May 9 marks the annual celebration of Goku Day for Dragon Ball fans worldwide. Although this year’s celebration was without Akira Toriyama, fans of Dragon Ball Z found a way to honor the late manga artist through the series’ most iconic theme song in America.
Released through the SmallButera YouTube channel, "Rock The Dragon Animation Jam" is a fan-animated tribute to the Americanized theme song of Dragon Ball Z. During the early English dubbing years of the anime, "Cha-La Head-Cha-La" and the series’ whimsical Japanese musical score was replaced with a hard-rock soundtrack to better suit the taste of American viewers. Even when the English dubbing of DBZ became more faithful in its Toonami run by allowing more violence and references to death, the use of American rock persisted due to the series’ overwhelming popularity in the West. Famously, the original English release of Dragon Ball Z: Cooler's Revenge featured an alternative rock soundtrack by bands like Drowning Pool, Finger Eleven and the Deftones.
Dragon Ball Z's Newest Tribute Video Involves Numerous Professional Artists & Animators
Fan-animated tributes like "Rock the Dragon Animation Jam" are typically collaboration projects where artists come together to create their own rendition of a famous scene, episode or in this case, theme song. Around 20 animators are credited with doing their own version of a specific scene in the original DBZ English theme song, adding their comedic twist and animated flare. The SmallButera team consists of Alex and Lindsay Small-Butera, who have worked on the Baman Piderman web series, along with Adventure Time and Later Alligator. KC Green, the cartoonist behind the viral "This Is Fine" comic, is credited among the animators, along with Game Grumps co-host Arin Hanson and pixel artist Paul Robertson.
The complete listing of animators as mentioned on the YouTube channel are as follows: Brianne Drouhard, Worthikids, Aaron Long, RubberRoss w/Giwi, Quinn Taketa, Charlie Bryant, David Liu, Nas Pasha, SmallBu, Tom Barkel w/Sarah Harper, Ashley Nichols, Louie Zong, Paul Robertson, Arin Hanson, KC Green, Parker Simmons and Abby memedokies. Currently, the "Rock the Dragon Animation Jam" video has over 14k views after 3 hours of being released.
Dragon Ball Staff and Fans the World Over Celebrate Goku Day
For Goku Day, the official Dragon Ball website is currently holding a contest for the best Goku fight in the entire history of Dragon Ball. This means any fight featuring Goku -- whether as an adult or child -- is eligible for submission by fans. The poll is also open to any scene from the Dragon Ball anime franchise or manga series, meaning fans can vote for Goku vs. Moro that’s currently exclusive to the Dragon Ball Super manga. According to the official Dragon Ball X (formerly Twitter) account, the winning Goku battle will be turned into merchandise.
The various Dragon Ball anime TV series and movies are available to stream on Crunchyroll. A new anime series called Dragon Ball Daima will premiere this fall as part of the 40th anniversary of the franchise. Viz Media handles the English distribution of the manga.
Source: YouTube, X (formerly Twitter)
