Dragon Ball

So, on a whim, my roommate decided to download this last night. While I should have been doing a homework, I decided to watch this instead out of a sense of nostalgia. And now I have a blog post out of it.

I'm sure most of us here watched Dragon Ball Z on Toonami when we were young, so I'm not going to bother to explain the premise. However, I'm pretty sure less people watched Dragon Ball Z's predecessor series, Dragon Ball. At least I know I did.

Dragon Ball's first season starts off with us meeting Goku as a kid. He soon runs into Bulma, who is looking for the seven Dragon Balls. Goku happens to have one, so she enlists his help as she goes looking for the Dragon Balls. Along the way, they meet several characters familiar to anyone who watched Dragon Ball Z as a kid, such as Yamcha, Oolong, Puar, Chi Chi and Master Roshi.

The first thing I noticed about Dragonball is that several of the characters who barely did anything in Dragon Ball Z, such as Yamcha and Bulma, serve much more important roles in Dragonball. It's nice to see characters who you tend to think of as useless actually do something.

Another thing I noticed about Dragonball is that it's much more light-hearted and silly in tone compared to Dragon Ball Z. One episode, for instance, deals with the gang saving a village from a rabbit who turns people into carrots. It's a pretty big difference from Dragon Ball Z, where every episode seemed to decide the fate of the universe.

Overall, if you're expecting Dragon Ball to be as intense as Dragon Ball Z, you'll be pretty disappointed. But if you just want something light-hearted to watch (or just want to experience a nostalgia rush) then definitely watch Dragon Ball. I guarantee you'll enjoy it.

Regular Show

milk...cereal...combine...

So this is a show both I and my roommate love to watch. It's known simply as "Regular Show" despite the fact that the main characters are a giant blue jay and raccoon named Mordecai and Rigby respectively, a talking gumball machine named Benson, a giant lollipop named Pops and a yeti named Skips.

So its basic premise is that Mordecai and Rigby are two twenty-something slacker types who work for Benson as groundskeepers at a public park. Through their slacking off they somehow inadvertently manage to summon inter-dimensional monsters or just generally cause chaos through other means:

...such as summoning David Bowie in a white El Camino from the sky...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK2IP1hZsOQ

...or transporting people to the moon through a magical keyboard...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9xgq58OkV4

While the show would be funny just for the weird as fuck situations the main characters get into, the dialogue is also very well-written, and is filled with many quotable lines, such as the one for the above image.

A lot of times, it feels like a stoner show (hell, it would be a wonder if the show wasn't made while on drugs) and it makes you wonder why the show airs on Cartoon Network rather than on Adult Swim. Hell, even the creators seem to lampshade this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khb4qqjmIio

It's amazing that the creator, J.G. Quintel, was able to get a show green-lighted by Cartoon Network in the first place, considering he produced this cartoon as a student:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y894QNtX0VA

Overall, this is quite possibly one of the most amusing shows I've ever watched. The only real shame about it is that each episode is only 15 minutes long. A new episode airs each Monday night at 8:15 on Cartoon Network.