Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball has become a super-franchise that's attained a foothold on pop-culture like Star Wars and MARVEL, even if it's a somewhat more niche taste for some fanboys out there. Ever since 1996, when Dragon Ball Z (or DBZ) first got imported in the United States via Cartoon Network, the franchise's status in Western popular culture has become cataclysmic in scale and its characters have become household names, especially Goku himself.

Anime has become an interesting paradox in the entertainment industry: some relish its high-detail animation and storytelling whilst some reckon too many are all the same as each other. Yet in Japan anime is simply a domestic term for 'animation' period: not just specific to their own stuff. DBZ is like a nice concentrated form of all the good stuff that's come to define anime over the past couple of decades, even if it has some of the cliches built-in as part of its story. Thankfully the cliches add to the charm and over-the-top nature of the show's many fight scenes and character-driven comedy helps make DBZ a plentiful experience for even the most casual viewers of animated television.

This show is an energetic blast from the past that still has loads of charm and appeal for modern television audiences everywhere. Even if this isn't the very start of Goku's story (the original Dragon Ball covers that), it's still a great introduction to some of animation's most memorable characters.

First of all, yes I am a big anime fan and yes Dragonball Z is my hands down favorite anime. And let me tell you I've seen quite a bit. I'm not saying it's the best show out there, it's just "my" favorite. But I didn't write here just to praise the show. Not that at all. Here's why I wrote. I noticed that most of the negative comments written about this series all talk about how the show's sagas are basically the same thing over and over again (and yes I know they basically are). The writers of these comments also, more often than not, talk about how they hated the show so much that they stopped watching it after two or three episodes. Here is the weird part. How could they know all the sagas are pretty much the same thing over and over again if they only watched two or three episodes? More over, if they only watched two or three episodes of a show with well over 150 episodes, they have no right to write any kind of commentary about it at all. Finally, one more point. Lets say yes they did watch more episodes. If they hated it so much, why keep watching? If it was "that" bad, why watch another episode? There must have been something there that cried out for them to keep watching. Something they couldn't ignore no matter how much they tried. Something that had them watching every "crappy" episode in every "crappy" saga. And lets face it, if a show has that, it can't be all bad :)

I first saw Dragon Ball Z on the International Channel. It was entirely in Japanese with no subtitles, yet I could still get the gist of the story.

When tried watching the English dub on Cartoon Network, I couldn't get over it. It was an entirely different show. The music is different, the dubbing is horrible, they cut out huge scenes practically blotting entire episodes, digitize out a lot of the blood, change a lot of the great lines, for some reason change a lot of the names, and basically change plot points.

I couldn't stand it. Since then, I've gone to collecting it on DVD so I can watch the show as I am accustomed to watching, in Japanese. It's definitely not for children. It has profanity (and for some reason some of the profanity is in English some of it is your basic "k'usos"), nudity, blood, violence, and a lot of death (see Bejita;).

I keep my kids from watching those. They can see it on Cartoon Network if they want. That's just fine. The show was definitely "dumbed down" for children as if should have been for a non "Adult Swim" show. (But don't ask me why CN never thought DBZ qualified for Adult Swim instead of "Inuyasha.") However, if you are an adult, and want to watch the best anime show this side of "Akira," definitely watch DBZ, but ONLY in Japanese.

The only reason i gave it a 9 is because in some sagas like Frieza for example the graphics kind of suck and the tendency of the series to"kill time" like showing us the terrain and stuff which clearly is annoying,other than that the plot is awesome with minor holes, basically this is my favorite anime of all time since i was in the 6th grade!I remember back when i couldn't wait to catch an episode of DBZ only the sad part was that the only network that actually aired it in my country was RTL II,but i quickly got used to it,learned German :P and actually understood the series,and in comparison to the us version it was pretty good,the soundtrack was the original Japanese one and it didn't have to chsese lines like funimation does,in other words good ol RTL II saved me some trouble :D

Probably the greatest animated series of alltime.The drawings are simply superb, the characters and the whole story is so complex and thrilling you simply can't miss it. It's great the way they involve humor features in an epic story. 9,9/10