Texas Attorney General-Elect Nathan Johnson Scored 67 Dragon Ball Z Episodes Before Politics

Among the many surprises of a Democratic wave in Texas, one stands out for fans of anime: the newly elected Texas attorney general, Nathan Johnson, spent years writing the music for the English-language version of Dragon Ball Z.

Johnson, a Democrat and sitting state senator, defeated Republican Mayes Middleton in the November 3 midterm election. According to IGN, he will be the state’s first Democratic attorney general since 1994. He won on a night when, as The Independent reports, Gina Hinojosa unseated three-term Governor Greg Abbott and James Talarico beat Ken Paxton for a U.S. Senate seat. Variety adds that Democrats also took control of the U.S. House and Senate nationally.

From Law Office to Funimation’s Score Desk

Johnson represented Texas’s 16th Senate district from 2018 and, per his campaign website cited by Variety, passed 134 bills over four sessions. Before that he practiced law and ran a music-production company. That company scored 67 episodes of Funimation’s in-house English dub of Dragon Ball Z, plus five films: The World’s Strongest, The Tree of Might, Broly – Second Coming, Fusion Reborn and Wrath of the Dragon.

IGN recounts how he got the job, drawing on a 2012 interview with the fan site The Dao of Dragon Ball. Johnson was close to giving up on music when he called about renting an office near his home. The man who answered, Robert Cocanaugher, turned out to be both the landlord and a Funimation co-founder. Johnson says he had never seen an anime or scored anything commercial. He called the episode “one of the most bizarre collisions of circumstance I’ve ever experienced.” IGN notes he was the second composer on Funimation’s dub, and the last, since the company’s music branch was later cut to save money.

Why the Texas Attorney General’s Past Resonates

Polygon places the work in a pivotal moment. Funimation’s dub replaced an earlier version, produced by Ocean Group, that was criticized for heavy cuts and edits imposed by Saban Entertainment. The Funimation version, which aired on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block, became the one many Western viewers remember. It helped build the audience that now makes anime a mainstream global phenomenon.

Johnson has leaned into that legacy. In a June 22 Facebook post, he wrote: “If you grew up watching Dragon Ball Z, you might know me better than you think.” The post accompanied a conversation with state Sen. Taylor Rehmet. In it he recalled his then one-year-old son on his knee as the screen exploded with action, saying, “Oh, Daddy, Goku!” The work, he said, earned him “street cred with my kid’s friends” and “a cultural connection that very few people have had the opportunity to have.” He also said the experience shaped his direction and still connects with many Texans.

A Footnote to a Political Upset

The anime credit is a sideshow to the election’s main story, and no source suggests it swayed the vote. Still, it gives the incoming Texas attorney general a rare biography: a lawyer who set his career aside for music, then landed a job on one of the most recognizable animated series of its era. Polygon also points out a possible mix-up. Another Nathan Johnson, Nathan Tyler Johnson, is a well-known film composer who scores the movies of his cousin, director Rian Johnson. The two are different people.

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