Akira Toriyama, the legendary creator of the Dragon Ball manga series, passed away very recently. And if you had even a remote passing interest in Japanese anime over the years, chances are your first exposure was thanks to Toriyama. You want to talk about a legacy? You need only see a handful of the outpouring of tributes to Toriyama, coming from all backgrounds and walks of life to pay tribute to someone who profoundly influenced their lives. FFS, Toriyama’s passing was far bigger news than even the State Of The Union address, completely overshadowing that.
What if I told you there was a bigger connection between Dragon Ball Z + Japanese anime, and music? You can probably guess by the photo on social media what we’re talking about, but…
If you ever downloaded Limewire or utilized YouTube in its infancy in the mid-2000s, you probably downloaded or watched at least one music video that ended up having something to do with Dragon Ball Z. As the Internet quickly grew accessible to almost every household in the USA (and many other countries as well), it provided opportunities for more people to mess around with the most amateur of video creation and editing programs. You can see where this is going, right?
The wonderful world of Dragon Ball Z AMVs, of course. There’s a staggering amount of crossover between fans of nu-metal, alt-rock, metalcore, and the like – and anime. And even music in general, not just the aforementioned genres. A simple search on YouTube of something like “Dragon Ball Z AMVs” will trigger dozens upon dozens of results that will keep you watching for hours on end. There’s just so many of them. Even searching something like “Linkin Park Dragon Ball Z”, “Deftones Dragon Ball Z”, or “insert 2000s rock band here _____ AMV” will bring in a plethora of videos that were probably created sometime around when Tom Brady won one of his first 3 Super Bowl rings.
El Salvador has made a declaration of nationwide mourning for Akira Toriyama and I do not know what stronger legacy you could aspire to as an artist than several governments and actual world leaders on multiple different continents commemorating you in this fashion. https://t.co/C0hVzwmHfI
— Punchy (@Succinct_Punchy) March 9, 2024
It just so happens that Limewire, YouTube, and the rapidly rising accessibility of the Internet all converged around the same time Toonami was huge on Cartoon Network. In fact, it was a weekday afternoon block from 1997-2004, and there were few bigger examples of Japanese animation’s rising popularity in the West than Dragon Ball Z. While Akira Toriyama was also a famed character designer for the Dragon Quest series and Chrono Trigger (to name but two examples), the emergence of his Dragon Ball manga series on TV in the West was massive. It’s probably the first experience someone had growing up in the 2000s with anime, and the natural result of a child’s curiosity is indeed trying to find a way to merge all the things they love into one. Hence the popularity of Dragon Ball Z AMVs with popular bands of the aforementioned genres as the music. You also saw it happen with games like Runescape in that era, where it was similarly accessible and popular with kids, teenagers, and young adults.
A million beautiful things said about Toriyama. All I really have is thank you. Rushed home from school every day as a kid for new DBZ. Chased that high in every piece of narrative art since. Rest in peace.
— La Dispute (@ladisputeband) March 8, 2024
It's good seeing Mexican TV shows talking about the death of Akira Toriyama knowing the influence he had on the country. Azteca 7 blew up their programming today to show a marathon of Dragon Ball movies on broadcast tv! pic.twitter.com/WpkNhuC2uB
— Linkabel (@AbelMunizJr) March 8, 2024
It was really special and notable, having the privilege to see gaming and technology explode like that at such a rapid rate. Experiencing things like the explosion of anime, Pokemon, and discovering our favorite bands (or loving them even more because of it)? Priceless. And we can thank Akira Toriyama, in large part, for enabling this to happen – with a simple anime and immense creativity. When you have entire football clubs and even entire countries mourning your loss and celebrating your work and life, you know you’ve done something special. Here’s a toast to Dragon Ball Z AMVs. At the intersection of anime, music, and childhood wonder for many, we’ll never forget you.
