Many subscribers were shocked and appalled by Viz's announcement in Dragonball, part three number three, that they were censoring the comic in order to meet the complaints of a few parents, who felt some of the material in the monthly manga was objectionable. I for one wrote a letter to Viz immediately. As an adult subscriber I was MAD, because I paid a lot of money to subscribe to the series, ONLY because it was uncensored. I never received a reply back from Viz, which made me even more IRATE. I even found myself on the brink of selling my entire collection and not renewing my subscriptions for Dragonball or Dragonball Z.

      Then a couple of weeks ago I was surfing and found an interesting story at Anime News Network from Planet Namek, about a petition started by a young man to Viz insisting that an uncensored version be made available for mature readers. I wanted to sign this petition myself, but found it already had been submitted. So I decided to the next best thing, interview the author of the petition and give him the props he deserves.

      I now would like to present the first and only interview featuring Julian (his last name was omitted because of his age-Editor) the young man who gave thousands of fans of the Dragonball manga a voice!

Julian: I don't have a website per se, though I got a lot of support through Planetnamek.com, and they usually post anything of interest that I dig up. I was mentioned on the Anime News Network the other day, because I had a note posted that Viz would likely do the uncensored graphic novels, pending approval from Shueisha. Apparently, someone at Viz read the article and said that though they wanted to, they needed approval from Japan first, which is exactly what I said! People are strange sometimes.

Julian: I started kicking the idea around in early August. I was reading Dragonball part three number three, and discovered a note that said Viz had begun censoring the series because of parental complaints, and that the upcoming graphic novels were going to be censored as well. I am a firm believer that parents are responsible for what their children read, and it is their fault, and not the company's fault, that they (parents) find something they gave to their child inappropriate.

I was outraged at first, and started sending out letters to various site webmasters, VegettoEX at Vegex.Seranime.net, Mr. E at Planet Namek, etc.; until I had gotten a response from Eric Pham, head of the manga section at Planetnamek.com. He agreed that though success might not be likely, it would be best to try it.

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