you're just a puppy to me

FINALITY. AKIRA TORIYAMA.

I like Vegeta lot. I don’t really like to think about how much I like him, but then I worked on this for a long time. I even like getting Yume art of him (not in a romantic way). It’s bizarre to me because I don’t experience that sort of attachment too often to characters, especially long periods. I assume it’s this strong with him because every iteration of DB that exists, I feel he’s done well. It feels like I’ve had him in my life for a long time, and I relate to him a lot.

I understand being deeply insecure and living in a world that feels alien to you. The way you grew up becoming irrelevant and having to move on but also missing being fucked up and terrible. I can also understand his hubris, and while I don’t consider myself to be egoistic, I was as a child. Unlike Vegeta, humiliation made me lose a lot of that aspect of myself, and I don’t really defend myself when others insult me, but I like him a lot because.. he does.

Vegeta is constantly humiliated, almost more than any other character in the series really (aside from Mr. Satan really?). The first parts of DBS have him humiliating himself, but everyone loves and respects him. I mean not everyone loves him, but they respect him, and the universe itself acknowledges that although Vegeta has these aspects that aren’t viewed as ‘golden,’ he is still good by the end. And I really love that because it’s hard to know you used to be a bad person. And choosing to love others despite all the bad things that happened to you is hard. And, the Z fighters are all really good to him really.

Writing this made me remember a lot. I’ve been intending to sit and go back over a lot of Z because I mainly just read chunks of the manga or watch random eps. I loved Daima and I’ve been having a good time with S despite it not being perfect, and just find myself thinking about everyone in the cast, especially him but I’ve been thinking about everyone. Vegeta is my favorite, and I can think about him so hard that I break into tears. I have a figure of his kid form (Goku’s too), and they are everything to me because we don’t really get cute DB merch and I always want some of him.

When things are hard or when someone says things that are meant to put me in my place to make me know I’m not special, I can shrug it off easily. And While I don’t blame that on my experiences with Dragon Ball, I do think seeing a character like Vegeta who goes through so much, who even cries as he dies to his rival, it’s good. He’s so childish in the beginning and grows over time. And his pride is never depicted as bad. And I am a prideful person too. I think.

It’s something I don’t really talk about publicly, but it’s a very important aspect of my existence, and having it shattered over and over and over again is a large reason I tweak out all the time. Being an artist and writer... People always want to put you in your place. They want to tell you about people who are leagues better than you, class you into unskilled categories, judge you for not working for a corporation or you just aren’t ‘special’ to them. People who meet you want you to know how little time they have for you, and even if you try so hard to reach your own level of satisfaction, it never feels like enough.

In theory, you aren’t that far off from the people you envy. You aren’t that different for people who everyone speaks highly of. You know you’re skilled, but you’re just not as special as they are but then you just keep living. You grow. You meet more people. You realize that.. Your worries are really just not that big a deal. And if you don’t past them, you’ll hurt or others or everyone will move on without you.

I really like him. I like Yume art of him, but there’s not many people who can draw lolitas and Vegeta on Vgen I guess, but um, he’s a character I would plaster everywhere if given enough time and money to make a real shrine. I’d buy my own commissions and make merch out of them. (I don’t really draw him in a way that satisfies me because he’s so shaped.)

I’m sad that Akira Toriyama died. He died before I watched Daima, and I wasn’t thinking a lot at the time. I was sad, but I process grief weirdly, so I just kind of went on for a while. Then I watched Daima, and I cried, and cried, and now I’m crying again writing this.

Akira Toriyama.. Is also the artist for Dragon Quest, and I always felt weird about him because he draws these horrible caricatures of black people in his work,but when I played Dragon Quest Builders 2 in particular, I made myself and I was happy to see myself in Akira Toriyama’s world (his art I mean). I really.. like…everything he does. It’s hard because I never watched Dr. Slump due to the caricatures, but the clips I’ve seen make me laugh.

I hope you’re resting in peace. I hope you’re alright. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that you’d die someday. I guess I always thought you were, and you weren’t old when you died. I think about it a lot sometimes with other mangaka but with him, it never occurred to me… It was so sudden, and Daima sort of felt like a final gift. It was everything I wanted from Dragon Ball. A perfect mixture of all the series that existed, and it made me so happy.

Thank you for making it. Thank you for everything.