It’s been a rough year for Dragon Ball fans who grew up with the show. Earlier in 2024, Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama passed away at 68 years old, and now the English narrator, Doc Harris, has died at 76. Kids who rushed home from school to watch the show on Toonami would recognize his voice easily, as he’s the one who gave recaps at the start of each episode and also popularized the phrase “find out next time on Dragon Ball Z.”
Broadcast Dialogue reports Harris went in for minor surgery last month but passed away in the hospital on October 5. He lent his voice to more than 220 episodes of Dragon Ball Z, but that’s not the only anime he was part of. Most recently, he appeared in five episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in 2019. While many fans recognize him from his work in DBZ, he hasn’t served as the narrator for the series since 2003. The current-day English narrator is Kyle Hebert, best known now as the voice of Gohan. To his credit, Hebert does his best to emulate the same style as Harris, so his presence has still been felt even if he’s not the one narrating.
Actor Ian James Corlett, who was the English voice of Goku in Dragon Ball Z, wrote on Instagram that his friend and former colleague was “one of a kind”. He added that Harris was a “HUGE force” in his early career, “lived and breathed music” and had a “keen eye for movies”.
The passing of both Harris and Toriyama come at a tough time for fans because the Dragon Ball franchise is almost more popular than ever before. Not only is there a new video game, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero but there’s also Dragon Ball Daima, a new show that’s also Toriyama’s last work in the franchise.
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Dragon Ball keeps on trekking along
Dragon Ball Daima was announced back in 2023, and American viewers can get their first taste of it once it debuts on Netflix on October 18. The show depicts the characters transformed back into children, so if you yearned for a return to the early Dragon Ball days, this could very easily be a series that catches your attention. It takes place following the events of Dragon Ball Z and the defeat of Majin Buu, but it’s before the introduction of Beerus and Dragon Ball Super. This season has 20 episodes, and it’s not yet clear if there are plans to let it run longer if it needs to. Toriyama only planned the initial season, so any future episodes would be without him.
As for Sparking! Zero, it has been a hit among critics so far. At the time of this writing, it has an 83 score on Metacritic, and it’s a return to the Budokai Tenkaichi games that fans have been wanting for years. While it might be jam-packed with fan service, it’s also a love letter to the franchise, and all fans of the Dragon Ball series can find something to like, even if they aren’t traditionally fans of fighting games. Whether it’s a new show or a video game, there’s something good out there for Dragon Ball fans in 2024, something that might not have seemed like a guarantee 20 years ago.
- Release Date
- September 13, 1996
- Cast
- Christopher Sabat , Scott McNeil , Sean Schemmel , Brian Drummond , Sonny Strait