Struggle and Success

Over this semester, there are quite a few words I could use to describe my growth as a student, but the most fitting of them all would definitely be ‘struggling.’ Now, this isn’t to say the class was unfair or unfun. I enjoyed it quite a lot. But I started off as a freshman to college, and was rusty with school work after a lazy senior year with a pandemic beforehand. However, despite starting off admittedly very shakily, I would honestly say I’ve definitely improved from the start of the course. Overall, I’m a bit of an unorthodox student when it comes to essay subjects, but please bear with me as we go through my literary journey. I’ll be focusing primarily on my essays and classwork from Phases 1, 2, and 3 and breaking down how I achieved several of the Course Learning Objectives (CLOs).

Of course, we’re starting off with Phase 1, which was an interesting phase for me at the time. To be honest, I was a bit unprepared for college at the time, but I started getting used to everything pretty fast. We were introduced to our CLOs, and specifically the first one was “[Students will] examine how attitudes towards linguistics standards empower and oppress language users.” In a discussion post I did on BlackBoard, I went into detail on how I related to author Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” essay. The specific topic was “What parts of Tan’s essay resonate with you most? Why?” While I didn’t have a family where we spoke multiple languages, I did have a family that wasn’t born in the United States and had a very distinct accent. After seeing how my teacher acted towards my dad once his true accent came on, it really did make me realize that even people who speak English can face prejudice and be oppressed, just because of an accent. I wrote about how my dad had “started cursing me out in Jamaican patwa” after a teacher started bad-mouthing me at a parent-teacher conference, and how it let me learn that even people who were citizens and spoke English could still be looked down upon or wrongly judged just because they “don’t talk good.” I set out to clear the first goal of our learning objectives here by using stuff from my own life, through my own writing and analysis. After all, the best writing can come from your own experiences.

Moving onto my Phase 1 essay, I decided to use what I learned from my Tan response post. As we had to write about our most important literary experiences, it was crucial to use something again that was very close to me. Actually, the first draft of my essay was far, far different from my original one. Everything down to the main subject was completely different. Of course, radically changing my essay like this made things harder, but I decided it was for the best. My first essay was about a series called JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, specifically Part 7: “Steel Ball Run.” I was writing about how the series influenced me to make my own stories. As I said, “I was 15 when I first read “Steel Ball Run.” and didn’t care much about writing at the time. However, the incredible characters and moments have heavily motivated me to become a writer.” It wasn’t all bad, but my main issue with the essay was how much time I spent explaining everything. I had to explain why the literary experience was so valuable to me, but I overdid it with the explanation of the game and its mechanics. I explained the scene, talking about the setting, characters, and motivations. I was completely off on a tangent. It got to the point where the paper had become a summary, and at this point I realized I had made a grave mistake. It’s either, do I simply restart and cut the fat out? Or perhaps talking about “Steel Ball Run” was too much for one essay…

So, I did choose to restart and write about another experience. I decided to go with something a lot more important to my early life, which still influences me to this day. The third CLO, which is “Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing,” was something I accidentally managed to accomplish here with my first essay. Through drafting and revising I realized my essay was no good, and after reading things through even editing wouldn’t be able to save it. When I sent it to a friend who offered me criticism that was similar to my own thoughts, I knew I had to do something. So I decided to talk about Dragon Ball Z, which is the first anime I truly got into. Instead of talking about the several moments I loved, I decided to step back and look at the greater picture. I talked about how Dragon Ball helped me learn how to read, but also “not just see what I’m seeing and reading, but actually comprehend it” as quoted in the essay itself.

For my second major essay, I continued the trend of writing about things I can relate to. Learning from my mistakes with Phase 1’s essay, I tried to pull away from over-explaining everything. I wrote about a platform fighting game I love, Super Smash Bros. Melee, responding to a popular top player, Joseph “Mang0” Marquez who was ranked 3rd overall for 2022. He made a video talking about how Fox and Falco are the best characters in the game, lacking any significant flaws or bad match-ups. My Phase 2 essay serves to go into greater detail on why he’s wrong about Fox and Falco, and that they’re both countered by Marth. Of course, this is a bit of an esoteric topic for most normal people, like my professor, so I had to get to work explaining everything first. In my introductory paragraphs, I talk about the game itself and try to ease my way into talking about the mechanics. Once the mechanics of the game are explained I can talk about why Marth beats Fox and Falco and go into detail. I get quite technical with game knowledge, as admittedly I was excited writing about something I’m passionate about. There were a number of times I had to cut down on explaining, or reworking old explanations. Throughout the essay I constantly had to reassess what was needed and what wasn’t. For example, I started talking about how good of a grab game Marth has, and that characters like Fox are weak to Marth’s chain-grabs. But I quickly realized that no one’s actually going to understand that, so I elaborated more, saying “In fighting games, characters often have grab attacks which go through the defensive maneuver known as blocking generally but is called ‘shielding’ for the Smash series. Marth’s grab is notable in that its range is far beyond his actual hand and is fast for a grab of its length.” I explained what grabs and shields are, in the context of the Smash series, and additionally explained how Marth’s grab game was good. 

