How Easily I'm Swept Away

I'm usually confident in my bearings on my own nerdy journey, but every once and a while something turns even me around. I just wasn't expecting it to be my feelings about voice actors' screaming.

My youngest brother-in-law is very quite. In the twelve years I've known him it was like pulling teeth to get him to talk to me. That was until he realized I was a giant nerd, too. We usually talk about video games and anime but we finally took a next step recently. He asked if we wanted to watch an anime movie WITH him (yay!). And well, I can never say no to that! His pick? Dragon Ball Super: Broly.

I was actually super excited about this for nostalgic reasons. I grew up watching Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball, before I knew the term anime, and I always loved it. I was also curious as to what it had become since I had not continued with the series after I found other animes as I grew. I have to say, I had some shell shock. I think most of it is due to perspective, going from a child watching "cartoons" to an adult watching an anime, you notice different things.

The biggest thing I notice was how horrible and constant that Goku's screaming was. I absolutely could not get over it. Now, most shonen has a lot of screaming. Look at Naruto or even My Hero Academia; both have a lot of screaming, but it at least seems a bit more authentic. The screams that came from Goku, I refuse to believe were human. This was unfortunate because the fight scenes were pretty cool, if not completely over the top- which of course, is a staple of the franchise. The scenes did drop in 'cool points' due to the sound coming from Goku's mouth.

If we ignore that, it was a decent movie, if not for shattering childhood impressions, I would have greatly enjoyed it. The biggest perception that I found was off from my childhood to now was how much of a goofball Goku is. I wasn't horribly bothered by it though. Overall, I actually enjoyed the experience. So much so that I am teetering on re-watching the entire series, which goes to show I am easily swept away in a moment- or should I say a movie.

What can I say? I am simply intrigued with how wrong I was with my childhood impressions versus now. I had the same experience when I re-watched the Pokemon series a number of years ago. It happened again two years ago when I re-watched Sailor Moon. Sometimes it's nice to re-experience things and see how you feel. Which childhood anime would you re-watch? Do you think you would fall in love again? Or find disappointment waiting there? Find out next time on Dragon Ball Z! I'm just kidding, but seriously, why not give it a try?!

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Thank you for joining for this small installment of Nerdom! Despite the hate I gave the voice actor, I really did enjoy this experience and highly encourage letting a newbie nerd pick an anime for you sometime. It was a lot of fun and motivated to revisit a classic. I hope you are all having a great week! Make sure to finish strong and I will see you back on Sunday for The Mess! In the meantime, stay nerdy, stay young at heart, and stay messy otaku!