The very first manga I read was in primary school in the early 1990s and it was Dragon Ball Volume 4. The Japanese written manga is actually influenced by Chinese literature and was translated to Chinese for countries like China and Singapore and eventually in English after America picked up on the popularity.
That is like a Japanese and a Chinese frenching and exchanging bodily fluids and an American decided to walk by and join the spit exchange.
During those days, Singapore had the Chinese translated manga and although my Chinese was of Primary One standard, it didn’t stop me from enjoying the manga. By the way, I improved. I am now Primary Two standard.
Thinking about it now, there were various factors that made Dragon Ball appeal to kids like me so much.
1. The main characters of the manga were Asian
Before I knew of Dragon Ball, all my known heroes are Ang Mors. There was Superman, the flying Ang Mor whom nobody realize is Clark Kent because he took down his specs. There was Spiderman, the wall crawling Ang Mor who can shoot sticky stuffs from the thing in his pants and also his hands. There was also Batman, the Ang Mor with cool gadgets who has two birds. One in his pants and the other as a sidekick.
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2. They had a funny way of drawing Ding Dongs
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3. Bulma and her softcore antics
Yes, yes. I was very young back then. Kids are curious.
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Before my Mum could find out about my obsession, I was already an addict. I would go to the bookstore almost everyday to see if a new volume is released and spent a lot of my moolah on Dragon Ball and other mangas i got to know like Captain Tsubasa and SlamDunk.
I really had a lot of moolah at that age. When I was in primary school, my pocket money was $10 to $12 daily. DAILY! I remember I got so crazy about the manga that I would go down to a nearby shop and break a $10 note into 20 cent coins. With a bag of coins and a gleefully smiling shopkeeper in my aftermath, I would walk out of the shop and sit down beside one of those tikam machines and let those machines eat my money for these…
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Those were the days…
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