Drake Surprises Dragon Ball Fans With Hilarious Kamehameha Shout Out

Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball franchise is bigger and more widespread than ever recently as it comes off the success of a massively popular anime series, movie, promotional anime series for an arcade game, and a manga that’s currently taking the fandom by storm. With this many projects coming out of the franchise on top of Dragon Ball Z‘s 30th Anniversary, all sorts of surprising fans are starting to come out of the woodwork.

One of the more recent surprises is rapper, actor, and producer Drake, who incorporated a very familiar pose into his dance moves in a recent music video as he invokes Dragon Ball’s famous Kamehameha Wave.

In the official video for Chris Brown’s “No Guidance,” Brown and Drake get into a dance battle in which Drake pulls out some interesting moves. One of which includes the familiar wind up and release that Dragon Ball fans are all too aware of. While there’s some debate over whether this is a reference to Dragon Ball or another famous wind-up with Street Fighter’s Hadouken technique, this is a perfect example of just how much anime and video game culture have spread throughout pop culture in general in the last few years.

The Dragon Ball franchise, in particular, is experiencing an explosive level of popularity. Fans are currently hoping for news that the series would return to anime someday, and recent demonstrations such as the world record breaking Kamehameha Wave during San Diego Comic-Con 2019 prove that the franchise will not be slowing down any time soon. Regardless of where this move is sourced from, it’s a hilarious showing from Drake and has certainly gotten the attention of anime fans everywhere.

Anime and rap have had a very deep connection for a long time, and hopefully Drake’s demonstration brings even a few more curious fans into the anime fold! Dragon Ball Super currently airs its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonami programming block on Saturday evenings. It is also available to stream on Funimation and Amazon Video. The Japanese-language release of the series is complete, and available to stream on FunimationNOW and Crunchyroll. The manga has chapters that can currently be read for free thanks to Viz Media, and Dragon Ball Super’s big movie, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.