The impact of Dragon Ball Z is enormous. For more than 20
years, the series has stood the test of time and has reached out to many
children and adults alike across the globe. This is mainly due to the
series' very clear representations of good overpowering evil, love
overpowering hate, the importance of family and friends, and an
unyielding passion toward achieving goals. The series also featured
heavy sci-fi overtones, and a greater emphasis on fighting - making it
extremely popular among adolescent boys who had grown up alongside the
original series.
Dragon Ball Z has also played a large part in contributing
to the popularity of anime in western culture. Though the first two
seasons of the series were played on various networks in the U.S. in
1996, it would not take off for two more years until August 31, 1998,
when Cartoon Network featured the show in its action-oriented Toonami
lineup. Toonami heralded the show as "The Greatest Action Cartoon Ever
Made," and it greatly boosted the popularity of Toonami, but unknowingly
did so much more. Dragon Ball Z's newfound popularity helped to
bring about a greater interest in Japanese cartoons in the eyes of
western youth, which in turn fueled the western anime industry to new
heights. Because of its success on Toonami,
Toonami 1997-2008
Dragon Ball Z was the first anime that made its way to the Wall Street Journal, who declared it "A Huge Cartoon Hit."
Many items such as apparel, backpacks, lunch boxes, writing utensils, candies, drinks, foods and more feature Dragon Ball Z,
in both Japan and North America. Action figures, collectible figurines,
plush toys, bobble heads, and character model kits were also made. The
fast food chain Burger King featured Dragon Ball Z toys twice in the early 2000's. Despite the TV series officially ending in Japan in 1996, and in 2003 in North America, Dragon Ball Z video games are created nearly every year for almost every console on the market, helping to introduce the Dragon Ball Z
series to younger generations that never got a chance to see it air on
television. These games usually do very well in the market. Popular
sites such as YouTube
have attracted large Dragon Ball Z fan communities over the course of the last few years, and Dragon Ball related videos receive many views. All of these examples showcase the incredible popularity of Dragon Ball Z in many countries of the world.
Filler is used to pad out the series for many reasons; in the case of Dragon Ball Z,
more often than not, it was because the anime was running alongside the
manga, and there was no way for the anime to run ahead of the manga
(since Toriyama was still writing it, at the same time).
Frieza Saga
The company behind the anime, Toei Animation,
would occasionally make up their own side stories to either further
explain things, or simply to extend the series. Filler doesn't come only
in the form of side stories, though; sometimes it is as simple as
adding some extra attacks into a fight. One of the more infamous
examples of filler is the Frieza Saga. After Frieza had set the Planet Namek
to blow up in five minutes, the final fight with Frieza still lasted
well over five episodes, much less five minutes, although this can be
attributed to the fact that Namek simply took longer to explode than
Frieza expected. Also, there were many numerous filler scenes that took
place while the battle with Frieza was in motion, which accounts for
much of the footage during the planet's explosion.
As the anime series was forced to expand 12 pages of manga text
into 25 minutes of animation footage, these changes were introduced to
kill time or to allow the (anime) writers to explore some other aspect
of the series' universe. The Other World Tournament between the Cell Games Saga and the Majin Buu Saga, and the Garlic Jr. Saga (Garlic Jr.'s return from the Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone movie) between the Frieza Saga and Trunks Saga are both good examples of this.
Besides having filler scenes and episodes, there are many changes from the original manga. Among them are the following:
DBZ - The History of Trunk
Kamehameha!
When Tien Shinhan loses his arm while fighting Nappa, his arm becomes a stump with only a small amount of blood seen. In the manga, the scene is much more gory.
In the original manga, Appule finds all the Namekians in the village attacked by Vegeta dead and tells Frieza, who just tells him to call the Ginyu Force. In the anime, the soldier is changed to another soldier referred to as "Orlen"
(in the closed captioning for the Ocean Dub VHS
tapes; it is unclear if
this is canonical however) who is killed by Frieza when he tells that
he killed the last survivor of the village without asking him where
Vegeta was.
In the manga, after Frieza survives Goku's Spirit Bomb, he immediately strikes down Piccolo with his Death Beam
technique, but in the anime, he fires his beam at Goku, only for
Piccolo to jump in the way and get struck down by the beam anyway.
In the manga, Frieza's full power was still never a match for Goku's Super Saiyan form, but in the anime, Frieza appears to have the upper hand for a short time before he begins to tire.
In the anime, when Vegeta is brought back to life on Planet
Namek, he manages to witness some of the battle between Goku and Frieza,
as well as Goku's Super Saiyan form, before being teleported to Earth
by the Namekian Dragon Balls. In the manga, he is teleported to Earth
almost immediately after being revived and does not get a chance to see
Goku as a Super Saiyan for the first time until Goku returns to Earth
himself later on.
When Dr. Gero
first appears in the series (as Android 20), he grabs a man by the neck
and tears him through the roof of a car. In the original manga, he
crushes the man's neck afterwards, tearing his head off.
In the manga, when Goku fully recovers from the Heart Virus, Chi-Chi finds him simply looking out the window of the bedroom he was resting in at Kame House. In the anime, however, Chi-Chi finds him outside the house, firing several Kamehameha blasts across the ocean.