The final conventional phase, Phase 3, was unique in that I had to alter my own approach to its essay prompt. It required far more of us, having  a larger page count and requiring the usage of at least four unique sources, one of them being scholarly. However, I would honestly argue this is one of my strongest essays I’ve ever written. It truly is the culmination of everything I’ve learned while I wrote my other papers and responses for this class. There was also quite a bit of a learning process involved with making the essay too. Finding sources for my topic, which was the balance of the Smash Bros. games and why Melee is “the best,” was very difficult. In general, getting a good source for certain topics tends to be pretty hard. In fact, usually a good topic is one that’s broad and applies to a lot of people. So my topic wasn’t the best choice for an easy essay. But I didn’t want to write an easy essay, I wanted to write something I actually cared about. Video games aren’t exactly niche at this point anymore, but fighting games— platform fighting games— are definitely not nearly as popular. Finding a source that counted as “scholarly” was especially difficult. I ended up using “A multiplayer game is balanced if a reasonably large number of options available to the player are viable–especially, but not limited to, during high-level play by expert players.” as my scholarly quote. It’s a quote from David Sirlin in question, a video game designer and professional fighting game player. Considering how he not only plays fighting games extensively but also works on them I figured he’s someone who could be considered “scholarly” enough.

In this essay alone, I feel as though I accomplished several of the CLOs. Due to the difficulty of writing the essay, it made me have to really work hard when it came to my citation. Specifically, CLO #6 “Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias,” as it’s effectively the basis of the entire essay. I set up my stance of Melee being the best balanced Smash game compared to the other ones. I admittedly wasn’t as descriptive of game mechanics as before, which is one area I could’ve done better in. However, where my descriptiveness wasn’t as sharp, I excelled in other aspects I normally tend to falter in. I often would explain how a mechanic would work in Melee, and then explain why the lack of it or changes to it made in Ultimate and the other Smash games truly make the game’s balance change for the worse. For example, I talked about how Melee has “perfect shielding,” allowing all characters to deflect projectiles in a skill-based way— timing your shield input. Ultimate has parrying instead which doesn’t provide much use versus projectiles which significantly harms characters with poor range or options to get closer. I was working to closely follow the seventh CLO, as I had to “compose texts that integrate a stance with appropriate sources, using strategies such as summary, analysis, synthesis, and argumentation.” To make this essay, I had to summarize game mechanics, analyze and synthesize quotes from other game designers, and of course I had to argue my stance. The final CLO “Practice systematic application of citation conventions” was also something I had to adhere to, as I used MLA citations throughout the paper and had a full “Works Cited” page. I’ve never really had to make one before this semester, but it’s actually something I got used to pretty quickly. 

I’ve always been a student that had to scrape by. I’m not a full blown bad student, but I’m no good noodle. Sometimes assignments are hard, sometimes I can’t hand things in on time, and sometimes I feel so horrible I can’t even come to class. But in spite of all the struggling I had to do, it helped strengthen my abilities as a writer. I got better at using evidence in more natural ways, and also writing argumentative essays which were something I always tended to struggle with. But even though I struggled, I came out benefitting from it. And I wouldn’t change a single thing. Not one thing.

Why Super Smash Bros. Melee is The Best Balanced Smash Game

Good balance is a hallmark of great competitive games, and the same is true of fighting video games. Originally, fighting games were often hit-or-miss when it came to balance, as it wasn’t possible to update games on consoles up until the last 15 years or so. But due to that, they were developed under a different philosophy as balance was effectively something developers only got to tweak once. As such contrary to what you might initially think, older fighting games are often not subject to bad balance due to the more meticulous process. The Smash Bros. series has had games all throughout the years, with the balance between the games being all far different from each other. However, a common belief spread around I the Smash community is that Melee is a poorly balanced game, and that most people agree that Ultimate is the most balanced Smash game. The other games in the series, Smash 64, Brawl, and Smash 4, are often not brought into the conversation when it comes to balance as they aren’t as competitively popular as Melee and Ultimate, though I will discuss them here as I believe it’s important as Melee and Ultimate have 16 years of changes between them across these games. So while it can be easy to think Ultimate is the better balanced game due to a lower disparity between tiers and a considerably larger roster means there are more top and high-tiered characters, this could not be further from the truth. While Ultimate could be considered the “most” balanced Smash game, Melee is the best balanced Smash game without a doubt.

