YEAR 2008
Over the
years of m
Especially playing cricket, reading Tamil Books and Watching Movies. Reading Books was starting to become a habit for me at that time. I used to love reading Sujatha’s fiction novels and non-fiction books. I even started writing my own stories as a hobby.
My childhood crush was Science Fiction. Sujatha introduced and intrigued me to a lot of Sci-Fi Stuffs.
More about Sujatha and his influence of Sci-Fi on me in another post!!
I’ve had my fetish with horror stuff, and it was too minimal. The horror books I’ve read in Tamil were well written, but I couldn’t find more of it.
The one thing that I hadn’t had my experience was with Fantasy. I always loved Fantasy. It initially happened when I first watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone. I even tried reading the Wheel of Time series during those days. This happened and I failed to read even the first two chapters of The Eye of the World.
This is because I have never read any fantasies in Tamil. The only thing I remember reading as a fantasy was Madhan’s Vandhaargal Vendraargal. That too was not a perfect fiction.
I am planning on reading WOT starting 2021. After the Game of Thrones became a hit, I started reading it in 2015 and I had a failed attempt on reading A song Ice and Fire series and so I am totally fueled up for starting WOT on 2021. But English fantasies were hard to read then watching stuff.
Then summer happened.
I was finishing my fifth grade and It was the summer of 2008. Two months of Summer holidays to enjoy before moving to Sixth Grade. At that time, I was obsessed with BEN 10. I started enjoying fantasy and magical worlds through cartoons.
And there were many great shows and great TV channel to keep us entertained. Channels like POGO, Jetix and Disney XD telecasted, not only cartoons but, shows like Mr. Bean, Vicky and Vetal, Kick Buttowski and a lot.
I was a huge Ben 10 fan. Usually Evening 6PM is the Ben 10 slot in Cartoon Network. Sometimes I would tune in the channel before 6PM.
The show that was playing before Ben 10 was a weird show. Some old cartoon. And at the end of each episode, there would be a teaser for the next episode. I didn’t even like the old quality of the cartoon then. I didn’t like the next-episode-teaser-announcer voice. He would say “We will see on the next episode of Dragon Ball Z”
Huh! Dragon Ball Z. What kind of weird cartoon is this? Clock would turn to 6 and
Ben 10 would start playing dragging myself out from the
reverie of Dragon Ball Z. More like a weird reverie.
One fine day, I was returning to home from my school.
I found my cousin, who was studying in college at that time, watching this weird old cartoon Dragon Ball Z. He came from Coimbatore to his house for the semester study holidays. We were neighbors and he was watching the TV in our home.
Why was he watching this shit? Maybe he was waiting for Ben 10 like I did. But he was a grown up. How could he watch a cartoon?
There were many thoughts circling my mind at that time. I asked him straight out.
“Why are you watching this cartoon?”
My cousin turned towards me and scowled at me. I scowled back but in a confused way.
“Don’t call it as a cartoon”
That’s all he said and continued watching it. I might have exaggerated this scene a bit but my takeaway at that time was Dragon Ball Z was not a cartoon. But what was it then?
I freshened up and sat near my cousin. I watched the show with him without speaking to him.
“We will see on the next episode of Dragon Ball Z”
My cousin stood up and moved out of my house. Was he not going to watch Ben 10? Well! I ignored him and finished watching my favorite show.
The next day, the same set of incidents took place. This had been going on for some time. In the span of this time period, we exchanged a lot and my cousin shared me about his obsession towards this show.
Even I got hooked for this Show day by day. From him, I came to know that these shows are Japanese cartoons called anime. Comparing anime with cartoons is like comparing white rice with biriyani.
Technically, Pokemon was the first anime I have ever watched. Beyblade and Pokemon were way before Ben10. It was when I was still obsessed with DC. But even Pokemon or Beyblade, I considered it as a cartoon and it was also a mistake.
Imagine
when you are eating Biriyani, and someone looks at you and asks, “Why are you
eating White rice da?”
He just put that in a comical way, but I found out the real reason when I became an otaku.
So, He went
back to Coimbatore after his study holidays and I started watching Dragon Ball
Z daily.
FANTASY LOOP
DBZ was amazing. Unlike Ben 10, I wanted to watch it more and more. When I watch Ben 10, one episode at a time was enough to satisfy me. This was not the case with DBZ. I started to empathize with the characters and became crazy about the show.
