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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
Tuesday Sep 23, 2025
Tuesday Sep 23, 2025
Quarks! Quantum entanglements! Relativity! Non-Einsteinian simultaneity! What do these have to do with Bulma making a phone call from Namek to Earth? Everything, it turns out.
Join Jelli and Bekinney as they continue breaking down Akira Toriyama's worldwide manga and anime phenomenon Dragon Ball Z by looking at episodes 46 through 50: "Defying Orders," "Namek's Defense," "The Hunted," "The Prince Fights Back," and "Unexpected Problem." Wedive into the Namek Saga and tackle the problem of faster-than-light communications and time travel.
In this episode:
- Jelli and Bekinney are being cagey
- Back to a solid run of episodes
- Putting some SCIENCE into our science fiction
- How long it SHOULD take to send a message to Namek
- Ursula K LeGuin and her creation of the ansible
- What is an ansible? Why is it called an ansible? How does an ansible work?
- Robert Heinlein's (Starship Troopers) answers to how faster than light communication would work
- Non-Einsteinian simultaneity and how early work on non-simultaneity and relativistic speeds influenced Einstein's theory of relativity
- Lorentz transformations and Einstein's train thought experiment
- How the term ansible and the work of Le Guin influenced people like David Langford and Orson Scott Card
- A brief slagging of Card
- Research done into tachyons and reverse time travel
- The work of physicists Ben Tippet and David Tsang in the math behind reverse time travel
- Whether changing the past changes the future
- 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.
Tuesday Sep 16, 2025
Tuesday Sep 16, 2025
We've still never heard of editing but we HAVE heard of Dragon Ball this time...kind of.
Join Jelli and Bekinney as we catch up after just a couple weeks.
Bekinney discusses a new book series he's reading, while Jelli delves back into Japan, walking through Osaka, Dotonbori, Tanuki statues, the Orix Buffaloes, Expo 2025 (which leads us into a brief discussion of the movie Gamera vs Jiger) the Curse of the Colonel and the Hanshin Tigers, Hiroshima and Peace Park, and the Hotel Gracery or the Godzilla Hotel in Tokyo. Jelli also talks about some general tips for travel and alludes to a video that may or may not ever happen.
We also discuss The Princess Bride, and the Buffalo Bills, and Dragon Ball Gekishin Squadra
Join us for this more casual conversation as we dig through our lives.
https://www.facebook.com/FinalForumPodcast
Tuesday Sep 09, 2025
Tuesday Sep 09, 2025
How do you pad for time between arcs? Are those Crows? What awaits us as we begin a new story arc?
Join Jelli and Bekinney as they continue breaking down Akira Toriyama's worldwide manga and anime phenomenon Dragon Ball Z by looking at episodes 41 through 45: "Look Out Below," "The Search Continues," "A Friendly Surprise," "Brood of Evil," and "Frieza Strikes." We begin discussing the Namek Saga and attempt to break down some filler episodes and preview this new arc.
In this episode:
- Jelli and Bekinney try to plot their next move
- The run of great episodes is over, but let's not lose hope.
- Breaking down the names for Raiti and Zaacro, as well as Cui
- Attempting to evaluate the Treedon birds through the lens that they might be crows and looking at how crows are viewed in Japan
- Cannibalism? One of us totally would. Which one will (not) shock you
- Jack and the Beanstalk and its origins as a very different story from the one we know
- A little bit about Group TAC, which allows us to talk about the voice talents behind Pokemon's Mewtwo, and get tangentially into a wild tokusatsu movie...
