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Dragon Ball has a wealth of cultural context and inspiration that’s often overlooked because the fights are cool. Though not averse to fawning over animation and allowing for the Rule of Cool, Jelli and Bekinney delve into the world of Akira Toriyama, and discuss lesser-known facts about the worldwide manga and anime phenomenon that is one of the most well-known and popular Japanese pop culture exports of all-time. Want to learn about the cultural importance of moments, literary inspirations behind scenes and characters, production facts, and more? Whether you‘re a fan of Goku, Vegeta, or any of the cast of characters including Piccolo, Gohan, Frieza, or even Broly, there should be something for you to enjoy as we cover all things Dragon Ball, including DBZ, GT, Super, Daima, and more! We‘ll have discussions, guests, interviews, reviews, and commentaries so grab a senzu bean, power up your fan level to Super Saiyan, and get ready to learn about Kakarot and his friends; and of course, thank you for helping us achieve our FINAL FORUM...We hear it‘s over 9000.
Episodes
Wednesday Nov 09, 2022
Wednesday Nov 09, 2022
Jelli and Bekinney continue breaking down Akira Toriyama's worldwide manga and anime phenomenon by breaking down episodes 37 and 38, "Ninja Murasaki is Coming," and "The Five Murasakis" and we dig further into the Red Ribbon Army and Goku's challenge on floor 4: a deadly ninja assassin
In this episode:
- INVASION!
- We recap the episodes and discuss our favorite moments
- We discuss the origin of Murasaki's name and why it's different than other members of the Red Ribbon Army who have color-based names
- We break down Murasaki's design
- There is a brief detour into Akira Kurosawa's films such as Seven Samurai, Ikiru, and One Wonderful Sunday (and Ran, Yojimbo, Sanjuo, Throne of Blood, Kagemusha, etc)
- The importance of language in Murasaki's speech patterns and how it changed from Japanese to English
- The connections to James Bond, especially the film You Only Live Twice
- We talk about some of the James Bond influences, like You Only Live Twice
- How Toriyama is blending cultures: A Japanese Ninja, working for a James Bond Villain, controlling a Red Army, to defeat a Hindu Monkey Demigod - to create new things
- The use of all the ninja jokes that exist
- We talk about Akira Toriyama's use of stereotypes
- We break down the tatami mat joke, which neither of us understood prior to researching this episode
- More discussion of opposites colliding, and subversion, which have definitely become Toriyama signatures at this point
- Connections to Journey to the West, including a clash between Sun Wukong and Laozi
- Explanation of shuriken
- Explaining the Murasaki Brothers and how the five of them come together to form one person
- How Murasaki's personality and style reflects those of General White
- Is Murasaki a social commentary? What is he saying about salary man culture? Is Toriyama making a statement about Japan in the post-war years? Is this a statement made about the past, present, and future of Japan?
- If you've been listening along, you can probably guess the answers to some of this
- and more, including some general pop culture, trivia, and editorializing, as usual
Join us as we continue to uncover the cultural meanings, publication facts, inspirations and more behind the wildly popular Dragon Ball franchise.
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