Dragon Ball Z: Doragon bôru zetto

I was going to write a huge long comment on this, but a lot of people really seem to hate this show so I just can't be bothered preaching to the unconvertable. I will say, however, I am a big fan of anime and this is one of my favourites. It's certainly my favourite anime TV series. People don't seem to realise that this is for kids, so screw the voice acting (which is better than many other kids shows) and animation (which is also better than many other kids shows). Comparing this to serious anime like Akira is like comparing He-Man to Gladiator. DBZ is light on the brain and heavy on the adrenal gland. Once you get into it it becomes very addictive, and your imagination covers over any bad acting or animation. Unless you have no imagination... Watch it from the beginning and just let yourself get sucked in to the amazing fights and ever increasing displays of power.

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.

Wha-? Are you crazy, Nah...the thing is, I really like this show, and it's NOT because of the fighting. Too many people just dimiss the show as a mindless punch-a-thon, as "that fighting anime that turned me off all fighting anime." The thing is, the characters are all really nicely developed. As we watch the show over the years, we get to see the characters grow, and it happens so gradually that we don't even realize it's happening. Toriyama's Freeza saga was probably the best-told part, despite the fact that the anime completely f-ed it up--the reason for everyone to be there in the first place actually made sense, and the transition from the Vegeta fight to the Freeza fight (and the reason Vegeta eventually joined with the rest of the group) was actually logical. I think the show has a lot more substance than everyone else says, but I realize by now that everyone's already made up their mind about the show and no matter what I say, their opinions will stay the soon.

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

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.