- ...Rex: A Dinosaur's Story, the tale of how a baby tyrannosaurus rex is raised by a little girl, gets in a food fight, escapes marketing executives on a snowmobile after stealing a Christmas cloak from Colonel Sanders and the story of how the movie's production led to the arrest of the head of Kadokawa for smuggling drugs
- A bit about Japan's Sesssho-seki, or Killing Stone famous in Tochigi Prefecture
- Nautilus, their shells, the Golden Ratio, the Fibonacci Sequence, and illusions
- We're not grasping at straws AT ALL
- Setting the stage using examples from X-Men, DCEU and Journey to the West
- Vegeta's history as the heir to the throne, and his early life
- Some of Toriyama's thoughts on Vegeta, at least early in the story
- Vegeta and Goku: Opposite sides of the same coin
- How Vegeta so internalizes the lessons he learns as a child that it shapes his entire worldview, and how the very existence of Goku flies in the face of said worldview
- The Six-Eared Macaque from Journey to the West, one of Sun Wukong's most formidable foes
- Some researched theories about the relationship between Wukong and Six-Ears and how that is mirrored by the relationship between Goku and Vegeta
- The Lego series Lego Monkie Kid and its portrayal of Six Ears
- Why Vegeta is always invoking his prince status as if it is a boast, despite there being only a handful of Saiyans left
- Why Vegeta is so relatable
- 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.
Monday Sep 08, 2025
Monday Sep 08, 2025
Dragon Ball? Editing? Never heard of those things.
Join Jelli and Bekinney as we catch up after six weeks of not talking much.
Bekinney discusses a family reunion and riding sketchy rides on the boardwalk, including the Himalayan, and Jelli regales everyone with the first week of his trip to Japan, with his usual penchant for rambling and self-indulgence
We also discuss Superman, Thunderbolts, Captain America: Brave New World, Better Man, Robbie Williams, Paddington in Peru, James Gunn's DC universe, Jurassic World Rebirth, and provide one of the only reviews you're likely to hear about the movie Brush of the God.
Join us for this more casual conversation as we dig through our lives.
https://www.facebook.com/FinalForumPodcast
Tuesday Aug 26, 2025
Tuesday Aug 26, 2025
What would have happened if they saved Hitler's brain and put it in the body of a robot with a bubble-dome? What does the film Phantasm have to do with Dragon Ball? How did we manage to work in a reference to the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out multiple poison attacks on Japanese public transit in the early 90s?
The answers to these, and similar questions, abound as Jelli and Bekinney continue breaking down Akira Toriyama's worldwide manga and anime phenomenon by tackling the 1990 movie, The World's Strongest.
In this episode:
- Jelli and Bekinney narrowly escape disaster
- We sync up our audio commentary for the listeners
- We discuss some of the production facts about the film Dragon Ball Z: The World's Strongest such as its 1990 release at the Toei Manga Matsuri film festival, the film's box office, and the production team working on the film
- We talk about the other films released alongside the movie: Akuma-kun: Welcome to Devil Land, and Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Sally the Witch movie.
- A little history about Misuteru, including his creation of Tesujin 28, Babel II, Iga no Kagemaru, Sally the Witch, and adaptations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water margin
- Contextualizing the box office of the film
- Shedding light on Shinji Fukumitsu, the editor, who worked on Dragon Ball Z, Gegege no Kitaro, One Piece, and Transformers: The Movie
- A little bit on Motoaki Ikegami and his career spanning Neon Genesis Evangelion, Dr Slump, Pokemon, Inuyasha and Twilight of the Cockroaches
- Discussing the film's unique antagonists, Kishime, Ebifurya, Misokatsun, Dr. Kochin, and Dr. Wheelo (or Uiro)
- Misokatsun --> Buyon --> The Blob --> horror movies --> Nightmare on Elm Street 3 (yes, really)
- A bit about the Funimation composer, Nathan Johnson and his career, including his time as a Texas state senator
- (Nathan) Johnsons, (Anthony) Wieners, adult film parodies of Chinese classic novels...things are coming unglued
- A bit about the Metaluna Men from This Island Earth, Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Universal Monsters movies, especially Ghost of Frankenstein
- and more, including some general pop culture, trivia, and editorializing, as usual as we react to this wickedly fast-paced film
Join us as we continue to uncover the cultural meanings, publication facts, inspirations and more behind the wildly popular Dragon Ball franchise.
https://www.facebook.com/FinalForumPodcast
https://twitter.com/finalforumpod
Tuesday Aug 12, 2025
Tuesday Aug 12, 2025
We've reached the end of the Saiyan Arc. How do we feel about it having reached its end and being primed for the next adventure?
