Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z (commonly abbreviated as DBZ) is the long-running anime sequel to the Dragon Ball TV series, adapted from the final twenty-six volumes of the Dragon Ball manga written by Akira Toriyama. The anime adaptation premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on April 26, 1989.

In the U.S., the series initially aired in first-run syndication from September 13, 1996 to May 23, 1998. On August 31, 1998 episodes began airing on Cartoon Network's weekday-afternoon programming block, Toonami, where the series received much more popularity. The first previously syndicated and heavily edited 53 (originally 67) episodes aired in 1998, in 1999 new less edited episodes began to air and finished its run in 2003, in the summer of 2005, the first 67 episodes were re-dubbed and shown uncut on Toonami. The series also appeared on The Midnight Run, The Rising Sun, and Toonami Super Saturday.

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 handled 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.

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's name, Videl, was an anagram of the word "Devil", but FUNimation felt that the connection was obscure enough to not worry about.

Plot
Five years after the events of Dragon Ball, now a young adult and father to son Gohan, Goku meets his older brother Raditz, who reveals to him that they are members of a nearly extinct extraterrestrial race called the Saiyans. The Saiyans had sent Goku (originally named "Kakarrot") to Earth as an infant to conquer the planet for them, but he suffered a head 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 and has to team up with Piccolo, and sacrifice his life, in order to defeat him. However, Goku is revived a year later by the Dragon Balls, after training in the afterlife with King Kai, in order to save the Earth from the Saiyan prince Vegeta. However, in the battle Yamcha, Chaotzu, Tien and Piccolo are killed. Due to Piccolo being one with Kami, the Dragon Balls no longer exist, resulting in a group traveling to their home planet, Namek, in order to use the balls there to revive their friends. However, the galactic tyrant Frieza is already there doing the same, leading to several battles with his minions and Vegeta, the latter of which teams up with the heroes to fight the Ginyu Force. After Goku arrives, the final long battle with Freeza himself comes to a close after Goku transform into a legendary Super Saiyan and avenges the lives of billions across the galaxy.

Filler
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).

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 does not 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 Garlic Jr. Saga (Garlic Jr.'s return from the Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone movie) between the Frieza Saga and Trunks Saga, and the Other World Tournament between the Cell Games Saga and the Majin Buu Saga are both good examples of this.