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Is Draganball's Kamehameha the most iconic attack of all time?
- Thread starter Furisu
- Start date
I'm pretty sure those two properties are roughly on par.
List of highest-grossing media franchises - Wikipedia
Given how much newer Dragon Ball is than Spider-Man that's all the more impressive. I'm pretty sure almost just as many people know who Goku is as they know who Spider-Man is lol.
Star Wars' Force Choke and Spider-Man's Web-Shooters are probably the only suggestions that can actually take down the Kamehameha. People are really in here trying to deny how massive Dragon Ball was and continues to be.
Yeah I think people do need to realize that Dragon ball is just old. It's in legacy mode these days, and I say that with the existence of the movie this year and the Super show a few years back. Its iconic status remains, but it's not that relevant anymore.
I will argue though that by virtue of being a shouted attack, Kamehameha is way more iconic than the attacks of Spiderman or Batman.
Surely The Trojan Horse isn't more famous than Hiroshima......ah I see this is just in fiction.
Actually I'd argue that it is the case.
We tend to teach history and culture from oldest to newest so older events or artifacts are taught to smaller kids.
eg : small kids don't know about Hiroshima (unless they're FROM hiroshima or Japan in general) but they've been told about the Trojan Horse.
The absolute genius about it is that the pronounciation is really easy for most speakers even from languages that are rather foreign to Japanese.
It doesn't need to be relevant for it to be iconic. Mickey Mouse is iconic even though he's no longer relevant anymore. I feel like people are more associating Disney with MCU and Star Wars nowadays than Mickey
Well, IIRC it's a Hawaiian word not Japanese
Look, I like Street Fighter and Ryu, but the point is that if you look at insta/Twitter/TikTok/google/etc, it really, really isn't comparable at all lmao
How should I put this.I'm pretty sure those two properties are roughly on par.
List of highest-grossing media franchises - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Given how much newer Dragon Ball is than Spider-Man that's all the more impressive. I'm pretty sure almost just as many people know who Goku is as they know who Spider-Man is lol.
In my perception, I feel like Spider-Man, Wonder woman, Superman and Batman and Robin have ascended way beyond just mere comic book super hero characters and more into like, as figures.
What I mean is, a kid can wish to become Batman for his birthday despite not having consumed any comics, movies or shows about him. They're just that giant at this point.
Goku I feel is still grounded as a character, I mean a ginormously popular one at that but not yet a "figure" or a "template". His show though is way more iconic than the TV shows, animated or live action of the aforementioned supeheroes (with the exception of Adam West Batman).
I don't know but maybe other cultures have different perceptions on this.
I think it's a Japanese word that happens to share the name of a Hawaiian king
This is an interesting one. I certainly haven't thought much about Mickey in a minute but that head and ears silhouette is so iconic. I wonder how much share he has if you were to ask people when they think of Disney what do they think of. Obviously a lot but I'd be curious to see the split at this stage.
Incredible. Went to watch that Broly movie a couple of years ago to the cinema (latin america here) and there were tons of kids and young people in the audience. Dragon Ball is as cross-generational as Pokemon.
Dragon Ball is probably iconic and popular enough to have a huge amount of staying power even as just a defacto example of (two) entire art forms, but I tend to agree that Trojan Horse's massive historical impact and notoriety probably put it over the top, unless we're strictly talking contemporary impact.
It also doesn't matter that it was possibly never even a thing. It has serious renown that crosses millennia and is referenced absolutely everywhere, both as a military strategy that potentially happened and as a metaphor for a million other things both in and outside of war.
Since this site skews towards the US, this colors the opinions posted on the perceived popularity and iconicness of Dragonball, due to the unique relationship of Dragonball and anime in general in the US (and the Anglosphere) compared to the rest of the world.
Only popular from the late 90s, didn't find success until it hit cable and was stuck on that since then, was popular mostly among teen nerds intially
vs
Broadcasted in the late 80s to early 90s, actually mainstream, literally everyone watched from kids to adults, aired on the biggest National Broadcast Free TV Channels, had multiple reruns over the years.
Well maybe you're right.
Regardless, stuff like Kamehameha and Super Saiyan and fusion are among the top things that are most iconic in pop culture.
Gonna say Hadouken overwrites it despite basically being the same thing, and I don't even think DB is first time surge firsts have happened, honestly. In the UK, SF was everywhere. DBZ wasn't until late 90s when it started airing on Cartoon Network/CNX. It was '98? If you weren't already into bootleg anime VHS, you didn't know about DBZ before CNX. But everyone and their mums knew SFII. I only knew about DBZ before it because of older siblings and friends who kept coming back from HK with VHS tapes and magazines.
But I think retroactively, once people understood DB came first, they'll say that's the most iconic move.
Edit: Looking at those TiKTok/social media stats, I'll say it's thanks to social media that Kamehameha would be more popular than Hadouken in this decade. Far more interesting clips and memes to take from an anime than a videogame, in my mind.
But I think retroactively, once people understood DB came first, they'll say that's the most iconic move.
Edit: Looking at those TiKTok/social media stats, I'll say it's thanks to social media that Kamehameha would be more popular than Hadouken in this decade. Far more interesting clips and memes to take from an anime than a videogame, in my mind.
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Here in the US, Street Fighter was a PHENOMENON in the early 1990s, before we even got any Dragon Ball at all. And with SF4 revitalizing interest, and regular re-releases, it never really went away completely. It's not the phenomenon now that it once was, but it remains popular.