During Gohan and Cell's Beam Struggle in the anime, Piccolo, Krillin, Tien, and Yamcha
unsuccessfully try to distract Cell before Vegeta succeeds in doing so,
whereas in the manga, they all simply observe the struggle and Vegeta
is the only one to attack Cell from behind.
Though the flashback of Future Trunks and Future Gohan fighting Androids 17 and 18
is present in both the anime and the manga, there are notable
discrepancies between the flashback and the scene depicted in the TV
special Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks. In the special, Gohan had not lost his arm yet at beginning of the
story, Trunks had not yet achieved his Super Saiyan form too, and there
was rain in the scene in question.
When Vegito fights Super Buu
(with Gohan absorbed) in the manga, Vegito immediately transforms into
his Super Saiyan form. In the anime, Vegito fought in his base form for a
while before becoming a Super Saiyan.
When Goku begins his battle against Kid Buu in the manga, he transforms immediately into his Super Saiyan 3 form. In the anime, however, Goku starts the battle as a Super Saiyan 2, and manages to hold his own against Kid Buu for a while before ascending to Super Saiyan 3.
In the manga, many characters have a different number of
fingers on their hands; such as Piccolo (3 fingers and a thumb), Dodoria
(3 thumb-like fingers), and Imperfect form Cell (two long fingers and a long thumb). In the anime, everybody has human-like hands with 4 fingers and a thumb.
Dragon Ball Z was marketed to appeal to a wide range of
viewers from all ages, and contains crude humor and occasional excesses
of violence which are commonly seen as inappropriate for younger
audiences by American standards. When it was marketed in the US, the
distribution company FUNimation Entertainment
alongside with Saban decided to initially focus exclusively on the
young children's market, because the anime market was still small
compared to the much larger children's cartoon market. This censorship
often had unintentionally humorous results, such as changing all
references to death so the dead characters were merely going to "another
dimension", and digitally altering two ogres' shirts to read "HFIL" instead of "HELL".
Starting with the Captain Ginyu Saga
on Cartoon Network, censorship was reduced due to fewer restrictions on
cable programming. FUNimation did the dubbing on their own this time
around with their own voice actors. In 2004, FUNimation began to redub the first two sagas of Dragon Ball Z, to remove the problems that were caused from their previous partnership with Saban. They also redubbed the first three movies.
Mr. Satan aka Hercule
However, the show still retained some level of censorship, not
out of FCC laws, but out of choice by Funimation, so as to cater to the
possible sensitivity of western audiences. For example, Mr. Satan was renamed Hercule to avoid any religious slurs; his daughter, Videl, was a play on the word Devil, but FUNimation felt that the connection was obscure enough to not worry about.
Dragon Ball Z follows the adventures of the adult Goku
who, along with his companions, defends the earth against an assortment
of villains ranging from intergalactic space fighters and conquerers,
unnaturally powerful androids and near indestructible magical creatures.
While the original Dragon Ball anime followed Goku through childhood into adulthood, Dragon Ball Z is a continuation of his adulthood life, but at the same time parallels the maturation of his son, Gohan , as well as characters from Dragon Ball and
more. The separation between the series is also significant as the
latter series takes on a more dramatic and serious tone. The anime also
features characters, situations and back-stories not present in the
original manga.
Production history
The main characters of Dragon Ball Z
The anime first premiered in Japan on April 26, 1989 (on Fuji TV) at
7:30 p.m. and ended on January 31, 1996. The other names the production
was considering for this second series before they settled on Dragon Ball Z were Dragon Ball: Gohan's Big Adventure, New Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball 2, Dragon Ball Wonder Boy, and Dragon Ball 90.
Toriyama's humor/parody manga Neko Majin, released after Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, features several concepts introduced in the series, and several Dragon Ball Z characters make various appearances in this manga. After Dragon Ball Z, the story of Goku and friends continues in the anime-only series Dragon Ball GT, which is not based on a manga by Akira Toriyama.
In the U.S., the series ran between 1996 and 2003, though not
always on the same networks or with continuity of dubbing (for details
on the dubbing problems, see Ocean Dub and FUNimation Dub).
It aired in the UK, albeit with the same dubbing problem, on Cartoon
Network, premiering on March 6, 2000 and running on that channel until
2002. The Majin Buu Saga, Fusion Saga and Kid Buu Saga
were later broadcast on CNX (which later changed its name to
"Toonami"), with the show ending on February 28, 2003. After the
finished run it was repeated daily, until the Toonami merge with Cartoon
Network Too.
In April 2009, a new 'refresh' of Dragon Ball Z began airing on Japanese television. This recut is titled Dragon Ball Z Kai.
Dragon Ball Z (ドラゴンボールZ; Doragon Boru Zetto, commonly abbreviated as DBZ) is the long-running sequel to the anime Dragon Ball. The series is a close adaptation of the second (and far longer) portion of the Dragon Ball manga written and drawn by Akira Toriyama. In the United States, the manga's second portion is also titled Dragon Ball Z to prevent confusion for younger readers.
