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 from April 26, 1989 to January 31, 1996.

In the United States, the series initially aired in first-run syndication from September 13, 1996 to May 23, 1998, to little acclaim. However, on August 31, 1998, episodes began airing on Cartoon Network's weekday afternoon Toonami programming block and became immensely popular. The final episode made its Toonami premiere on April 7, 2003, but re-runs continued to air on Cartoon Network through 2008. The series also appeared on Toonami: Midnight Run, Toonami: Rising Sun, and Toonami: Super Saturday. The edited version was rated TV-Y7-FV on Cartoon Network, while the uncut version was rated TV-PG-LV.

Saiyan Saga
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.

Frieza Saga
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.

Garlic Jr. Saga
This filler saga takes place between the Frieza Saga and the Android Saga.

After the events of the movie Dead Zone, Garlic Jr. remains trapped in the Dead Zone, but is able to escape thanks to the power of his planet, the Makyo Star drawing close to Earth. Garlic Jr. returns to Earth to take revenge on Goku and his friends for sending him to the Dead Zone. He gathers the Spice Boys, members of the Demon Clan from the Makyo Star and steals the Black Water Mist, a powerful mist that brainwashes all life on Earth to act like mindless monsters. With Kami and Mr. Popo captured on Kami's lookout, the 3 remaining Z warriors: Piccolo, Gohan and Krillin travel to the lookout to battle the villain and save the Earth.

Android Saga
A year and a half after planet Namek's destruction the Z warriors are still waiting for the day when Goku finally returns home. Unbeknownst to them, they are once again threatened by Frieza who somehow survived his fight against Goku on Namek. A Cybernetically enhanced Frieza approaches Earth with his father King Cold to exact revenge against Goku and the other Z Fighters for defeating him. Once Frieza and his father arrive on Earth, they and their minions are easily killed by a mysterious young super saiyan, who tells the shocked Z Fighters that Goku is due to arrive in 2 hours. Goku arrives and after swearing Goku to secrecy, Future Trunks introduces himself and warns him that 3 years from now two Red Ribbon Androids will appear and destroy everything on Earth.

In the three years before the scheduled fight with the androids everyone begins training. The Z fighters encounter Android 19 and 20 on the day Trunks said they would appear and engage them on a deserted island. As Goku battles Android 19, he begins to feel the effects of his heart virus. As he becomes incapacitated Vegeta arrives on the battlefield and demonstrates his new powers (super saiyan) by destroying the android. Android 20 promptly flees the battle and heads for his lab. Future Trunks then arrives and is shocked to discover that Android 19 and 20 are not the same Androids from the future that he warned the Z Fighters about three years ago. Finally reaching his lab, Android 20, revealed to be Dr. Gero, proceeds to activate two more Androids, 17 and 18. The two androids decide to unleash an incomplete android 16 and effortlessly kill Dr. Gero. After easily defeating all of the Z warriors, Androids 16, 17, and 18 begin their search for Goku.

Cell Saga
On Kami's Lookout, Kami notices that Earth is now being threatened by an even greater force than the Androids. After Piccolo re-merges with Kami, the powered-up Piccolo goes to investigate the new threat. Meanwhile, another time machine and an exoskeleton of a disgusting looking creature are discovered by Gohan, Future Trunks and Bulma. This monster reveals himself as Cell, a creature created by Dr. Gero as the perfect fighting android made up of the cells of the universe's strongest warriors. He came from the future and is capable of using many of the Z warriors strongest techniques and abilities. Cell also reveals his goal to absorb the unique Infinite power cores of Android 17 and Android 18, reaching his Perfect Form. After briefly battling Piccolo, Cell escapes using "Solar Flare".

The Z warriors continue to search for Cell, but he remains one step ahead of them, hiding in the shadows as he knows that he is not yet powerful enough to defeat Piccolo. Meanwhile, Goku is cured of his heart virus and he, Gohan, Vegeta and Trunks enter the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, where they can spend a whole year training in the span of one day in real time, in order to surpass the powers of a Super Saiyan. As Future Trunks and Vegeta train in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, Piccolo and Android 17 battle on a deserted island nearby the Kame House. As the two battle to a stalemate Cell appears beating Android 17 to a pulp in order to absorb him by force. Cell transforms into a more powerful form after absorbing Android 17 and he next sets his sights on Android 18 who has escaped with Android 16.

