Rest in Peace, Toriyama

     I don't even know what to say. I usually make posts about my personal life, but Dragonball was so personal to me and building my personality... I'm just gonna write about my brief history with it...

     I always knew Dragonball existed, but never engaged with it... My mom wouldn't like it because it was violent... So I only watched Sonic, which he always had a super transformation, obviously inspired from Dragonball Z. I started keeping up with a sprite animation series called "Super Mario Bros Z" and many other Dragonball inspired animations on youtube, newgrounds and many other media hosting websites. Finally I got to engage with the series around 2009. I had moved to the United States for a while and things were rough. I didn't have any friends there and was just a little kid with nothing but my PSP to spend time with. While in a gamestop store, they were having a big sale, and I picked up the game "Dragonball Z Shin Budokai Another Road". Needless to say I was fascinated by it. The characters, the power ups, the  transformations... Everything about the game was so exciting and fun. Many amazing moments I had with it, figuring out the gameplay, unlocking characters... 

     As I moved back to my home country, my uncle was a huge dragonball fan his entire teenagehood. He had moved out of town and left his entire dragonball and dragonball Z manga collection behind with my grandma. Needless to say, I was curious as hell and began reading it. I was just enticed about Goku getting stronger, faster and wiser with his training. Even as a kid, no one could stop him... It was amazing. That was my favourite aspect about Dragonball, the training and becoming stronger. Throughout Z, I will never forget my favourite moment... Goku's 100x gravity chamber training before arriving on Namek. That story about realizing you're alone in the world and there are massive problems out there that no one will be able to solve for you, like Goku realizing he has to defeat Frieza, was a message that stuck within my heart.

    Needless to say, I kept up with the series. Had a shitty computer back in the day, but really wanted to download a dragonball game on it. There was this Quake 3 mod called "DragonBall Bid for Power" i installed and had some fun with... I remember looking up animations on youtube about it... Like the Goku vs Superman from Death Battle. Things just kept going. I pirated Xenoverse and played it on my pc, I would keep talking about the newest Dragonball Super episodes with my high school friends. I remember being so hyped about seeing Goku use Kaioken on top of ssblue, watching the Goku Black arc, finding out Mai was alive, seeing Vegito again... And especially, the Ultra Instinct transformation on episode 110. I got emotional with that one... Got so enthusiastic seeing all the reactions about it online.

    I had many more memories with Dragonball... I can't list them all here or else it would be too long... Regardless, I am heart broken. Toriyama passed away a bit too young and I am really shattered. So many good memories this guy brought me along with the people he worked with. I guess I'm gonna have trouble sleeping today... I'll leave you with an emotional soundtrack that stuck with me from the game that got me into DBZ...

Thanks Toriyama