New HQ Dragon Ball Z Cover

Description

Dragon Ball Z , Hepburn: Doragon Bōru Zetto, commonly abbreviated as DBZ is a Japanese anime television series produced by Toei Animation. It is the sequel to the Dragon Ball anime and adapts the latter 325 chapters of the original 519-chapter Dragon Ball manga series created by Akira Toriyama. Dragon Ball Z aired in Japan on Fuji TV from April 26, 1989 to January 31, 1996, before getting dubbed in territories including the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, India and Latin America.
Dragon Ball Z follows the adventures of Goku who, along with his companions, defend the Earth against villains ranging from conquerors , androids and other creatures . While the original Dragon Ball anime followed Goku from childhood to early adulthood, Dragon Ball Z is a continuation of his adult life, but at the same time parallels the lives of his sons, Gohan and Goten, as well as the development of his rivals Piccolo and Vegeta from enemies to allies.
Due to the success of the anime in the United States, the manga chapters comprising its story were initially released by Viz Media under the title Dragon Ball Z. Additional works called animanga were released in Japan, which adapt the animation to manga form. Dragon Ball Z's popularity has spawned numerous releases which have come to represent the majority of content in the Dragon Ball universe; including 17 movies and 148 video games, many of them being only released in Japan, and a host of soundtracks stemming from this material. Dragon Ball Z remains a cultural icon through numerous adaptations, including a more-recent remastered broadcast titled Dragon Ball Kai. There have also been two sequel series; Dragon Ball GT and Dragon Ball Super .


Plot summary
Dragon Ball Z picks up five years after the end of the Dragon Ball anime, with Goku as a young adult and father to his son, Gohan. A humanoid alien named Raditz arrives on Earth in a spacecraft and tracks down Goku, revealing to him that he is his long-lost big brother and that they are members of a nearly extinct extraterrestrial race called the Saiyans . The Saiyans had sent Goku to Earth as an infant to conquer the planet for them, but he suffered a traumatic brain injury soon after his arrival and lost all memory of his mission, as well as his blood-thirsty Saiyan nature. Goku refuses to help Raditz continue the mission, which results in Raditz kidnapping Gohan. Goku decides to team up with his former enemy Piccolo in order to defeat Raditz and save his son, while sacrificing his own life in the process. In the afterlife, Goku trains under the ruler of the North Galaxy, King Kai, and is taught the Kaio-ken and Spirit Bomb techniques, before being revived by the Dragon Balls a year later in order to save the Earth from Raditz' comrades; Nappa and the Saiyan prince Vegeta. During the battle Piccolo is killed, along with Goku's allies Yamcha, Tien Shinhan and Chiaotzu , and the Dragon Balls cease to exist because of Piccolo's death. Goku arrives at the battlefield late, but avenges his fallen friends by defeating Nappa with his new level of power. Vegeta himself enters into the battle with Goku, but is ultimately also defeated thanks to the efforts of Gohan and Goku's other surviving allies Krillin and Yajirobe. At Goku's request, they spare Vegeta's life and allow him to escape Earth. During the battle, Krillin overhears Vegeta mentioning the original set of Dragon Balls from Piccolo's home planet Namek . While Goku recovers from his injuries at the hospital, Gohan, Krillin and Goku's oldest friend Bulma depart for Namek in order to use these Dragon Balls to revive their dead friends. However, they discover that Vegeta's superior, the galactic tyrant Lord Frieza, is already there, seeking the Dragon Balls to be granted eternal life. A fully healed Vegeta arrives on Namek as well, seeking the Dragon Balls for himself, which leads to several battles between him and Frieza's henchmen. Realizing he is overpowered, Vegeta teams up with Gohan and Krillin to fight the Ginyu Force, a team of mercenaries summoned by Frieza. After Goku finally arrives on Namek, the epic battle with Frieza himself comes to a close when Goku transforms into a fabled Super Saiyan and defeats him.
Upon his return to Earth a year later, Goku encounters a time traveler named Trunks, the future son of Bulma and Vegeta, who warns Goku that two Androids will appear three years later, seeking revenge against Goku for destroying the Red Ribbon Army when he was a child. During this time, an evil life form called Cell emerges and after absorbing two of the Artificial Humans to achieve his "perfect form," holds his own fighting tournament to decide the fate of the Earth, called the Cell Games. After Goku sacrifices his own life a second time, to no avail, Gohan avenges his father by defeating Cell after ascending to the second level of Super Saiyan. Seven years later, Goku is revived for one day to reunite with his loved ones and meet his second son Goten. Soon after, Goku and his allies are drawn into a fight by the Supreme Kai against a magical being named Majin Buu. After numerous battles resulting in the destruction and recreation of the Earth, Goku destroys Majin Buu with a Spirit Bomb attack containing the energy of everyone on Earth. Goku makes a wish for Buu to be reincarnated as a good person and ten years later, at another martial arts tournament, Goku meets Buu's human reincarnation, Uub. Leaving the match between them unfinished, Goku departs with Uub to train him to become Earth's new defender.


