Nathan Johnson composed music for 67 episodes of Funimation's uncut Dragon Ball Z redub and five DBZ movies. Now he's the first Democrat to win Texas attorney general since 1994.
Democratic state senator Nathan Johnson won the Texas attorney general race on 3 November, US time, beating Republican Mayes Middleton.
He scored 67 episodes of Funimation's uncut Dragon Ball Z redub and five DBZ movies, including Broly: Second Coming.
He admitted he'd never watched DBZ before being hired, but later said "I can never not be a part of Dragon Ball Z."
The AP had him on about 52 per cent. He's the first Democrat to win the job since 1994.
A physics graduate and business litigator, he replaces Ken Paxton in January 2027.
Here’s a sentence nobody expected to write in 2026: the bloke who composed the music for Dragon Ball Z is about to become the top lawyer in Texas.
Nathan Johnson, a Democratic state senator from Dallas, won the race for Texas attorney general on 3 November, US time. Before he was a politician, and alongside his day job as a lawyer, he scored 67 episodes of Funimation’s uncut Dragon Ball Z redub and five DBZ movies. His power level, as the internet has spent the last day pointing out, is now over 9,000.
Johnson owned a music production company before he got into politics. When Funimation redubbed the early seasons of Dragon Ball Z, uncut, for its Ultimate Uncut and remastered season box sets, it couldn’t use Bruce Faulconer’s score, the music most western fans grew up with on Cartoon Network. So it brought in Johnson to write a new one.
He ended up scoring the first 67 episodes of that redub, plus five films:
The funny bit? According to Dexerto, he admitted in a 2012 interview that he’d never watched the show before he was hired. He came round to it, though, and said he especially liked Gohan’s relationship with his dad. “I can never not be a part of Dragon Ball Z,” he said in 2017.
DBZ fans being DBZ fans, his score has been argued about on forums for nearly two decades, mostly by people comparing it to Faulconer’s. Some reckon it’s forgettable, others swear by his Fusion Reborn and Wrath of the Dragon music. Either way, it’s on the box sets a lot of people own.
Music was never the whole story. Johnson, born in Fort Worth in 1968, has a physics degree from the University of Arizona and a law degree from the University of Texas, and has spent his career as a business and bankruptcy litigator.
In 2018 he ran for the Texas Senate in a Dallas district Republicans had held for decades, and beat the incumbent, Don Huffines. Anime News Network even covered it at the time as the DBZ composer winning a Senate seat. The Texas Tribune says he spent the next eight years building a reputation as a dealmaker who’d work across party lines in a Republican-run chamber. He’s also said Dragon Ball’s theme of unlikely allies teaming up reflects his politics, which is honestly the most on-brand thing a politician has ever said.
Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat as attorney general since Dan Morales in 1994, so this is a big deal there. The seat was open because Republican Ken Paxton ran for the US Senate instead of going for a fourth term.
Johnson’s opponent was Republican Mayes Middleton, an oil and gas heir who, according to the Texas Tribune, spent close to US$20 million of his own money to beat US Representative Chip Roy for the nomination. With about 5,200 of 5,300 polling places reporting, the Associated Press had Johnson on around 52 per cent to Middleton’s 46. Middleton called him to concede.
So what will he actually do? Johnson says he’ll focus on consumer protection, anti-corruption and child support enforcement, and that he’ll sue the federal government when he thinks it’s overstepping in Texas. “I think people are tired of being treated like they’re stupid,” he told the Texas Tribune. He takes office in January 2027.
We’re a gaming site in New Zealand and Australia, so we’re not going to tell Texans how to vote. But as a piece of nerd trivia, this is elite. Most politicians’ secret pasts are a dodgy uni band or a regrettable haircut. This guy wrote the music for Broly: Second Coming.
It’s also a nice reminder that the people who make the stuff we love end up everywhere. Somewhere in Texas there’s a DBZ fan whose childhood box sets were scored by their new attorney general. That’s a better origin story than most anime protagonists get.
Faulconer or Johnson? Settle it once and for all in the GetRekt Discord.
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