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40 years after its debut, Dragon Ball is a pop culture force like few others
Akira Toriyama's legacy continues to spread and grow like few others
40 years ago this week, a young boy with a tail encountered a young woman looking to use the magical power of the Eternal Dragon to set her up with a boyfriend. 40 years of training arcs, rivals-to-allies character arcs, and new variations of the Super Saiyan transformation. November 20, 2024 marks 40 years since the original Dragon Ball manga first debuted and changed pop culture forever.
Dragon Ball wasn’t the first anime to grace American television, but it was one of the first that didn’t get brutally censored and edited to make it safe for consumption in the West. Unlike Speed Racer, Pokémon, or the infamous Sailor Moon DiC dub, Dragon Ball was mostly intact when it aired on Cartoon Network. Some of the gore was replaced and lines were added to imply that characters just went to “another
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