Nathan Johnson was just elected as the new attorney general of Texas — but before he was in politics, he actually composed the music for 67 episodes of Dragon Ball Z.
The United States midterm elections took place yesterday, November 3. The country’s Democratic party saw several major victories in this election, with the state of Texas being one of the most notable; for the first time in 30 years, the state ‘turned blue,’ with Democratic candidates James Talarico elected as U.S. senator and Gina Hinojosa as governor.
Another Democratic candidate who won the vote was Nathan Johnson, who was elected as Texas’ attorney general. Besides being the state’s first Democratic AG since 1994, he’s making headlines for a different, rather unexpected reason: He once composed the soundtrack for English episodes of Dragon Ball Z.
Johnson opened up about his past with the franchise in a June 22 Facebook post, where he described what it was like working on the famous anime series while being a father to young children.
“If you grew up watching Dragon Ball Z, you might know me better than you think: I composed the musical scores for 67 episodes and five movies, and had a great time doing it. Catching up recently with Taylor Rehmet, we talked about how composing for DBZ influenced my direction, and how the show still connects with so many Texans today,” he captioned the post.
“I had a one-year-old at the time, and I remember him sitting on my knee and stuff blowing up [on screen], and he’s like, ‘Oh, daddy, Goku!’ He just thought it was super cool. Even then, it got me street cred with my kids’ friends, and it gave me a creative outlet and a cultural connection that very few people have had the opportunity to have,” he said in his conversation with Rehmet.
Nathan Johnson was fascinated with music as a child, but decided to pursue a law degree in university, which has since come in handy in this recent election. However, before he became attorney general, he put his legal career on hold to pursue music, eventually crossing paths with one of Funimation’s co-founders, Robert Cocanaugher.
Cocanaugher was the landlord of a house he was hoping to rent. In a beautiful coincidence, this led to him being hired on as the second composer for Funimation’s in-house English dub of Dragon Ball Z. He was the last replacement composer used for the company’s dub, or any other English version of the anime, due to the Funimation’s music branch getting axed to cut costs.
Johnson spoke about his time at Funimation in an August 2012 interview with The Dao of Dragon Ball, saying he was nearly ready to quit his struggling music career when he first met Cocanaugher.
“A place near my house was for rent. I called the number on the sign out front to rent an office, and the guy on the phone said, ‘What will you use it for?’ I said ‘To practice law, but to be honest, I might throw an electric keyboard in there and make some musical noise, but nothing to disturb the other tenants.’ He said, ‘What kind of music?’ Well, it turned out the person on the phone and the owner of the building was Robert Cocanaugher,” he said.
“I had never seen Dragon Ball, never heard of Dragon Ball Z in my life. Never seen an episode of an anime in my life. I had never scored anything commercial in my life. But Barry and obert apparently liked my music,” he continued. “…It was one of the most bizarre collisions of circumstance I’ve ever experienced.”
Johnson isn’t the only political candidate going viral for their connections to the entertainment space. Republican Marty O’Donnell, who composed music for the original Halo games and Destiny at Bungie, was the subject of a joke by winning Democratic opponent Susie Lee, who poked fun at his loss by posting the famous Vine of college students singing Halo’s monk chant in a bathroom.