It can be argued that no series was more important to the growth of anime in the West than Dragon Ball Z. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, Goku and the Z-Fighters touched down on televisions across North America, capturing the attention and hearts of young viewers. Today, Dragon Ball is one of the all-time highest grossing franchises worldwide.
Dragon Ball Z helped countless fans discover the medium of anime, and will likely continue to be a starting point for countless fans in the making. However, it can’t be argued that the series shows its age.
Despite its reputation and immense popularity, the original broadcast version of Dragon Ball Z has not been preserved all that well, and the quality of recent home releases hasn’t exactly been up to standard. Fortunately, a definitive remaster is now offering Dragon Ball Z as it was meant to be seen, and fans won’t want to miss it.
DBZ Is Finally Available as It Was Meant to Be Seen
Fans Can Finally Watch Dragon Ball Z at Its Best
In recent years, a subsect of the wider Dragon Ball fan base has refused to interact with the franchise’s modern entries, claiming the visual aesthetic of shows like Dragon Ball Super and Dragon Ball Daima are not nearly as pleasing as the classic Dragon Ball Z look. Ironically, most of those fans never experienced Dragon Ball Z as it originally aired.
In the years since its 1989 premiere in Japan, the series has suffered in a number of ways, mainly from poor preservation. Different home releases included inconsistent cropping to fit HD aspect ratios, while exporting errors caused color desaturation and other odd visual flaws, like the greenish tint throughout sections of the show.
Thanks to the work of Seed of Might, which has made the preservation of Dragon Ball their passion project, a color corrected, audio-restored version of Dragon Ball Z now exists for those who are willing to surf the web and find it. Seed of Might has already color corrected the original Dragon Ball as well as the franchise’s numerous films.
For the first time in decades, Dragon Ball Z, with its original glorious color palette and un-muffled dialogue, can be experienced once more. Other audio tracks have been cleaned up as well, including the original Funimation English dub with both the Japanese and American soundtracks.
Until fans get a glimpse of what the show looked like during its broadcast, they likely won’t realize just how much the passage of time chipped away at it. Unfortunately, all official Dragon Ball releases from Toei include a wide variety of flaws, and that’s a problem for the franchise and its fans.
Dragon Ball Has Not Been Preserved Well
Few Fans Have Been Able to Experience Dragon Ball at Its Very Best
Dragon Ball is one of the biggest anime and manga franchises in history, yet time hasn’t been all that kind to it, and those overseeing its many entries haven’t done much to help. If the versions of the anime available on streaming services and Blu-ray are so low quality that fans have felt the need to restore them themselves, there’s a problem.
It isn’t just the anime, either. The official English manga releases from Viz Media contain some incredibly wonky translations, including incorrect character names and other liberties that directly and negatively impact the audience’s reading experience. The disagreement within the community about whether Vegito or Vegetto is the correct name stems from the English manga translation.
For as dedicated as Dragon Ball‘s fan base has been for four-plus decades, their overwhelming support isn’t often properly reciprocated. One-time series editor Kazuhiko Torishima has expressed a similar sentiment recently in regard to the newly-opened Dragon Ball store in Tokyo.
In an interview earlier this year, Torishima urged fans not to shop at the store, and criticized the poor quality merchandise and illustrations released to celebrate the grand opening. He warned that those overseeing the franchise are willing to set quality aside, knowing the fans will buy whatever it is they release regardless. Having worked closely with Toriyama, his harsh words hold significant weight.
Such a disregard leads to the poor management and preservation of shows like Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, which have suffered greatly throughout the years. The support for Dragon Ball has not lessened, and yet little has been done to restore and properly release the shows the way they were meant to be seen to the series’ wide fan base.
If fans wish to watch Dragon Ball Z at its best, they will unfortunately have to take matters into their own hands, as Seed of Might has done with their recent, highly impressive restorations. Dragon Ball is one of the world’s most successful anime and manga franchises, and the fans deserve better.
- Created by
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Akira Toriyama
- First Episode Air Date
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April 26, 1989
- First Film
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Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies
- Latest Film
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Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
From the creative mind of Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball is a mega multimedia franchise that spans back to the 1980s. Dragon Ball expanded quickly, starting as a serialized manga for Weekly Shonen Jump in Japan. It made its way overseas via manga and an anime adaptation that is enjoyed worldwide. Dragon Ball was the initial starting animated series that followed the adventures of the young Son Goku as he sought after the Dragon Balls. These mystical orbs would grant the wish of any who gathered them together. Then, the series would branch off into the immensely popular Dragon Ball Z, which followed Goku as an adult and featured high-intensity battles and Goku’s never-ending search to be the strongest. The series has also enjoyed several popular video game adaptations and continues to release several new animated series and theatrical films up to the recent popular Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.