But before we can even prove why Melee’s balance is the best, it’s important to explain what balance is in it’s basic sense. The basic Oxford Dictionary definition of the world “balance” is, “a situation in which different things exist in equal, correct or good amounts.” In the case of a fighting game series like Smash Bros., the “situation” is the game, whilst the “different things” are the individual things that make a character fun to play but also fair to fight, such as their attributes, moves, and special gimmicks or abilities. Additionally, they could also include mechanics of the game beyond the characters, such as universal techniques or stages.

So, in essence, a balanced game features fun and fair characters, but also fun and fair mechanics too. Thus, things brings me to my main point: is it better if a game is “more” balanced or simply has “good” balance. A more balanced game generally has every character playable for the most part. Match-ups are also not as polarizing due to this. And after all, if everyone is good to some extent, then why wouldn’t having more balance be better than simply good balance? Well, problems start to emerge when you try to make every character good. Simply making every character the equivalent of an A-tier or S-tier level character often doesn’t lead to healthy metagames, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is extremely guilty of this. 

Compared to Ultimate, Super Smash Bros. Melee has far more universal options in terms of movement, offense, and defense. As Masahiro Sakurai’s, the creator and director of the entire series, design philosophy changed throughout the years, he ultimately decided that he wanted the series to be more approachable to people not as interested in fighting games hence Ultimate’s more simplistic moveset. However, this change in philosophy wasn’t positive for the competitiveness of the series. As David Sirlin, a fighting game designer and fighting game player, states “A multiplayer game is balanced if a reasonably large number of options available to the player are viable–especially, but not limited to, during high-level play by expert players.” (Sirlin). In Melee, every character has access to “light shielding”, a mechanic where using the analog on the triggers makes your shield bigger and last MUCH longer at the cost of pushing you back farther when hit by an attack, preventing punishment but also putting you in a safer position. Additionally, when you shield as soon as an attack makes contact with you, it will be a “perfect shield,” which allows you to act sooner and additionally reflects projectiles back. Not only does this give every character a way to escape shield pressure via light shielding, it also gives every character a skill-based way to fight against projectiles. Lastly, there’s “shield dropping,” which is a bit advanced and I won’t go into full detail, but it allows you to escape under platforms from a shield which is incredibly helpful for avoiding pressure or getting in a more advantageous position. 

Compare this to Ultimate, where after several reworks to defense after it got too powerful in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U, we’re left with… parrying, which replaces perfect shielding. It’s sort of ironic that it’s called parrying considering perfect shielding functions FAR more like a conventional fighting game parry. Instead of timing it so you shield as soon as an attack connects, you shield an attack and then let go of shield at the right time. You can buffer it for multi-hits, and it does indeed let you punish poorly spaced moves, though it’s not nearly as useful and is harder to get used to. It also does not deflect projectiles, which I found to be a baffling change as perfect shielding was already nerfed from Melee to Brawl as it sends projectiles at a 45-degree angle instead of straight forward, not like that was a good change either. Not to mention, shield dropping was just removed.