Production and broadcasting

Kazuhiko Torishima, Akira Toriyama's editor for Dr. Slump and the first half of Dragon Ball, felt that the Dragon Ball anime's ratings were gradually declining because it had the same producer that worked on Dr. Slump. Torishima said this producer had this "cute and funny" image connected to Toriyama's work and was missing the more serious tone in the newer series, and therefore asked the studio to change the producer. Impressed with their work on Saint Seiya, he asked its director Kōzō Morishita and writer Takao Koyama to help "reboot" Dragon Ball, which coincided with Goku growing up. The new producer explained that ending the first anime and creating a new one would result in more promotional money, and the result was the start of Dragon Ball Z. The title was suggested by Toriyama because Z is the last letter of the alphabet and he wanted to finish the series because he was running out of ideas for it .Dragon Ball Z is adapted from the final 325 chapters of the manga series which were published in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1988 to 1995. It premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on April 26, 1989, taking over its predecessor's time slot, and ran for 291 episodes until its conclusion on January 31, 1996. Because Toriyama was writing the manga during the production of the anime, Dragon Ball Z added original material not adapted from the manga, including lengthening scenes or adding new ones, and adding new attacks and characters not present in the manga. For example, Toriyama was asked to create an additional character for Goku's training with King Kai, resulting in the cricket Gregory.Throughout the production, the voice actors were tasked with playing different characters and performing their lines on cue, switching between roles as necessary. The voice actors were unable to record the lines separately because of the close dialogue timing. When asked if juggling the different voices of Goku, Gohan and Goten was difficult, Masako Nozawa said that it was not, and that she was able to switch roles simply upon seeing the character's picture. She did admit that when they were producing two films a year and television specials in addition to the regular series, there were times when they had only line art to look at while recording, which made giving finer nuanced details in her performance difficult.Series Director Daisuke Nishio left the series after personally directing Episode #202. Nishio left the series to become series director of Aoki Densetsu Shoot!. The role of series director was not officially filled for Episodes #200-291, despite Nishio's directing of Episode #202.


English dub production and broadcasting
In 1996, Funimation Productions licensed Dragon Ball Z for an English-language release in North America. They contracted Saban Entertainment to help distribute the series to television, and Pioneer Entertainment to handle home video distribution. The Vancouver-based Ocean Studios were hired by Funimation to dub the anime . Saban musicians Ron Wasserman and Jeremy Sweet, known for their work on the Power Rangers franchise, composed a new background score and theme song . Funimation's initial English dub of Dragon Ball Z had mandated cuts to content and length, which reduced the first 67 episodes into 53. It premiered in the United States on September 13, 1996 in first-run syndication, but halted production in 1998 after two seasons. This was due to Saban scaling down its syndication operations, in order to focus on producing original material for the Fox Kids block. Pioneer also ceased its home video release of the series at volume 17 and retained the rights to produce an uncut subtitled version, but did not do so.