We apparently got a few episodes of Dragon Ball in 1995 until it was cancelled due to low ratings. The notorious original DBZ dub (OVER 9000!!!!!) started in 1996, and after syndication, cancellation, and then Funimation, finally we got the end of it in 2003. But remember that anime has always been niche here, even the more popular anime. DBZ was never a phenomenon in the US, not even close.
I'm not saying that it isn't different in other parts of the world, but I'm pretty certain that in North America, the hadouken is more iconic.
edit: I changed "North America" to "the US"
We apparently got a few episodes of Dragon Ball in 1995 until it was cancelled due to low ratings. The notorious original DBZ dub (OVER 9000!!!!!) started in 1996, and after syndication, cancellation, and then Funimation, finally we got the end of it in 2003. But remember that anime has always been niche here, even the more popular anime. DBZ was never a phenomenon in the US, not even close.
I'm not saying that it isn't different in other parts of the world, but I'm pretty certain that in North America, the hadouken is more iconic.
edit: I changed "North America" to "the US"
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Helmeppo Violet color variant?Trunks is cooler than Goku so I was googling him just now and this popped up. I love it.
I can only speak anecdotally here but in my experience the bolded is very untrue. It absolutely was a phenomenon here. I can't even count how many friends in school I had who were absolutely enamored with DBZ - waking up early on Saturday mornings just to catch it - who probably couldn't even name another anime series. It was a juggernaut maybe even to a greater extent than something like FF7 which heavily popularized JRPGs in a similar way.
Didn't know who that was so googled it and lmao, on point. All I know is Ryan Gosling will now need to play Trunks in the next live action DBZ film. That look is made for him.
If you're fine with manga I would recommend it instead, especially for Z because the anime has awful pacing issues
Mickey (and friends) just got a ride at Hollywood Studios. Had a series on D+ that ran in 2020, along with seasonal specials still airing and prior to that had a series that ran from 2013 to 2019 on the Disney Channel nevermind all of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse/Roadster Racers/Mixed Up Adventures/Fun House.
Yeah, I knew France got it before the US did (and you're right Belgium got it too to some extent because of that.), wasn't aware Spain and Italy did too. But a big part of the EU only got it after the US did so no, "Europe" did not get Dragonball in the 80s. Only parts of it.
I've seen and read Z before but never got into the original series.
I work a simple IT job from home and can comfortably respond to tickets and watch it at the same time.
I feel like this is entirely glossing over how unpopular Street Fighter became around the Third Strike period. Hell, there's a reason that most of the fighting game community even referred to the 1999-2008 period as the Dark Ages
People trying to say that the Hadouken is more iconic than the Kamehameha is undoubtedly the most American boomer thing I've ever seen.
i would 't call the trojan horse an attack. it's more a weapon or a war tactic than an attack in and of itself. if we're stretching the definition of attack a bunch of things from myth probably qualify (Sun Wukong probably has a few techniques tbat might qualify under that interpretation and even given his reputation is limited to east asia alone he might still be able to take it). if we include stuff like weapons i'd probably say Excalibur takes the prize here. But yeah these are really stretching the definition of attack. honestly i feel like even the spiderman webshoot is a bit stretching though that i can understand qualifying depending on how you count it
That's another couple right there that I'd put over kamehameha tbh. Pikachu thundershock, or a flame thrower from a charizard
Dragonball was absolutely a phenomenon in the Us lol. and again, nobody is disputing that SF was super popular in the 90s, buts it's incredibly niche right now and most of it's audience now is a remnant of thw old 90s audience. SFIV and beyond is absolutely not mainstream, and the franchise was a fucking shadow during the III era. Again, we've literally shown proof on every metric that right now the Kamehameha is way, way more popular and know. than the Hadouken. The popularity in the 90s isn't relevant to this discussion because that was decades ago and times change
So about that Street Fighter movie that's getting a worldwide theatrical release soon...
oh, right.
oh, right.
Statistics bInack you up. September of 2002 Dragon Ball Z was the most watched show for boys/men age 12 to 24 in the US based on Nielsen ratings. It was one of the most watched shows for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights that month. The idea that no one watched DBZ or it wasn't big is just wrong.
i mean yeah Dragonball is also past the peak of it's relevance, but it's still miles more relevant than SF. Dragonball video games regularly sell way more than SF games and that's SF's hone turf whereas most Dragonball games are exceptionally mediocre
Thundershock probably comes close, but I'd say that Kamehameha is more iconic only because it predates and thus it grabbed attention from one or two generations prior
This is what I mean when I say I don't even buy the "well in the west, no I mean North America, no I mean the US, SF is actually...." stuff in this thread and think a lot of people in here are also just out of touch with stuff's popularity in the US itself. DBZ was huge.
If there's anything that this thread, and the one about MK vs SF, has taught me it's that street fighter fans are vastly clueless about the lack of relevancy sf has had in pop culture since the 90's.
Yes people know the hadouken, but the kamehameha is easily more recognisable.
Yes people know the hadouken, but the kamehameha is easily more recognisable.
what they really mean is "in my bubble of 35-45 year old age range nerds who are the only people i regularly interact with" lol. it's the same phenomenon that has lead to people in Era thinking minecraft wasn't iconic lol