Additionally, Melee’s balance is far tighter and even with no patches at all, there has never been a point where a character was ever good enough to seriously consider banning them. Even the top characters in the game who are widely believed to be Fox and Marth have their own glaring weaknesses, such as Fox being arguably the most susceptible to being “combo’d” and Marth’s inconsistency at killing at higher percentages. Smash 64 is basically just ruled by Pikachu and Kirby,  Brawl should’ve banned Meta Knight,  Smash for Wii U and 3DS– which I’m calling Smash 4 from now on because the official name is quite a mess– has both Bayonetta AND Cloud as the definitive top 2 and led to the game’s popularity dropping significantly after the launch of Ultimate. And Ultimate? Ultimate is the second game in the series (third if you count Cloud’s ban from doubles) to have a character be banned. But unlike Brawl, which had Meta Knight banned temporarily and generally was unsupported, two characters are in heavy discussion to be banned now from Smash Ultimate. As said on EventHubs, “Minecraft’s Steve and Tekken’s Kazuya Mishima have now apparently been banned from one of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s biggest weekly tournament series in Texas, Ultimate Shockwave. Similarly, it’s also been announced that these two Fighters Pass Vol. 2 DLC characters have also been banned from Super Smash Odyssey.” It’s not just locals either. The biweekly regional online tournament hosted by popular Melee and Ultimate player Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma called “The Coinbox” is a rather popular tournament that often attracts the attention of top players in the world such as MkLeo and Spargo who attend frequently. Hungrybox recently tweeted “Steve will be banned at the Coinbox for the foreseeable future.” He banned Steve due to a game breaking technique in which Steve can cancel all the knockback of an attack by using his neutral special move in an exploit. Since Ultimate is done and won’t be getting updated again, this technique called the “phantom MLG” was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And it only looks like the bans are getting more and more popular among players. Compared to Melee, which has never ever had any serious talks of banning someone. Fox, as prominent as he is in the metagame, is not infallible and best of all is arguably healthy for the meta unlike the top characters in the other games in the series who are too centralizing. For example: removing Meta Knight would make Brawl a much better game; while removing Fox would be a killing blow to Melee, imbalancing everything. 

Modern Smash’s removal of universal mechanics continues beyond just defense as well. Movement as a whole is far simpler and linear in later Smash Bros. games. Dash dancing, a technique where you dash back and forth to make your approach towards the opponent ambiguous and tricky, is weakened significantly even after buffs to it after Brawl and Smash 4. Wavedashing was notably removed after Melee which absolutely crippled several characters, such as Luigi who lost his ability to travel on the ground swiftly as a result. It’s just not possible to mix up your movement at all in Ultimate for most characters, leading to characters with good projectiles and disjointed reach to be overpowered. Numerous top-tier characters in Ultimate have great reach, such as Pyra, Mythra, Joker, Shulk, Roy, Cloud. 

However, it can be argued that these mechanics, while deep and rich for competitive players, can be alienating to casual players. But the oversimplification of a game can significantly hurt its balance, as with a lack of options the game can feel clunky or unintuitive. Masahiro Sakurai himself argues as much, claiming that without a sense of depth in a fighting game, it also lacks “push and pull”  aspects, as he says. In fact, he brings up two games in particular: Street Fighter 1 and Street Fighter 2. Street Fighter 1 is obviously dated, being one of the first of its genre. Numerous mechanics were missing, such as special moves which were limited to Ryu exclusively and were more like “secret” moves instead, with the Shoryuken being capable of instantly killing opponents. Generally, it’s considered a clunky and imbalanced fighting game, though its age explains why. Street Fighter 2 meanwhile definitely was a much better game, often considered to be one of the best fighting games of all time. The roster was expanded, along with movesets. Every character gets multiple special moves and new super moves. Sakurai himself even claimed the game had “incredible depth” especially in comparison to the first game. And due to the greater depth of the game, it leads to a more balanced experience with a thriving competitive scene lasting to this day.

All in all, Melee is often incorrectly assumed to be unbalanced to its smaller variety of characters generally seen in competitive play. While it is true that only half the cast sees extensive use in the modern meta, the same could be argued for Ultimate. As Melee has much less characters— Ultimate has 89 characters compared to Melee’s 26 viable characters— Ultimate sees about the same percentage of characters used. Especially due to the popularity of the DLC characters, who have an ever growing number of them in the top 10 or 20. However Melee’s focus on skill and the presence of numerous options every character can perform often leads to a more balanced experience compared to Ultimate which is more focused on character gimmicks and far simpler strategies. 

To put it simply, Ultimate is more balanced in that there are more “good” characters, while Melee’s balance is better because everyone is on the same playing field.

Work’s Cited

Debiedma, Juan ‘Hungrybox’. “Steve Is Officially Banned at the Coinbox for the Foreseeable Future.” Twitter, Hungrybox, 2 Mar. 2023, https://twitter.com/LiquidHbox/status/1631435704772317186

Gordon, Justin ‘AdaptiveTrigger’. “Steve and Kazuya Mishima Both Banned from One of Super Smash Bros.. Ultimate’s Biggest Weekly Tournament Series in Texas.” EventHubs, EventHubs, 17 Apr. 2023, https://www.eventhubs.com/news/2023/apr/17/steve-kazuya-banned-ssbu-weekly