It was like Popeye. Remember how I wanted to eat Spinach in a can like Popeye used to it. I was reverting myself back to that level of craziness.
Goku became my favorite hero next to Batman. I rooted for Goku big time. Remember the vadivelu comedy where he throws a knife towards a TV because of MGR. That same ludicrous mentality I felt towards Goku.
When Goku wanted us to raise our hands for giving him energy to create the Spirit Bomb, I raised the hands.
“Take it Goku! Take all my energy”
I am not saying this was the fantasy I wanted to watch but it was near to any fantasy experience I thought I would ever get at that time. GOT, HP and PJ were my eye openers for the typical fantasy series and nowadays I am getting most of my fantasy experience through TV shows.
I always wish to get this kinda adrenaline reading fantasy books because understanding the magical system of a mythical universe can only be comprehended while reading books. People who reads manga can able to get this.
The magical system with the dragon Balls and Aura was new to me and moreover the emotional attachment got huge between me and the characters. I got furious when Frieza killed Krillin. Goku saw his best friend killed by that monster. He cries his lungs out and…
The episode ends there.
That was the first ever cliffhanger I encountered ever in my life.
Then the tragedy happened. The next day when I tuned Cartoon Network, I got shocked. There was no Frieza. No Goku. It was the first episode of Dragon Ball Z.
Why are
they playing the first episode? What happened to the continuation of the
yesterday’s episode? And, I got depressed. Man! I never felt this kind of
depression until that point of my life.
Later on, I came to know that this issue happened because of Toonami. More on that later. Well,
I started watching the show from the first episode. This loop continued till the end of my 8th grade.
December 2010
Best Half Yearly exams holidays ever.
It was a 10-day holidays around Christmas time and Cartoon Network played Dragon Ball Z marathon for a whole week (8 hours a day) from Christmas to New Year. I did not let anyone watch TV on that week. I didn’t care about the scolding; I didn’t care about my physical and my mental health.
I just wanted to binge DBZ. My first ever binge watch.
After this
marathon, I was waiting for the loop to start the Frieza saga once more. But to
my surprise, the show moved on to the next saga and introduced a new villain
called CELL.
Animax and Adult Swim
Meanwhile my cousin finished his college and joined an IT company. He was working like for the past 3 or 4 years in an IT company. His family moved elsewhere. We no longer were neighbors. But once in a while me and my family used to visit him and his family.
On one of these visits, I came to know that he watched DBZ way back in early 2000s in Cartoon Network. Also, he said something about a company called Toonami. Even he didn’t know about it in detail. But that name stuck in my head.
TOONAMI!
In the middle of my 9th Grade, I was watching this Cell Saga over and over. I was into my teens by then and I started exploring my boyhood.
Until that moment, I used to think that human reproduction works just by kissing. But I explored my boyhood and started unlocking many mysteries of our sex. And these mysteries were unlocked by this great place called Browsing centers.
Every weekend I used to go to the Browsing center for more exploration.
On one of these explorations, out of curiosity, I checked what this toonami is. I donno how I remembered it and that too during my exploring sessions. But now when I think about it, I find the memory of me researching toonami in a Browsing Center.
DBZ used to be telecasted sometime from 1998 to 2003 in Cartoon Network at evenings by toonami. It is nothing but a company that owns these animes (more like having copyrights from the original Japanese studios) and had its slots on Cartoon Network. In 2008, right when I started watching DBZ, toonami got canceled and that’s why the loop of sagas happened.
When I researched further, I came to know that DBZ has another super villain called Buu.
But when I further dug deep, I found other channels who telecast similar shows like DBZ namely Animax and Adult Swim.
Unfortunately, the only medium I know to watch videos was Youtube at that time. And youtube didn’t have any full-on episodes of DBZ or any other anime.
Without any breakthrough, I left the Browsing center that day. After that I used Browsing center for my exploration purposes only.
Days gone by and another depressing thing happened.
DBZ’s 5:30PM slot got changed to 9PM slot.
That was a dangerous slot. My family used to watch this reality show called Airtel Super Singer in Vijay TV. So, my parents won’t allow me to watch DBZ.
Sometimes, luck favors my side and my parents allow me to watch DBZ at that time. That is when, I happened to find out another anime that was playing in Cartoon Network.
NARUTO.
Nice da...remembering my childhood.. Ram use to watch DBZ but i will always fought with him to change the channel.. Feeling similarity with u two ppl. .
ReplyDeleteIt always happens! You should've watched with him 😛
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