6. Almost every single character has a pun for a name
If you're a native English speaker, it's easy to pass off a lot of the names in the series as just Japanese names. For all you know, there are guys named Nappa and Raditz all over Japan. But in almost every case, these names are actually puns. Super lame, adorable puns.
As you might guess from the above image, almost all the Saiyans are named after vegetables. Goku's "real" name is Kakarot, which is a carrot; Vegeta is short for vegetable; Raditz is a radish, and so on. Most of the rest of the Z fighters are named after food. House of Infographics made a super handy chart of all the names:
The most notable character excluded from the pun trope is Mr. Popo, who was so named because Toriyama "thought it sounded comfortable." The unyielding void of Mr. Popo's soul-stripping stare is the last thing I'd call "comfortable," but to each their own.
What that chart doesn't include are the new characters that have appeared in the last couple Dragon Ball movies, along with the new anime series Dragon Ball Super.
From left to right we've got Whis, Beerus and Champa -- all named after alcoholic beverages. Whis is whiskey, Beerus is beer and Champa is champagne. There are more characters in this pantheon yet to be revealed, so we could be looking at the introduction of Vodkadon, Bourbo or Saken. Really, anything but Appletinius will do.
7. The Japanese government funded a DBZ movie
As popular as DBZ is in the Western world, it's even bigger in its home country. Japan goes nuts for DBZ, especially since the franchise has seen a resurgence in the last few years. It's gotten to the point that Japan recently elected to spend money to support Dragon Ball by awarding a grant for the movie that arguably ignited DBZ's comeback: Battle of the Gods.
Japan's Co-production Certification Program funded production to the tune of 50 million yen, or about $600,000. That might not sound like a lot in movie terms, but this isn't Hollywood. The Frieza-focused movie sequel Ressurection F cost five million dollars to produce, and BotG very likely cost less. Which means that you have the Japanese government to thank for at least 1/10th of that movie. We'll just assume that 10% had nothing to do with Vegeta singing and dancing.
8. Hilarious bootleg Dragon Ball movies from the early 90s
The internet has provided us with a ton of fan-made films, but unauthorized bootleg Dragon Ball movies actually predate the internet. The early 90s saw two big productions that were in no way sanctioned by Akira Toriyama or any of the other rights holders. The first was Dragon Ball: Fight Son Goku Win Son Goku, and the other was Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins. They both have their own special brand of terrible.
A Korean production, Go Son Goku Win Son Goku has the distinction of being scarily accurate to the manga and anime, up to and including the part where young Goku slaps Bulma's vagina.
So dedicated to the accuracy of the story were they that they included even the cartooniest of characters in their live-action adaptation. The low budget prevented any real animatronics from being used, so Puar isn't so much Yoda as he is a vibrating dildo shoved up a handpuppet.
Rinky dink as it may be, at least Fight Son Goku was a bit more faithful than Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins.
This Taiwanese ripoff was actually based on the first Dragon Ball movie, which was kind of like a shorter version of the first arc with some villains switched around. Even though they based it off of a non-canon film, the production team took even more liberties. For example, not only is Goku's grandpa still alive, but his kidnapping plays a major driving force in the plot. At least that's fairly innocuous compared to some of the other changes.
When it came time to depict Oolong, the lovable shapeshifting pig, the filmmakers inexplicably decided to go with the always-awful "horrific blackface caricature." Just look at him. Dude has more in common with Mr. Popo than the anime Oolong.
What's weird is that the production values seem to be considerably higher than those seen in Fight Son Goku, as there are actual special effects in play.
It's not exactly impressive, but you might call it "impressively shitty." Either way, we can probably all agree that these bootlegs are far superior to the celluloid plague that is Dragonball: Evolution.
No comments:
Post a Comment