Sakurai, Masahiro. “Do Competitive Games Have to Be Complex? [Game Essence].” Translated by Nate Behildorf, YouTube, Masahiro Sakurai, 8 Mar. 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ggw9xXbzig

Sirlin, David. “Balancing Multiplayer Games, Part 1: Definitions.” Sirlin.net, David Sirlin, 16 Sept. 2014, https://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions

An Op=Ed to “Mang0”

Super Smash Bros. Melee released in 2001 for the GameCube was the sequel to Nintendo’s flagship fighting game series Super Smash Bros. released 2 years before for the Nintendo 64. Despite the games age, it has exploded in popularity to the point where it’s one of the most popular fighting games of all time and is played even in spite of further sequels being released. The main goal of the game is that you fight on stages, which can be various environments that often feature a larger main area and can have a varying number of additional smaller platforms, from three to two to none at all, and your goal is to get opponents off the stage. When reaching beyond the edges of the screen, you are knocked out, or KO’d. This is a “platform” fighting game, and possibly the most famous and arguably best one of all time. The balance of the game’s better characters, “top” and “high”-tiers, is often regarded to be quite solid with generally balanced “matchups,” which are estimated performances between two particular characters, with no character being too dominant.

 Among many of the matchups, it’s often stated that Fox, the character many people claim to be the best in the game due to his blinding speed and ability to rush you down, and Falco, a glass cannon– characters which tend to have high offensive ability but low defenses to compensate– combo character who’s moveset is partially derived from Fox, have no losing matchups. One of the greatest Melee players of all time, Joseph Marquez who often goes by his gamertag of “Mango” claims that Fox and Falco theoretically beat Marth, thus having no losing matchups in the game. Marth is the swordfighter character characterized by his long range, grab game, devastating edgeguarding abilities, and very powerful advantage state making him a contender for the best character in the game. However, Mango couldn’t be further from the truth here. 

 In fighting games, characters often have grab attacks which go through the defensive maneuver known as blocking generally but called is “shielding” for the Smash series. Marth’s grab is notable in that its range is far beyond his actual hand and is fast for a grab of its length. His throws additionally are all great for setting up combos or “kill confirms,” which are combos that guarantee a KO. His grab game against Fox and Falco, commonly grouped together as “space animals” or “spacies” for short, is absolutely devastating on these two characters in specific. Due to their incredibly fast falling speeds and high gravity, they fall so fast to the ground after being thrown that it’s possible for Marth to grab them once again, continuousing dealing damage. This is known as a “chaingrab.” It’s very possible for Marth to be able to chaingrab a spacie until he’s able to knock them off the stage, securing the knockout. Not to mention, Marth’s grabs and throws in general are highly effective on Fox and Falco due to Marth being able to send them very low offstage, which often results in a KO thanks to Marth’s ability to edgeguard their predictable recoveries, especially in the case of Falco who’s recovery is a worse version of Fox’s. 

In general, Fox and Falco have terrible disadvantage states vs Marth, especially Falco. Marth’s long ranged sword is able to protect Marth from the spacies’ somewhat below average range, and he has several combo starters against them. His up-tilt, up-air, and f-air are all very good at keeping Fox and Falco in attack combos. Especially the former two, with them being able to convert into kills when followed up with a “Ken combo,” a f-air into d-air spike which sends opponents offstage. While Fox’s speed and incredibly versatile “shine” attack along with Falco’s own shine and laser shots outranging Marth’s blade can make it difficult for Marth to get into an advantage state versus these two characters, the spacies are highly difficult to play requiring fast, dexterous hands and good reflexes. Meanwhile, Marth is a relatively easier character to play with a lower skill floor and ceiling, meaning that a mistake made by Marth is far less devastating than a mistake from Fox or Falco. 

Additionally, historically Marth players have always prevailed in the matchup vs the space animals. Notably the #1 player in the world in 2022, Zain, has no losing records vs a Fox or Falco player, boasting winning records on the aforementioned Mango along with the likes of Cody Schwab, Leffen, Moky, Fiction, Joshman, Ginger, and Magi. All of which are the top ranking spacie players at 3rd, 4th, 7th, 13th, 14th, 19th, 21st and 25th best players in the world according to the SSBMRank for 2022. Even the second best Marth in the world, Kodorin ranked 12th, boasts winning records vs players such as the aforementioned Moky, Joshman, Fiction, and Magi. While the spacies are dominant and considered to be better characters overall compared to Marth, it’s no question that historically and even in the present, Fox and Falco players have always struggled vs Marth.

