I noticed I don't usually talk about the effect Dragon Ball had on me growing up. It's probably because at some point, I got cognizant of the fact that I don't really qualify as a 'fan' by, like, whatever arbitrary modern fandom metrics nowadays. My experience was mainly just me as a stupid little kid, catching stray episodes out of order on Toonami whenever I'd remember to watch them, and an irresponsible amount of silly, retroactively embarrassing play-pretend or whatever with my older cousin on the weekends. I wasn't struggling with old fansubs, I wasn't deciding if I liked the original or the dubbed soundtrack better. I was too young to notice GT was 'non-canon' or whatever because I lacked the critical thinking skills to parse anything other than 'wow Super Saiyan 4 looks so cool', that's how little I was. I still haven't experienced Super first-hand, my knowledge of the original Dragon Ball pre-Z is super spotty, and just... in general, if I tried to be specific, I would wind up embarrassing myself and I know it.
But I think the fact that I'm still genuinely fighting back tears right now thinking about what's happened speaks to just how powerful Dragon Ball is as a fiction. I don't need it to be fresh in my mind, I don't need my understanding to be comprehensive, I don't need to justify myself to anyone else's standards, to know that it was something I cared about. I would watch it whenever I could with genuine reverence for a story where you could always be stronger, you could always overcome anything, if you just found out how. It was a world where anything could happen, and it would end in cool fights and powerful screams and giant lasers, and in that way, it was perfect.
It was an honest-to-god inspiration. There's no other word for it. That's how you make little kids who don't even get to see the whole show that still wish they were living in it. That's how you get a stupid little child and his brilliantly creative older cousin spending hours and hours and hours imagining what it would be like, what they would be like, who they would fight, what they could do, if they had the chance to exist in the story you spin for them. That's how you fill sketchbooks with designs full of heart without ever touching the page yourself. That's how you grow adults who have something in them that they want to share, who've spent years building up lightning in a bottle just for the chance to let it out, hoping it might brighten up the room, and if they're lucky, maybe hear something echo back to them.
It's not just about what was on screen. It's not just Goku and all the times he's died and come back, it's not just Gohan saving the world and becoming a sentai ranger, it's not just Vegeta growing into a person who could raise a family, it's not even all that and all the space and all the character in between. It's everything you take with you that keeps playing in your mind after you've stepped away. It's what didn't happen, that you wished would happen. It's every goofy thought you've ever had about an OC, or a new form for a character, or a new villain. It's the parts of you that wouldn't be the same if something hadn't changed you at just the right time.
It's easy to say, but I genuinely believe it; I don't think I'd be who I am anymore if I didn't have the little kid me still in there, clinging to memories of all my ultra-specific shameless fantasies, insisting that 'no, see, I do something like the Kamehameha but with one hand, so it's more focused and that makes it just as strong but it doesn't take as much energy'. I don't let myself feel shame over that anymore, because if I could give those feelings to even one person, I know I would feel so, so proud.
Because if the point of fiction is to touch someone's heart and leave a mark on them like that, then I don't need to be the one to say it. Akira Toriyama succeeded. Not just for me, but for so, so many people.
He did it. He left the world a better place than when he came into it.
Rest in peace.