Jelli and Bekinney continue breaking down Akira Toriyama's worldwide manga and anime phenomenon Dragon Ball by jumping into comparing the Dragon Ball anime to the Dragon Ball manga. We continue discussing Saiyan arc, and talk about pacing. We also discuss five episodes of the anime, episodes 36-40, "Picking Up the Pieces," "Plans for Departure," "Nursing Wounds," "Friends or Foes," and "Held Captive."
In this episode:
- Jelli and Bekinney destroy the gravity generator
- We recap the story a little bit
- Wukong Hospital and Goku's unique looking hospital bed, with a possible inspiration from Alien
- Bulma's outfit being inspired by Alien, and its possible influence on Hideaki Anno's Neon Genesis Evangelion
- A theory about Bulma's evolving hairstyles
- A brief discussion of Frank Frazetta, the "godfather of fantasy art" who was a well-renown illustrator who worked on Conan the Barbarian and John Carter of Mars among other things in his career
- A conversation about the Russian attempts to place mirrors in space, and a brief tangent into discussing Archimedes' Sun Death Ray
- Wrapping up the arc with grades and comparing the manga to the anime
- 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, and unspool what we all love so much about Goku, the Dragon Ball franchise, the Dragon Ball anime, Dragon Ball manga, and more.
https://www.facebook.com/FinalForumPodcast
https://twitter.com/finalforumpod
Tuesday Jul 29, 2025
Tuesday Jul 29, 2025
How do you handle introducing a rival? Why does Vegeta always call himself the Prince of All Saiyans? Is there any basis for this character in the story Journey to the West?
Join Jelli and Bekinney as they continue breaking down Akira Toriyama's worldwide manga and anime phenomenon Dragon Ball Z by looking at episodes 30 through 35: "Goku vs. Vegeta," "Saiyan Sized Secret," "Spirit Bomb Away!" "Hero in the Shadows," "Krillin's Offensive," and "Mercy." We continue discussing the Saiyan Saga and talk in detail for the first time about one of the franchise's most iconic characters: Vegeta. We talk about his in-universe history, and his psychology, as well as his possible sources for inspiration, and what makes him so popular
In this episode:
- Jelli and Bekinney enter into the gravity well
- Just how good are THESE episodes? For really real.
- Who is Vegeta?
- Setting the stage using examples from X-Men, DCEU and Journey to the West
- Vegeta's history as the heir to the throne, and his early life
- Some of Toriyama's thoughts on Vegeta, at least early in the story
- Vegeta and Goku: Opposite sides of the same coin
- How Vegeta so internalizes the lessons he learns as a child that it shapes his entire worldview, and how the very existence of Goku flies in the face of said worldview
- The Six-Eared Macaque from Journey to the West, one of Sun Wukong's most formidable foes
- Some researched theories about the relationship between Wukong and Six-Ears and how that is mirrored by the relationship between Goku and Vegeta
- The Lego series Lego Monkie Kid and its portrayal of Six Ears
- Why Vegeta is always invoking his prince status as if it is a boast, despite there being only a handful of Saiyans left
- Why Vegeta is so relatable
- 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.
Tuesday Jul 15, 2025
Tuesday Jul 15, 2025
Could Akira Toriyama have pulled inspiration from WWE for Dragon Ball Z? Did he really have nothing to do with the anime portion of the show? What happens when we come across five more stellar episodes of DBZ?