Vegeta and Trunks emerge from the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and immediately go to confront Cell. While Vegeta battles Semi-Perfect Cell, Krillin arrives on the island with a remote control capable of shutting down the Androids. However, a conflicted Krillin is incapable of pulling the trigger. Meanwhile, Cell convinces Vegeta to let him reach his perfect form so that he would become a worthy adversary. After absorbing Android 18, Perfect Cell turns the tables and easily knocks Vegeta unconscious. Future Trunks becomes enraged and battles the monster. However, Trunks learns that his new power, while superior in strength, significantly reduces speed. Trunks admits defeat and awaits the killing blow. Cell is instead intrigued after learning of the saiyan's rapid power-ups. He comes up with an idea of having a tournament, the Cell Games, which will occur in ten days.

For the next 9 days, most of the Z warriors use their time to train, though Goku and Gohan train for only three days and spend the remaining six resting. Goku also pays a visit to New Namek and asks Dende to become the new Guardian of Earth. The tournament commences and, after a brief appearance by Hercule and his students, Goku decides he will be the first one to fight Perfect Cell. After battling Cell to a stalemate Goku suddenly forfeits the match to Perfect Cell and surrenders, picking Gohan to fight next. During the battle Android 16 decides to destroy Perfect Cell himself with the self destruction device in his body but learns that the device was removed by Bulma when he was reprogrammed. Android 16 is destroyed by Cell who then creates 7 smaller blue versions of himself, naming them Cell Juniors, that attack the spectating Z warriors. As Gohan watches these maniacal Cell Jr.'s heartlessly beat his friends and family, he becomes enraged, transforming into a super saiyan 2 and defeating them all with a single blow.

Enraged and defeated, Semi-Perfect Cell threatens to destroy the whole planet and begins to self destruct. Goku transmits Cell to King Kai's Planet, which was subsequently destroyed along with Goku, Semi-Perfect Cell, King Kai, Bubbles, and Gregory. As the fight appears over, Future Trunks is killed by Perfect Cell now in a more powerful form he calls "Ultimate Perfection". Super Perfect Cell fires his Solar Kamehameha at a now injured Gohan, which is stated to have enough energy to destroy the entire solar system. Gohan launches a one-handed Kamehameha in turn but he is at a disadvantage until Gohan is encouraged by Goku from the afterlife. Cell is disintegrated by the blast ending the conflict.

Filler

 * For full list of filler material see: Dragonball.wikia.com

Filler is used to pad out a 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 create side stories to use as filler as either a way to expand on the plot or to extend the series, or it could be as simple as adding extra attacks into a fight. One example of filler occurs during the Frieza Saga. Frieza initiates the destruction of planet Namek to occur after five minutes, but the final fight with Frieza lasted several episodes. (This can also be attributed to the idea that Namek took longer to explode than Frieza had expected.) Some filler also took the form of extra footage that occurred during the battle with Frieza.

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.

Characters
Z Warriors=

Gallery
Character Promos=

English Dub History
In 1995, Funimation Productions licensed Dragon Ball Z for an English-language release in North America. They contracted Saban Entertainment to help finance and distribute the series to television, and Pioneer Entertainment to handle home video distribution. Saban hired the Vancouver-based Ocean Studios to dub the anime, and Ron Wasserman (Saban's in-house musician) to compose an American background score and theme song (also known as "Rock the Dragon!"). However, Shuki Levy is credited as being the composer due to contract reasons so that he and Haim Saban (the owner of Saban Entertainment) could gain royalties for the music. Wasserman later came out and said that Levy had nothing to do with the score. This dub of Dragon Ball Z had mandated cuts to content and length, which reduced the first 67 episodes to 53.

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 U.S., the distribution company FUNimation Entertainment, along with Saban Entertainment, 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."

The English dub of the series premiered in the U.S. on September 13, 1996 in first-run syndication, but was cancelled after two seasons due to a lack of interest from syndication companies. Pioneer also ceased its home video release of the series at volume 17 (the end of this dub) and retained the rights to produce an uncut subtitled version, but did not do so. Instead, Pioneer produced a bilingual uncut home video release of the series' first three movies, also dubbed by Ocean Studios.

Reruns of the first 53 episodes then began airing on Cartoon Network and, due to the success of these reruns, Funimation resumed production on the series' English dub by themselves, but could no longer afford the services of Ocean Studios without Saban's financial assistance. This led to Funimation creating its own in-house voice cast at their Texas-based studio, as well as a new background score composed by Bruce Faulconer. This new dub featured less censorship due to fewer restrictions on cable programming.

