#jbvo

News - After being considered “lost media” for over 2 decades, a lost Cartoon Network episode of JBVO featuring Dragon Ball Z has been unearthed!

A spin-off of Johnny Bravo, JBVO was a request show where the blond-haired character took call-ins from viewers for cartoons they wanted to see. In one particular episode, a caller named Jennifer requested their favorite episode of Dragon Ball Z, which Johnny agreed to by playing it sped up (since the episodes of JBVO were only 14 minutes long), and gave some color commentary over as well. 

Because this was a request show, episodes never got re-aired. But thanks to an internet denizen named Sanders, who reached out to a Youtuber to say that they were in possession of every episode from JBVO (via their mother who had worked on the show at Cartoon Network), this unique piece of American Dragon Ball Z media has been recovered (with plans to recover the entire JBVO series as well!) 

The Dragon Ball Z episode of JBVO, which aired on May 7, 2000 on Cartoon Network. It is Episode 6 of JBVO.

The full episode was considered lost media until May 14, 2023 when it was uploaded to the Internet Archive by a user named SandersPlanet.

In the episode, a fan request letter was sent by a girl named Jennifer from Sterling, Colorado to air her favorite episode of Dragon Ball Z: Episode 105 (Episode 90 in the American episode order). Johnny explains that due to time constraints the Dragon Ball Z episode can't be aired unless fast-forwarded (both JBVO and DBZ have half-hour long episodes). As the Dragon Ball Z episode is shown, Johnny commentates over the episode with the American dub audio vaguely being heard in the background.

The Dragon Ball Z segment begins at 13:12 and ends at 14:53 in the episode.

The episode also features a crossover episode of Scooby-Doo with Johnny Bravo, and the Rhapsody Rabbit episode of Merrie Melodies featuring Bugs Bunny.

Something I’ve been thinking about lately, and one of the things I miss most about cartoons and kid programming in the ‘90s, is the hosts that presented them. Whether it was a show with multiple segments, or a several hour marathon of some kind, something about characters talking to you and telling you what was coming up next made your viewing experience feel like an event, something special, something that you, yourself, were involved in and participating in, and not just passively consuming.

This is something that’s been missing for a long time, and something that’s much, much harder to do in the streaming era. Sure, we can still watch Tiny Toons on DVD, and “binge watch”, as we call it these days, an entire season of our favorite shows. But there’s less of sense of interaction, however artificial it may have been, and less of a sense of the shows being specifically selected for the audience in that particular moment in time. There were also programs like Nick in the Afternoon (with its U-Pick gimmick) and JBVO, where you could actually directly influence what you watched. You do, of course, have the freedom to watch whatever you want if you subscribe to the right streaming services, but to me, it was the characters that made all the difference.

It sorta gave the illusion that these characters were alive, at least on some other plane of existence. It also has a similar appeal as old school variety shows like Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson, or even Vaudeville and circuses.

An official JBVO: Your All Request Cartoon Show letter from Cartoon Network, sent to a girl named Allyson in January 2001. Allyson requested the Powerpuff Girls episode "Buttercrush." The Johnny photo included with the letter was not scanned. Found on the archived Cartoon Network's Fridays: The Fansite. Note the 'Do with monkey with me' typo.