a banner image that says lovely cyborg, a shrine to #18 from dragon ball
About This Site

I made this site in 2003. That seems like so long ago. I was living in Massachusetts, with nothing else better to do with my time. I had been role-playing online since 1996 or so, this is me and a lot of that time I spent role-playing #18 in an long-running alternate universe game. To say the least, I've been a fan of her for over a decade. I suppose this makes me an old-head...

When I first got into Dragon Ball, I was buying bootleg fansub tapes from Galaxy Video on Chestnut street in Philadelphia and trading them with my friends in high school. The quality of these tapes was so terrible, sometimes it was impossible to even read the subtitles. At the same time, the International Channel on cable was airing the original Japanese episodes, without subtitles, and the English version of DBZ only went up to the middle of the Namek Saga. Reliable English translations were few, and fan-made misconceptions were rampant. Nowadays, the whole series is translated, digital fansubs are outrageously easy to acquire, and I can actually read and understand the original Japanese material.

My time spent role-playing #18 has since led me to a fascination with cyborgs so strong that I'm persuing a graduate degree concerned with cyborgs and how people craft their identities through technology and culture. Yes, I love the hell out of (post) cyberpunk anime like Ghost in the Shell and Ergo Proxy, among other genre-defining works of 1980s/1990s sci-fi.

Toybox & Shout Outs

It may seem sort of passé to completely redo an anime character shrine in 2010, when almost no other character shrines exist it seems, but you know what? Who the hell cares. I love cyborgs. I love Dragon Ball. And I think keeping something around just because you can is a nice gesture to other fans. Also, Dragon Ball is still relatively popular in Japan. Nice!

Shout outs to those who are no longer with us: Juuhachigou's Place of Being, Juunanagou's Temple, all the jerks from DBZ Pool Party, Katchan who wrote that epic fanfic with Japhia in it, my homies from EoNVS, all those unrelenting copycat guilds, anyone that translated DBZ back in the day and brought it to us rabid fans...

oi ocha alliance