Join Jelli and Bekinney as they continue breaking down Akira Toriyama's worldwide manga and anime phenomenon Dragon Ball Z by looking at episodes 26 through 29: "Nappa's Rampage," "Nimbus Speed," "Goku's Arrival," and "Lesson Number One" We continue discussing the Saiyan Saga and talk about one of Dragon Ball's most infamous villains: Nappa. We also talk about filler moments such as the character Gregory, Snake Way, and Goku's misadventures in Hell and what influence Toriyama may have had on those elements. WE ALSO discuss some of the new ki attacks namely: the kienzan, or Destructo Disc, and the Masenko
In this episode:
- Jelli manages to stave off further adventure, much to the chagrin of Bekinney
- Just how good are these episodes? For real.
- How much input did Toriyama have on anime filler?
- We know he designed the character Gregory, and came up with the idea for Goku to be chased by a giant snake as well as Goku eating clouds. What does this say about how involved Toriyama may have been in filler?
- We briefly discuss the guidebooks, or Daizenshuu
- A note on a filler moment from very early in Dragon Ball, with regards to Muscle Tower and some possible foreshadowing to Goku's Saiyan heritage
- What inspired Toriyama to create the Destructo Disk?
- What would Gohan's use of the Masanko tell his intended audience (Japanese people) about Gohan and Piccolo at this point?
- It's over 9000! A discussion of the meme
- Nappa: his name, his design, and the team dynamics between he and Vegeta
- Bolo Yeung, Hulk Hogan, Bruce Lee, and King Boxer
- An attempt to tie-into Journey to the West, at least thematically
- 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.
Tuesday Jul 08, 2025
Tuesday Jul 08, 2025
Join Jelli and Bekinney as we continue looking at Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball franchise by tackling a discussion of where we sit currently at Final Forum. Recapping where things stand in the animated area of the franchise, and just providing a general update for the upcoming couple weeks.
Bekinney discusses watching Full Metal Alchemist and then Jelli gives an SEO-friendly (hopefully...gotta get them clicks RIGHT?!) update on some movies he watched including:
The Monkey, Predator: Killer of Killers, 28 Years Later, Mickey 17, Pee-Wee as Himself, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, Companion, Heart Eyes , Novocaine, Nickel Boys, Love Hurts and the little-seen Bob Trevino Likes It.
Join us for this more casual conversation as we dig through the franchise in a post-Daima world and continue to uncover the cultural meanings, publication facts, inspirations and more behind the wildly popular Dragon Ball franchise.
https://www.facebook.com/FinalForumPodcast
Tuesday Jul 01, 2025
Tuesday Jul 01, 2025
It's our 100th Episode! And we didn't want to celebrate on our own, so we brought in some new friends, Spencer and John from the show Eric Hates Dragon Ball Z to do a commentary-slash-reaction to the second live-action bootleg movie, Taiwan's Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins.
In this episode:
- Jelli and Bekinney are celebrating 100 episodes
- We reveal our title and instruct listeners where to find this one
- We discuss some of the production facts about the film, its 1991 release, and the production team working on the film
- Discussing the history of Taiwanese cinema
- Why this movie is on Tubi, Amazon Prime, and official YouTube channels
- A theory about why this movie looks like it has a budget
- Forays into the history of China and Taiwan
- A wild combination of everything being absolutely right and ABSOLUTELY wrong
- and more, including some general pop culture, trivia, and editorializing, as usual as we react to this insane fever dream of a film
Eric Hates Dragon Ball Z Links:
https://www.rocktopusnetwork.com/eric-hates-dbz
https://erichatesdbz.libsyn.com/
https://x.com/erichatesdbz
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8rUZoC6KaDgEo9cnFnMRLw
https://www.instagram.com/erichatesdragonballz/?hl=en
https://discord.gg/7pUnfRf29k
Join us as we continue to uncover the cultural meanings, publication facts, inspirations and more behind the wildly popular Dragon Ball franchise, and unspool what we all love so much about Goku, the Dragon Ball franchise, the Dragon Ball anime, Dragon Ball manga, and more.