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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.
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You may know Frieza is based on real estate agents, but do you know why? Do his design quirks point to a deeper cultural connection to Japan's history with relating to outsiders (aka foreigners aka 'aliens')?
Join Jelli and Bekinney as they continue breaking down Akira Toriyama's worldwide manga and anime phenomenon Dragon Ball Z by looking at episodes 86 through 90: "The End of Vegeta," "The Ultimate Battle," "Clash of the Super Powers," "Frieza's Boast," and "Bold and Fearless." As we dig into the Frieza Saga, we focus-in on the man himself and dive deep on discussing Lord Frieza.
In this episode:
- Jelli and Bekinney are trying to plan an escape from the swirling dimensional vortex
- An overall solid batch of episodes, and we discuss why they seem more tolerable at the pace we've been going than they have in the past
- A reminder about Demon King Piccolo and how his children were born in the past
- Toriyama's decision to draw Frieza as purely evil in his first appearance and how that influenced his style of speech
- Frieza being partially modeled after Yu Kondo, and a promise to cover Toriyama's second editor in a future episode
- A discussion of oni, largely because Frieza has horns, but also because he can transform, and is alien
- How oni folklore in Japan has its roots in a fear of the unknown and outsiders
- A brief mention about The Devil, aka Satan, aka Lucifer from Christianity but not much discussion: we trust our listeners to pick up on the obvious symbolism there
- Frieza's basis in Japanese culture as a real estate developer/land prospector
- The Japanese Bubble Economy, its history, how it happened, how it burst, and the fallout
- Nui Onoue, Japan's Bernie Madoff, who wound up billions of yen in debt due to bad investments
- Shusuke Kaneko's (director of the Heisei Gamera trilogy, as well as Godzilla: GMK) own Bubble Economy movie: Linking Love
- The Godzilla movie that reflected the Bubble Economy: Godzilla vs King Ghidorah from 1991
- Frieza's transformations
- Frieza's biggest comparison point in American comics, in our opinion, Mr. Sinister from the X-Men franchise
- 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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