While Falco and particularly Fox aren’t necessarily worse than Marth, as Marth himself has his own problem matchups such as Sheik or Pikachu along with slightly less favorable matchups versus other top tiers, to say the spacies lack losing matchups is an absurd claim. Even Mango, the one who often perpetuates these claims and who is quite possibly the best Fox and Falco player ever performs inconsistently against Marth. Even if it’s slightly losing for Fox, they both certainly lose to Marth.

How Dragon Ball Showed Me How To Read (and Think)

I started school pretty late compared to other kids. Most usually started in kindergarten. Some even started in pre-k. Hell, I’ve even heard of kids starting in the first grade, like my sister. But then there comes me, starting in second grade. Yeah, I wasn’t exactly the best at school. I wasn’t as helpless as you’d think, since I knew how to read from computers since I was a toddler. But as far as writing went? I’d rather type. So my most notable early literary experience wasn’t a book. Far from it, actually. 

Now, I was not a reader growing up. Obviously things have changed nowadays, but back then trying to get me to bother reading was rather difficult. After all, going from basically every day being free time to school 5 days a week was something my little child brain couldn’t even fathom. Now I’m no studious scholar, but even I don’t dread school as much as I did before. It was really hard for me at the time, especially since by second grade everyone was getting through the academic issues of school and moving onto caring about social issues. But while I wasn’t able to read particularly well and couldn’t write at all, I did have one thing over these kids: the Internet.

I’ve been browsing the Internet since I was very young, and of course I find entertaining stuff fast. YouTube was still the media giant it was even in 2012 and I eventually ended up finding out about the existence of anime. And manga, too. My first exposure to anime was Dragon Ball Z, this cool series about a guy named Goku fighting threats to him and his friends from Earth, other planets, and other universes. Needless to say I was genuinely addicted. To the point where I tried to read the manga myself. This was about the same time I was going to school, though at the start of the year there was no way I’d be able to read it. Getting through 20 page “Level A” books (which were the lowest reading level books usually only for pre-k and kindergarten students) was moderately difficult.

So I just kept trying. Everyday I’d keep trying to read it. Most of my family wasn’t very sympathetic to me. My great aunt and grandma just wanted me to read “normal” books and said that anime and manga were a waste of time. However my dad was a bit more receptive to me. He introduced me to subtitles on the TV, which I didn’t even know about. Thus, I could watch the Dragon Ball Z anime with subtitles which honestly was way more effective than brute forcing myself to understand the manga. It was actually much easier to understand, since the characters were speaking at the same time as I was reading. 

It’s kind of alarming how effective it was. At the time I feel like it influenced my own storytelling and writing at the time too. Whenever we had anything creative in class, somehow Dragon Ball would find a way to be involved in my school work. 

In specific, I think when I finally finished the series, fillers and all, it was my most notable literary experience. Because after all the time I spent reading the subtitles and watching the series, I gained the ability to not just see what I’m seeing and reading, but actually comprehend it. I found out my favorite character was Future Trunks, as unlike other Saiyans who suffered from overconfidence, Trunks handled threats as soon as he could. And he did it with style, being a swordsman and having a unique design compared to the other characters. My favorite “arc,” or section from the story, was the “Cell Saga,” as I was a big fan of the central villains, and everyone loves Gohan’s first Super Saiyan 2 transformation. Even things I didn’t like, like how I always found Chi-chi frustrating or why didn’t anyone listen to Bulma’s plan to use the Dragon Balls to stop the androids.

And I feel like that’s the most important thing I got out of the series. It showed me what reading was all about, and that it wasn’t so bad after all. After all, it’s like being told a story, except you get to pick the voice and reading speed. Even if the process was boring, the payoff at the end being a good story was something I could get behind. Eventually, I got into reading more manga and books in general. Over the years, I’ve actually read a lot more books. Fahrenheit 451, Into The Wild, and Lord of the Flies are some of my favorites. So I guess I have Dragon Ball to thank for getting me down the literary rabbit hole.

For years I was always ashamed of how I started off in school, since anime and manga just isn’t really held to the same esteem as other media. So whenever people talked about their early days in school I usually always ended up making some kind of excuse or different story. Most people’s most important literary experiences often tend to be more conventional books, so in a way I thought mine being a somewhat silly anime was embarrassing, especially when it came to telling teachers. But as a college student with many more years of life experience, I look back at my literary past in a better light now. Other people’s experiences were definitely good books. But for me? It was all Dragon Ball Z.