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Here in the year 2025, it is hard to remember a time when people didn’t know that Dragon Ball was the story of Goku, the heroic Saiyan who is single-minded in his desire to get stronger. However, back in 1999 in Texas, that wasn’t quite as well-known as it is now, so we can forgive Sean Schemmel for originally thinking he was playing a supporting character rather than the star of Dragon Ball Z.

During Florida Supercon 2025, Christopher Sabat, Eric Vale, and Sonny Strait all got together for a panel about Dragon Ball Z. During it, Sabat, who plays Vegeta, Piccolo, and a host of other characters in the show as well as serving as ADR Director for the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball Z, admitted that he had to tell Schemmel that Goku was actually the main character of the show.

A little bit of context is important here. You need to remember that Funimation didn’t begin dubbing Dragon Ball Z with their in-house actors and staff until episode 54 of the series (during the Ginyu Saga). Before that, the series was dubbed by actors at Ocean Studios, so Schemmel hadn’t played Goku until he was deep into the fight against the Ginyu Force. So when discussing those early recording sessions with Sean Schemmel, Christopher Sabat said that he “still hadn’t told Sean Schemmel that he was the main character of the show yet. He still thought he was a supporting character.”

After Sonny Strait asked how long Schemmel thought that he was just playing a supporting character, Sabat replied, “For a while… I did have to finally go, ‘Sean, you know you are the lead in this, right?’ He was like, ‘What?! Really? I just thought it was about a green guy who’s training someone in the woods!’”

If you want to hear more Dragon Ball Z stories from the people who have been voicing the characters for years, you can check out the full panel from Florida Supercon 2025 here.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

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