If you look back at the history of Dragon Ball, you'll see it goes all the way back to the 80's. Our sensei, Akira Toriyama taught us a lot of things. He created characters, villains, and an entire world to go along with unforgettable stories of fighters and friendship. Even in America, Dragon Ball has had a very interesting history. It began with the original series when Funimation and Saban got the rights to Dragon Ball's broadcast in the states. Funimation did not originally use their voice acting studio, instead they outsourced to Ocean in Canada. This started with the first movie and 10 or so episodes of Dragon Ball, but that proved to not become so popular at the time.
Instead, they started again with Dragon Ball Z on small television stations in America, and I just so happened to catch this entire series in its first run. The first image I ever saw was when Gohan headbutted Raditz with overwhelming power for a five year old. This started with a terrible schedule every Sunday at around 7 am. Still, the first season when the Saiyans came to Earth was one of the greatest in the entire series. When we first meet Vegeta, we had no idea he would be one of the most prominent Z Warriors, as well as a fan favorite. With Brian Drummond as his voice actor, he came up with one of the largest memes on the internet. "It's Over 9000" became another fan favorite after DBZ hit Toonami with his original English VA.
Overall what we consider the "Rock the Dragon" collection of episodes is up to each individual fan. Here at Planet Virtua, we consider these episodes superior in the ways of voice acting. However, it was far too censored to be considered objectively better in every way. If Saban is known for anything, it's the editing and censoring it did to the original Ocean Dub episodes. Hell was now known as HFIL (Home for the Infinite Losers) and being killed was changed to being "Sent to the Next Dimension"! Blood was covered up with effects paint, some of it being very obvious, and there was to be absolutely no nudity, cigarettes or alcohol of any kind.
Once again, these episodes are amazing, but they are also a very funny meme in many different ways. The censoring is comical in so many ways and have been parodied by old school DBZ fans for years. Once Cartoon Network added Dragon Ball Z to its Toonami run, the series exploded! It very quickly took over the internet with literal millions of websites. The Dragon Ball fan community was such a wide sensation that once it started to hit the USA in the ways of VHS and merchandise, needless to say it was sold out very quickly. Kids came home from school to watch it in its first three seasons before it started to rerun.
The reruns seemed to go on forever, but soon it was clear that they were working diligently to bring us the conclusion to the Freeza Saga, along with Cell Games and Buu. However, the biggest change to the series, along with the nixing of much censoring, was that now there was a whole new voice actor cast list. Chris Sabat was selected to take over the voice of Vegeta... along with half of the character cast. Needless to say, it took a while for these voice actors to come into their characters and it took even longer for Ocean Dub fans to get used to the new English cast.
To say that it was a much longer story would be an understatement, but it was such a fun ride. There were theories on how the series would end, but by the time we got much of Dragon Ball Z in the states, but in Japan, Dragon Ball GT had already ended in 1997. GT was a huge disappointment, but we'll get to that in another article. Still, from the beginning of Dragon Ball all the way to the end of the Cell Saga, there was a great masterclass in how to make an action series. Even with the excess in yelling, even with the recap episodes, and filler episodes, this whole enormous section was worth revisiting over and over again.
Goku has become an icon of Japan and anime fans everywhere, and for good reason. His journey to become the greatest still has not ended because fans just keep wanting more Dragon Ball. Should it probably have ended by now? Yeah, the series has become a shadow of its former self. It was a lot better when it as a martial arts comedy adventure. With the passing of the Sensei himself, it's a comfort to know that his masterpiece was immortalized in the hearts of millions. Just remember to give it a watch and bring a Dino Cap of water.
