I had the great fortune of watching the Philippine preview/premiere of Dragonball Evolution last Thursday, April 2, at SM North EDSA, all thanks to Bong =) — yes, for free. Was pretty skeptical since I heard from friends that it wasn’t good. Further, when I first saw the trailer months back, I kept complaining as to why the protagonist, Goku, was a white guy. I would’ve preferred the hero to be Asian, of course.

Right from the beginning of the movie up till the end, I was taken aback and was just kept in surreal awe and wonder. The movie was so clear — both in terms of visuals as well as story. In fact, it’s the clearest movie I’ve ever seen on the big screen. I deem that it played a major contributing factor for the stickiness of the movie. I understand that the cinema uses the D-Cinema system from Texas Instruments. Rather amazing I should say.

During the end credits, one name drew attention: Stephen Chow. You see, I’m an avid fan of Asian movies — especially Chinese and Southeast Asian ones. If you’ve seen Kung Fu Hustle and/or Shaolin Soccer, you would’ve noticed that the cinematography as well as martial arts choreography of Dragonball Evolution is very similar to those of the former two. When I saw Stephen’s name as the movie’s producer, it all became very clear.

While almost all, if not all, of the characters were Asian, it was very smart of them to place a white guy, who looked Eurasian, to play the role of Goku. I now understand that it’s a very good way to market the movie to the West and adds a breath of fresh air to this much-loved anime.

Dragonball Evolution’s Philippine preview - sponsored by SM Cinemas and Net-25, among others.

A very good friend of mine has the following as his IM display image: “‘Your stupid’? … My stupid what?”

It’s pretty clear that if the one communicating the statement were only to think, he/she would’ve added an apostrophe between U and R, and the letter E at the end of the first word. Back in high school, when weaving the web meant pouring into hundreds of lines of bare HTML that rendered very simple interfaces, I got the chance to design my alma mater’s (then-called) Computer Education Department’s site. Having a penchant for branding and marketing, I looked for something that could iconify the Department’s vis/mis.

I chanced upon IBM’s one-word slogan - Think. At that time, I didn’t know that “Think” went all the way back to Watson Sr. All I knew was that it was being used to campaign IBM’s resurrection as led by Lou Gerstner. This inspired me to propose “Think Again” to be the Department’s theme — almost a decade before National Geographic started using the phrase in and for its branding. My proposed branding even had a graphical element — an abstract illustration of Auguste Rodin’s Thinker, like the replica found at Stanford.

Fast forward to 2009, we see IBM going back to its roots, to its core, in its campaign to change the world. One of the videos I stumbled into that I really love is the following.

Think.