In 2004, Pioneer lost its distribution rights to the first 53/67 episodes of Dragon Ball Z (as well as the first three movies), 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 Johnson. 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.

Broadcast History
Dragon Ball Z premiered in Japan on Fuji Television from April 26, 1989 to January 31, 1996. The English language dub produced by Ocean Studios premiered in the United States on September 13, 1996 in first-run syndication, but was cancelled after two seasons due to a lack of interest from syndication companies. The series then aired on Cartoon Network from August 31, 1998 to March 22, 2008. This included the premiere of Funimation's uncut dub of the first 67 episodes which aired on Cartoon Network during the summer of 2005 at 10:30 PM, due to the unedited content. The series also aired in Canada on YTV from 1996 to 2003.

In the United Kingdom, the series first aired on the British Comedy Network from 1998 until 2000, when the series was picked up by Cartoon Network. In 2002, the series was moved from Cartoon Network to CNX, a sister network under the Turner Entertainment umbrella. In 2003, the CNX network was rebranded "Toonami" and Dragon Ball Z continued to air on the network until 2006. In Australia, the series first aired on Cartoon Network from 1997 to 1999, when the series was picked up by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, where it aired until 2004. The series also aired in Latin America from June 6, 1999 to 2003.


 * Japan (Fuji Television) — April 26, 1989 - January 31, 1996
 * United States (Syndication) — September 13, 1996 - May 1998
 * United States (Cartoon Network) — August 31, 1998 - March 22, 2008
 * United States (Kids WB) — 2001
 * Canada (YTV) — 1996 - 2003
 * United Kingdom (British Comedy Network) — Fall 1998 - 2000
 * United Kingdom (Cartoon Network) — March 6, 2000 - 2002
 * United Kingdom (CNX/Toonami) — 2002 - 2006
 * Australia (Cartoon Network) — 1997 - 1999
 * Australia (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) — 1999 - 2004
 * Latin America (Cartoon Network) — June 6, 1999 - 2003

Toonami Broadcast History
On August 31, 1998, reruns of the English dubbed first 53 episodes of Dragon Ball Z began airing on Cartoon Network as part of the channel's weekday afternoon programming block Toonami. The rest of the series premiered on Toonami from September 13, 1999 to April 7, 2003, continuing in re-runs through 2008. Starting with the "Captain Ginyu Saga" on Cartoon Network, censorship was reduced due to fewer restrictions on cable programming. Dragon Ball Z also aired on all three of Toonami's subsidiary programming blocks: Toonami: Midnight Run, Toonami: Rising Sun and Toonami: Super Saturday. Kids' WB also briefly ran Dragon Ball Z in 2001 on its short-lived Toonami block.


 * Toonami (United States) — August 31, 1998 - September 26, 2003 ; January 5, 2004 - April 16, 2004; October 15, 2005 - June 3, 2006; April 7, 2007 - March 22, 2008
 * Midnight Run — July 10, 1999 - July 20, 2001; August 27, 2001 - November 1, 2002
 * Rising Sun — April 15, 2000 - March 3, 2001
 * Super Saturday — October 20, 2001 - February 22, 2003
 * Toonami (Latin America) — December 2, 2002 - 2003
 * Toonami (United Kingdom) — March 6, 2000 - 2006

Toonami Marathons
The following is a list of Toonami marathons in which at least one episode of Dragon Ball Z appeared. As it was the most successful and popular series during Toonami's weekday run on Cartoon Network, it appeared in a large number of marathons during that time.
 * DBZ20XL
 * Z-Day
 * DBZ President's Day Movie Marathon
 * Toonami: Full Cycle
 * New Year's Evil
 * Villaintine's Day
 * A Night of New Year's Eve-il
 * Toonami 5 Year Anniversary
 * DBZ: Best of Buu
 * DBZ Movies
 * Dragonball Chronicles

Related Series

 * Dragon Ball
 * Dragon Ball GT
 * Dragon Ball Z Kai
 * Dragon Ball Super

Related Movies

 * Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone
 * Dragon Ball Z: The World's Strongest
 * Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might
 * Dragon Ball Z: Cooler's Revenge
 * Dragon Ball Z: The Return of Cooler
 * Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku
 * Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks
 * Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug
 * Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn
 * Dragon Ball Z: Wrath of the Dragon
 * Dragon Ball Z: Broly - The Legendary Super Saiyan