Dragon Ball Z

By Geeky Gem

I don’t need to tell you (if you’re a regular reader) that I like anime, this is fact many of you already know and accept me for. I can’t tel you when my love for anime started but I can tell you that one of the first anime’s I watched was Dragon Ball Z. I figured I would share this show with you here. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do, it’s simply a fantastic show and I will tell you why now.

Well where shall I start, the beginning  seems like as good a pace as any. With the ending of Dragon Ball, Toei Animation quickly released a second anime series, Dragon Ball Z ( commonly abbreviated as DBZ) . Dragon Ball Z starts a few year after where Dragon Ball ends, and was aired during 1989 and 1996. It ran for huge 291 episodes, which quite long for an anime. Most that I have watched get to anything from 12 to 56 depending on the source material.

Once it was decided to dub the show for english speaking people, that lovely bunch at Funimation began production on DBZ. They  hired Shuki Levy to compose an alternate musical score, however the show is  heavily edited for content, as well as length; reducing the first 67 episodes into 53. The editing of the show was taken in order to take out some naughty words as they wanted children to watch this show and a little bit of what they see as violence. If you ask me it was fine the way it was, but we live in world were we have censor a lot of stuff.  However this was to be sorted lived because at one pont the series was cancelled and we here in UK very nearly didn’t get any more episodes. Thank goodness for popular demand, as Cartoon Network decided to air the rest of the season’s here. So Thank you Funimation and Cartoon Network with out this show would never hae made it to the UK.

That’s just a little about how we got Dragon Ball Z in anime from now for a bit on what the show is about.

DBZ is about this man above the brilliant Goku and his friends as they try to save the world from evil invaders that want to end the world. However Goku is not really human either he is what is known as a Saiyan (he’s an ailen, basically he has a monkey tail), a band of power full fighters from deep in space, all of which is covered in Dragon Ball the series that came before DBZ, As a young adult, Goku meets his older brother Raditz, who reveals to him that their race is nearly extinct. He also tells him tha as a baby the Saiyans had sent Goku (originally named “Kakarot”) to Earth in order for him to conquer the planet for them. What they didn’t know was that Goku suffered a severe head injury soon after his arrival and lost all memory of his mission, luckily for Gou he also lost his blood-thirsty Saiyan nature as he grew up around humans never knowing of his ailen nature. Goku wants nothing to do with the mission, and a battle soon begins. I don’t want to give away the whole story so I am cutting this down as best I can.  He then begins to encounter other enemies from space, most notably the Saiyan prince Vegeta, who becomes his rival and eventually another ally. Goku also encounters Frieza, a nasty evil tyrant responsible for the destruction of almost the entire Saiyan race, whose actions cause Goku to transform into a legendary Super Saiyan.

Many things happen through the different Saga of DBZ, we even meet some androids that want Goku dead, and we meet a visitor from the future who has some news for Goku and hs friends. One of my favorite saga’s is The Cell/Cell Games saga’s. As we get to see androids and watch Goku’s son Gohan come into his own.

Every episode I loved tended to have a fight in,  some of which takes place during the Cell games and each one is fantastic. I ave included one such fight below for you to enjoy. there are whole host of characters to love in this show and each as good as the last if not better. From Bulma and her gadgets to Krillin, Goku’s best friend and loyal side kick. Piccolo was always one of my favourite characters and it was so funny when he found out he was alien.  His ability to regenerate was always fantastic. If you have never seen this show then I endure you try to it out. As promised here is tha fight scene for you to enjoy.