They further capitalized on it by giving DBZ an edgy presentation and attitude that other shows lacked, such as incorporating hip-hop and drum and bass music into its soundtrack.
Why was the Dragon Ball series specifically impactful? In an interview with Inverse last year, Adult Swim creative director Jason DeMarco said that their mandate originally was to create an after-school block of action cartoons for boys aged nine to 14, but it was quickly recognized that the show was viewed mostly by ethnic minority youths who were into hip-hop music. Additionally, with DBZ‘s sequel Dragon Ball Super currently running (it began airing on July 5, 2015), the Dragon Ball series is bound to influence at least another generation or two of rappers and artists. Denzel Curry compared Goku to Jesus, A$AP Rocky came clean with his Dragon Ball fandom, and AK from The Underachievers even told us that he watched the latest Dragon Ball Z movies, Battle of Gods (2013) and Resurrection ‘F’ (2015). Snoop Dogg proclaimed that he is the fan of Gogeta (the resulting fusion between Goku and Vegeta), RZA claims that “ Dragon Ball Z represents the journey of the black man in America” in his book The Tao of Wu.
This means that anyone with basic cable who watched cartoons from the mid-90s all the way to 2008 would probably have laid their eyes on at least a few of the show’s 291 half-hour episodes - ’90s rappers to millenials included. Dragon Ball was also returned to American television in 2001 and aired till the winter of 2003. This time, it was very successful, and Funimation resumed production on Dragon Ball Z‘s dub by themselves, without the help of Ocean Studios (a Canadian voice-over company that did the dub work for the first run.) The new dub premiered on Toonami from fall of 1999 to spring of 2003, and re-runs continued through 2008. During the summer of 1998, re-runs of the cancelled dub started airing on Cartoon Network as part of Toonami. It’s follow-up series Dragon Ball Z, which was also acquired by Funimations the same year, did slightly better but was cancelled after two seasons. Unfortunately, due to low ratings, only 13 episodes were aired in its first run before it was cancelled.
In 1995, Funimation acquired the distribution license of Dragon Ball in the United States. If you grew up in North America, you’d probably understand why the references are being made.