Spike up your hair and ready your Kamehameha hands, it’s time to kick butt as Goku!

Twenty years ago, maybe more, I remember standing up in front of the TV while the credits were rolling on an episode of Dragon Ball Z. I grabbed the landline phone and punched in the number to my best friend’s house with shaky fingers, and when she answered, she was the one who spoke first.

“Can you believe he did it?! Goku went Super Saiyan! Finally!”

Many people my age have similar memories about Dragon Ball Z, Akira Toriyama’s shonen-manga-turned-anime-turned-global-success. Its popularity continues to the present day, occupying a spot in the collective memory of otaku both in Japan and across the world.

So much so, in fact, that Bandai Namco is recreating it in video game format for the XBox One, Playstation 4, and Microsoft Windows platforms.

▼ Dragon Ball Z Kakarot, coming soon!

https://twitter.com/GAME_Bullring/status/1204760747567271937

A new commercial for the game was released this month, and it capitalizes perfectly on that long-held fondness for the show and manga that inspired it.

https://youtu.be/nHLu9T347aE

Our commercial starts with a businessman walking home, briefcase in hand. Along the way he comes across two kids playing, and when one of them crows “I’m a Super Saiyan!” it becomes obvious what their game is. He returns home, puts away his things, and retrieves a game from out of a plastic bag: Dragon Ball Z Kakarot.

As he loads up the game, the opening bars of the TV anime opening Cha-La Head-Cha-La play. Alongside a montage of boys at wildly disparate ages, a selection of male voices chime: “Back then…”

▼ Who among us didn’t do this with soap bubbles?

Then we’re treated to schoolboy memories of excitedly chatting about last night’s episode with friends, and how inevitably everyone ended up imitating Goku’s most famous move.

We then see an an older teen watching the next episode previews. As the screen declares the next episode title, the spoileriffic “Goku Dies! There’s Only One Last Chance!” the narration explains how sometimes he would get so excited about the next plot developments that he’d head right out to buy the manga.

Another man remembers how, in secret, he’d practice controlling his ki or life force, even if occasionally someone might catch him doing it.

▼ If I were this girl I would’ve Spirit Bombed both of them to kingdom come.

The commercial builds to its climax, with a whole range of boys at different eras and different ages emulating Goku’s classic Kamehameha yell, and a voice says, “Keep that faith inside you somewhere.”

And as the boys and the in-game version of Goku unleash their attacks, the voices chorus the tagline together: “All of us are Son Goku.”

The commercial then ends, saying the game will come out in Japan on January 16, 2020, with one last touching scene of the businessman smiling as he walks past the pair of kids playing at being Goku.

▼ The hashtag reads “Ora ni nare,” ora being how Goku refers to himself. “Become Goku!”

Dragon Ball Z has spanned generations, each with their own cherished memories about Goku, Vegeta, and the rest of the colorful cast, and the commercial did a great job at yanking at all of our heartstrings in one fell swoop.

Do you have a favorite DBZ memory you’re dying to see in the game? Let us know in the comments!

Source: YouTube/876TV via Hachima Kiko
Images: YouTube/876TV
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