shoujo and Josei picked up popularity. Can't see it happening soon, could be wrong though.

Does anyone feel weird seeing series you like be more popular? I think it can be weird if you were into something for a long time and then it's popular, but you're totally detached from the new group of people it's popular with. Like it was a part of your identity but now you don't identify with the group that is identified with that thing. Same for political stuff - it's probably how older people feel seeing the associations attached to their political label shift with the times or having their political party taken over by a bunch of young people who have different values or ways of doing things than the old guard.

 

[DBZAOTA482]

Dragonball wasn't mainstream

Dragon Ball Z was literally giving the Simpsons a run for its money when it was on Toonami and it wasn't even on primetime television. Pretty much the only thing doing better than DBZ during its heyday was WWF/WWE and special events like the Super Bowl.

 

[sei'taer]

Hardly anyone in my highschool in the 2000s watched Dragonball. No one talked about it in popular culture.

No one referenced it at the Olympics. It had no cultural relevance in the west at all.

 

[Fantastische Hure]

Oh yeah. Only America is the west. I forgot that lol.

 

[Yoshi]

I consider Canada, Mexico, and Brazil to be part of the west too although none of them are anywhere close to America’s success.

 

[DBZAOTA482]

Hardly anyone in my highschool in the 2000s watched Dragonball. No one talked about it in popular culture.

No one referenced it at the Olympics. It had no cultural relevance in the west at all.

The Matrix literally took cues from Vegeta vs. 18, Buffy the Vampire Slayer referenced it, Grounded for Life referenced it, and even Two & a Half Men referenced it.

Hadouken was also widely believed to be a rip-off of Kamehameha (or vice-versa).

DB Evolution was made literally made because of how popular the franchise (still) was.

 

[camdudetenger2018]

to me in my opnion it was actually samuari pizza cats sailor moon og r s super s and dragon ball og z and gt that changed anime in canada back in the 90s

 

[Warmmedown]

Hardly anyone in my highschool in the 2000s watched Dragonball. No one talked about it in popular culture.

No one referenced it at the Olympics. It had no cultural relevance in the west at all.

DBZ as well? He seems to be talking about dbz.
And why would it not being referenced at the Olympics show it wasn't mainstream? 1996 Olympics? Probably nobody referenced Batman, Buffy, Spiderman, Friends or a bunch of popular 90s songs either. And why would they reference a Japanese thing at a non-Japanese Olympics?

 

[Warmmedown]

to me in my opnion it was actually samuari pizza cats sailor moon og r s super s and dragon ball og z and gt that changed anime in canada back in the 90s

samurai pizza cats?

 

[Warmmedown]

I consider Canada, Mexico, and Brazil to be part of the west too although none of them are anywhere close to America’s success.

@SSJ2
(@ahill @GSM123)