Dragon ball has always been a continual presence in my life, even when I wasn't a fan I would hear about it and learn about it through my cousin's who would make me play one of the old Budokai games on their ps2s, eventually when i finally started watching z, around the cell saga, the thing that struck me about it beyond all other cartoons was how every battle was a fight for survival where victory wasn't always guaranteed, the heroes would often lose and lose dramatically, far from the campy superhero shows id watch, after watching the cell saga, id start from original dragon ball and on wards on my old windows xp computer, and I slowly grew up alongside Goku as I widdled away the original series episodes, until I eventually reached z and was met with one of the greatest story arcs in history, a culmination of all Gokus struggles as he faced Frieza someone so diametrically opposed to everything he stood for, king piccolo was evil but Piccolo jr could still be reformed, Frieza couldn't, he was a naturally gifted monster who seemingly could not be stopped, the series dipped in quality after the Frieza saga, I was disappointed by resurrection of f when it came out, but dragon ball never stopped being a continual presence in my life, i would try to build endurance by filling my backpack with rocks like the turtle shells, i would watch hours upon hours of videos recreating the training and foods from dragon ball in order to become stronger, i would watch dragon ball what if videos in Mexico speculating really stupid ideas, dragon ball has always felt like a friend to me, and now that Akira Toriyama is dead, i feel like I've lost a long time friend, now everything made past this point will be made by Toyotaro and will lack his creative spark and vision, Akira Toriyama's dragon ball has ended and now the world is a little worse.