KIDS ARE GLUED TO A VIOLENT JAPANESE CARTOON SHOW
"Dragon Ball Z" Is Bringing Impalement, Strangulation To the After-School Crowd
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By Sally Beatty
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
As many a young child already knows, "Dragon Ball Z," a violent animated series imported from Japan, is a huge cartoon hit.
A sort of Pokemon meets "Pulp Fiction," the show is much darker than the average kiddie cartoon. Every weekday afternoon on Time Warner Inc.'s Caroon Network, characters age, die and get vaporized-suffering far worse fates than Wile E. Coyote ever did.
Brutality is a staple. In one recent episode, beads of sweat form on the brow of a character named Vegeta as he is nearly stragled to death by an evil foe named Frieza. In another, Frieza uses the horns on his head to impale a good guy named Krillin through the chest.
Mesmerized, kids are tuning in to the Cartoon Network in record numbers. "Dragon Ball Z" atracted an audience ot 1.7 million households on Sept. 30, the largest number in the network's history. The show's ratings among six-to 11-year-olds-the demographic group most coveted by children's advertisers-leapt 95% in the fourth quarter through Nov. 30 from a year earlier. Nearly one million kids in that age group tuned in to watch the show Oct. 1, another record for the network.
Advertisers are lining up, too, including Hasbro Inc. and Mattel Inc. Even the U.S. Navy is running macho recruitment ads at the end of the show.
"Dragon Ball Z" is also crackling on the Web. On the Cartoon Network's Internet site, it generates among the most inquiries of any of its shows. Last Week, "Dragon Ball Z" ranked as the fifth-most-requested topic on the Lycos earch site, behind singer Britney Spears and the Pokemon cartoon, but ahead of the World Wrestling Federation and Pamela Anderson.
Based on the success of "Dragon Ball Z" the network plans to boost its programming time devoted to Japanese animation to three hours from two, adding two new shows next year. "Gundam" is a tale of bad guys from outer space, and "Tenchi Meyo!" is the story of a lady's man caught up in an interstellar war.
The Cartoon Network says it hasn't had complaints from parents or advertisers about the show's violent content. In fact, the U.S. distributer and liscensing agent of "Dragon Ball Z," Funimation Productions Inc., says the show is toned down for U.S. sensibilities-blood is often edited out and frames erased to soften the blows in certain battle scenes.
The Cartoon Network also runs "anger management" spots that appear during "Dragon Ball Z" and other shows. "There's nothing wrong with being angry," counsels a bubble-headed host in a space suit. "It's all how you deal with it. Anger can be a motivational tool." The network says there is no connection between the spot and the show's content.
Betty Cohen, president for the Cartoon Network, says "Dragon Ball Z" is no worse than other popular Japanese programs like " The Power Rangers" or "Digimon" a show about mechanized monsters currently airing on News Corp.'s Fox Kids.
"People are attracted to action and people in battles with certain forces and unusual characters, but it's not all about real-life human stuff," says Ms. Cohen. Young boys tune into "Dragon Ball Z" for some of the same reasons people go to sports events, she adds. "They want to see conflict."
Network executives note that "Dragon Ball Z" is rated Y7-FV--FV stands for fantasy-violence--the most cautionary rating available for a children's show. That rating designates "Dragon Ball Z" as not suitable for children younger than seven. Under a voluntary rating system adopted by the TV industry in 1997, the rating appears for 15 seconds at the start of each episode.
"Dragon Ball Z" picks up where two hot trends in animation leave off. The movement toward edgier, more adult humor produced "The Simpsons" and "South Park." But those shows, aried during prime time, were aimed primarily at adults. More recently, the visually stylistic Japanese animation known as anime has swept the U.S.
In Japan, where "Dragon Ball Z" aired in prime time before recently going off the air, the show became a cultural phenomenon-though by Japanese standards its level of violence was considered mainstream.
Building on the craze for the Japanese show in this country, Funimation says it has signed deals to produce a "Dragon Ball Z" merchandising avalanche: action figures, calculators, pajamas, trading cards and watches. "Dragon Ball Z" products have generated more than $3 billion in world-wide sales since the show was launched in Japan in 1986.
In the U.S., "Dragon Ball Z" had plenty of naysayers when it made its debut in syndication in 1995. For three years, the show had no regular home, airing on various local TV stations and at odd hours, sometimes as early as 5:30 a.m.
Gen Fukunaga, president of Funimation, recalls children's programming and liscensing executives telling him that "kids in the U.S. wouldn't have the attention span" to sit through a serial cartoon, one in which complex plot lines unfold over 80 or more episodes.
Others questioned whether American boys would be able to follow the intricate stories, whose main characters regularly age from birth to death, and often merge with other featured players to create entirely new characters. Goku, the show's main hero, starts out as a young orphan and eventually dies.
"The show spends a lot of time in relationship development," says Mr. Fukunaga, explaining the popularity of "Dragon Ball Z." "It tries to tackle a little bit more difficult subjects than the typical children's show."
---Phred Dvorak in Tokyo contributed to this article.
Notes::::Hey it's me Rhea! and just to make a correction to this article since I can't change it's content.. It is Tenchi Muyo.. not Tenchi Meyo.. and Dragon Ball Z was the FOURTH most requested site of 1999 on Lycos.com. not fifth!! Isn't that awesome???? OK.. bai bai!