On August 31, 1998, reruns of this cancelled dub began airing on Cartoon Network as part of the channel's weekday afternoon programming block Toonami. Due to the success of these re-runs on Toonami, Funimation resumed production on the series' English dub without Saban's assistance, but could no longer afford the services of the Ocean voice cast due to financial constraints. This led to Funimation forming its own in-house voice cast at their Texas-based studio. The Saban-produced soundtrack from the first two seasons was replaced with a new background score composed by Bruce Faulconer and his team of musicians, which was used throughout the rest of Funimation's Dragon Ball Z dub. This renewed dub featured less censorship and aired on Cartoon Network's Toonami block from September 13, 1999 to April 7, 2003; continuing in re-runs through 2008. Kids' WB briefly ran Dragon Ball Z in 2001 on its short-lived Toonami block.In 2004, Pioneer lost its distribution rights to the first 53/67 episodes of Dragon Ball Z, allowing Funimation to re-dub them with their in-house voice cast and restore the removed content. This dub's background score was composed by Nathan M. Johnson. Funimation's new uncut dub of these episodes aired on Cartoon Network during the summer of 2005 . Funimation's later remastered DVDs of the series saw minor changes made to their in-house dub for quality and consistency, mostly after the episode 67 gap, and had the option to play the entire series' dub with both the American and Japanese background music.
In January 2011, Funimation and Toei announced that they would stream Dragon Ball Z within 30 minutes before their simulcast of One Piece. As of 2017, Dragon Ball Z is no longer being streamed on Hulu.
The Funimation dubbed episodes also aired in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand. However, beginning with episode 108 , AB Groupe and Westwood Media produced an alternate English dub. The alternate dub was created for broadcast in the UK, the Netherlands and Ireland, although it later aired in Canada. Funimation's in-house dub continued to air in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. The Westwood Media production used the same voices from the original short-lived dub syndicated in the USA , it featured an alternate soundtrack by Tom Keenlyside and John Mitchell, and it used the same scripts and edits as the TV edit of Funimation's in-house dub . In Australia, Dragon Ball Z was broadcast by the free-to-air commercial network, Network Ten during morning children's programming, Cheez TV, originally using the censored Funimation/Saban dub before switching to Funimation's in-house dub.
Dragon Ball Z originally aired on the British Comedy Network in Fall 1998.


Dragon Ball Z Kai

In February 2009, Toei Animation announced that it would begin broadcasting a revised version of Dragon Ball Z as part of the series' 20th-anniversary celebrations. The series premiered on Fuji TV in Japan on April 5, 2009, under the title Dragon Ball Kai. The ending suffix Kai in the name means "updated" or "altered" and reflects the improvements and corrections of the original work. The original footage was remastered for HDTV, featuring updated opening and ending sequences, new music, and a rerecording of the vocal tracks. The original material and any damaged frames were removed to more closely follow the manga, resulting in a faster-moving story. Torishima later explained the origins of Kai; Bandai was having a hard time increasing their sales and asked if a new Dragon Ball anime could be made. But Toriyama refused to create a new story. Realizing that the anime-exclusive scenes that were added to increase the distance between the original anime and the manga hurt the pacing of the series, Torishima thought of cutting them so that it faithfully followed the manga. He said the reception to Kai was positive and Bandai had a hit with a card game, so it all worked out.The series initially concluded with the finale of the Cell arc, as opposed to including the Majin Buu arc. It was originally planned to run 98 episodes, however, due to the Tōhoku offshore earthquake and tsunami, the final episode of Dragon Ball Kai was not aired and the series ended on its 97th episode in Japan on March 27, 2011. The 98th episode was later released direct-to-video in Japan on August 2, 2011.In November 2012, Mayumi Tanaka, the Japanese voice of Krillin, announced that she and the rest of the cast were recording more episodes of Dragon Ball Kai. In February 2014, the Kai adaptation of the Majin Buu arc was officially confirmed. The new run of the series, which is titled Dragon Ball Z Kai: The Final Chapters internationally, began airing in Japan on Fuji TV on April 6, 2014 and ended its run on June 28, 2015. The final arc of Kai was originally produced to last 69 episodes , but the Japanese broadcast cut it down to 61 episodes.


English dub production and broadcasting
Funimation licensed Dragon Ball Kai for an English-language release in North America, under the title Dragon Ball Z Kai. The series was broadcast on Nicktoons from May 24, 2010 to January 1, 2012 . In addition to Nicktoons, the series also began airing on the 4Kids-owned Saturday morning programming block Toonzai on The CW in August 2010, then on its successor, the Saban-owned Vortexx, beginning in August 2012 until the block ended in September 2014. Both the Nicktoons and Toonzai/Vortexx airings were edited for content, though the Toonzai/Vortexx version was censored even more so than Nicktoons, most likely due to The CW being a broadcast network; although it's possible that 4Kids and Saban were both at least partially involved considering their notoriety for heavy censorship of this sort . Kai began airing uncut on Adult Swim's Toonami block on November 8, 2014, and re-runs of the previous week's episodes aired at the beginning of Adult Swim proper from February 2015 to June 2016. CSC Media Group acquired the broadcast rights to Dragon Ball Z Kai in the United Kingdom and began airing it on Kix! in early 2013.Despite Kai's continuation not being officially confirmed at the time even in Japan, Funimation voice actors Sean Schemmel and Kyle Hebert , announced in April 2013 that they had started recording an English dub for new episodes. In November 2013, Kai's Australasian distributor Madman Entertainment revealed that the Majin Buu arc of Kai would be released in 2014 and that they we