#that was the summer i binge watched DB/Z and later binge read it

[kiealer]

a day delayed (on behalf of my poor planning), but it's been four years since I've made Ninazu! (not her blog, that didn't come until a few months later, but this could count as a celebration for that as well.)

I love my girl very much, and I'm proud to have had her for this long. I'm also grateful for everyone here putting up with me for this long--

[hotel-japanifornia]

Here it is folks!

Today is March 20th, 2017. I am probably uploading this either rather early at 5:00-30 in the morning. Or I’m uploading this 15 hours later because I forgot. Either way, if you didn’t already know, I ADORE Yamcha. And quite honestly, I’m still surprised that I managed to like him more than Goku, who I always thought would be my favorite. Yes I have reasons for liking him so much, but today I am going to tell you a story about how I became a fan of him:

It was the day after I had started watching Dragon Ball. I was still on the Pilaf arc and I had just stopped on the episode after they meet Oolong for the first time. When I read the title of the next episode, “Yamcha, the Desert Bandit”, my first thoughts were, “Yamcha? So...is it a guy or a girl?” 11 minutes later and my question was answered by the introduction of a certain desert bandit. Yamcha’s intro is always awesome but back then when I first saw it, I was amazed. He made a very cool first impression on me, despite not too soon afterwards, fighting Goku and trying to rob from him and Oolong.

Personally, what I found most intriguing about Yamcha during my first time watching the first arc, was his fear around women. While I had seen a couple of characters who were scared of women in the past, it wasn’t exactly a character trait I had seen often. He was interesting, he was badass, and he was also a 16 year old desert bandit with a floating cat. And it was those moments he had: such as the fight against the Rabbits, his moments with Bulma in the last few episodes of the saga, and when he came up with the plan to cut off Goku’s tail, that had made him my personal favorite during the first arc.

However, my own liking for the character waned during the RRA arc, not due through any faults Yamcha had, but simply due to lack of relevance. Despite this, I absolutely adored his fight with Tien, he truly held his own during that fight. In fact, despite the results, I had thought for a moment that he was certainly going to win. To this day, it still remains my favorite fight involving Yamcha.

Which is why, I was disappointed in his fight with Shen (Hero in the dub) later on. Not only was it not as good as Yamcha vs. Tien beforehand, but I got rather annoyed with Yamcha’s attitude during the fight; I had my head in my hands, with it shaking the entire time. This doesn’t mean I started disliking him, especially after the nerdy science guy turned out to be Kami in disguise, and Yamcha did do rather well, it just wasn’t my personal favorite not even now. Yamcha doesn’t really do much else in Original DB, so I’ll move on.

As I moved on from DB to Z, I quickly realized that I was becoming much more attached to characters such as Goku and Tien. While I did like Yamcha, I couldn’t say I absolutely adored him at the time. So after binge watching most of the Saiyan Saga on a Friday, I finally got to a certain point: Yamcha vs. the Saibaman. It was fricking badass. Like, Yamcha kicked that thing’s ass so hard, it had to catch him off guard, grab him, and blow themselves up just to kill him. When I had seen that scene for the first time, I shed a tear, mostly due to Bulma and Puar’s reactions to it.

Shortly after I had finished the Garlic Jr. Saga I had chosen to take a break from watching Dragon Ball. It was less because I was sick of the franchise, and more because I was busy at school during that period. Whenever I had managed to find some free time in between doing schoolwork, I decided to start making my tumblr more DB-oriented. I hadn’t really decided on any theme for it to revolve around, so I just thought one day, “Hey why not make it center around this new anime I am watching!” So I did and at first I was posting just general stuff, until one day I had found a Yamcha fan had started following me. I was initially surprised by this, as for the most part, much of what I saw were fans either tearing him down for being weak or being a cheater; and to be honest I was starting to believe them. So I checked out their blog, as I had been curious to see what they had to offer in terms of content, needless to say I liked what I saw and thus followed them back.

After I had finished with exams and school was out for the summer, I had decided to start watching DB again. Except instead of starting from where I had left off, I decided to watch from the beginning. And over this recap, I had really started to appreciate the human Z-fighters personalities more. So much so, that when I finally got to the Future Trunks saga, they had already managed to land themselves spots on my top 5. It was during this recap that my blog had become more positive towards Yamcha. I had in actuality been a bit nervous to show my love for Yamcha at first, but that was more due to certain people constantly knocking on him. Then I learned that quite a bit of those people were either very defensive over a certain canon ship or TFS fanboys who never watched the original Z. Knowing this, I decided to simply ignore the haters and simply continue to love his own character.

I was especially surprised by how much spoiling he was seeming to receive in the last 3 months of 2016. Not only was he made into a ultra hard super boss in the latest Dragon Ball game, or given an episode focusing on him in Super, but he had also managed to get his own manga! Ok, so technically it’s not him, it’s actually a teenager reincarnated as him. And it ended on the Saiyan saga, where the author promised us a second chapter but never delivered…

So, it’s not the most epic story ever. But I still felt the need to write this and on what better day than the desert wolf’s birthday?