Dragon Ball Screenwriter Reveals One of Its Star’s Earliest Hurdles

The Shonen franchise created by Akira Toriyama has been running for decades, covering the story of Goku and the other Z Fighters across the series of Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball Super. Over the course of the anime adaptation, Masako Nozawa has voiced Son Goku for the entirety of the series, with the actor playing the Shonen protagonist for over twenty-three years. Now, a recent quote has emerged from the screenwriter of the series, Takao Koyama, about one of the hurdles that Nozawa had in her earliest days of bringing the son of Bardock and Gine to life.

Twitter User Herms98 shared the recent quote from the Dragon Ball screenwriter wherein he documents that the biggest problem that was facing Nozawa in her earliest performances:

“In January 1986, Masako Nozawa’s heart was complicated when she faced the dubbing of the first episode of “Dragon Ball“. Of course, it was full of excitement to play a new character, but there was one lump. It was excluded from the role of Kitaro in the third series of “GeGeGe no Kitaro” that started in October of the previous year.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the franchise GeGeGe no Kitaro, the spooky supernatural series first emerged in 1960 and has been a long-running story within the medium of anime, receiving countless television shows and movies. In this story documenting the early days of Nozawa, the voice actor had played the protagonist of this ghost-filled series in the first two films but was passed on for the third, leaving her, apparently, feeling down even though she had just scored the voice of Son Goku.

Currently, Nozawa is eighty-five years old but is showing no signs of quitting her role in the Dragon Ball franchise, having brought to life not just Goku, but his sons Gohan and Goten as well. With next year seeing the return of Dragon Ball Super via the feature-length film, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, we’re crossing our fingers that Masako still has many years of voice acting ahead of her. 

What do you think of this early story in the history of Dragon Ball? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of Dragon Ball. 

Via Herms98