Dragon Ball - the anime that made Catalan cool

Dragon Ball - or Bola de Drac Catalan - was created as a manga, a style of comic or graphic novel, by Akira Toriyama in 1984, and was later made into an animated television programme, also known as an anime. It was the first Japanese series of its kind to be dubbed into Catalan and is etched in the memory of generations of Catalans who grew up watching Son Goku on his quest for dragon balls.

We meet actor Marc Zanni, the legendary adult voice of the protagonist Son Goku, to discover why the dubbing of Dragon Ball helped to promote the Catalan language and foster a sense of cultural identity. Catalan News journalist Oriol Escudé visits Norma Comics in Barcelona to talk to some Dragon Ball fans and find out why the series formed such an important part of their childhood.

Oriol Estrada, a specialist in Japanese culture with a focus on manga and anime, discusses the historical context of the release of the series in the 1990s. And we meet Daniel Cassany, a researcher on reading and writing, as well as a professor of Discourse Analysis in the Catalan language at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, to find out about the future of entertainment in Catalan and how we can continue to create cultural content that resonates with audiences and thrives on social media platforms.

This week’s Catalan phrase is ‘setciències’, an archaic insult used by Vegeta in Dragon Ball which means ‘seven sciences’ and is the equivalent to being a ‘clever clogs’ or ‘know-it-all’ in English.