The series serves as a sequel to the prior
Dragon Ball anime and manga, which primarily focused on Goku's childhood experiences. It has been speculated that creator
Akira Toriyama did not originally intend for the series to stretch past the Saiyan Saga when he began working on the
Dragon Ball Z portion of the manga. In an interview from around the time of the last
Dragon Ball arc, Toriyama said that the series would only continue for a "little while longer".
Shunsuke Kikuchi, the composer for the
Dragon Ball anime, continue to compose the score for
Dragon Ball Z. Goku's Japanese voice actress
Masako Nozawa also continued to voice the character in adulthood, unlike in many foreign dubs, which often use female actresses for Goku as a child before switching to male actors when the character becomes a teen during the final arc of
Dragon Ball.
English dub The first English dub of the episodes was produced by
Filipino company Creative Products Corporation, airing on
RPN 9 in the Philippines during 1993. In 1996,
Dallas-based company
Funimation began working on their first season of a North American dub for
Dragon Ball Z. By this point, parts of
Dragon Ball Z had already been dubbed for non-English audiences, in regions such as Latin America and Europe. Funimation company had previously produced an English dub of
Dragon Ball's first 13 episodes and first movie, which aired in
first-run syndication during 1995. Plans for a second syndicated
Dragon Ball dub season were cancelled due to lower than expected ratings, When this dub was running in syndication, both the Funimation logo and the Saban logo appeared in the closing credits, with the Saban logo coming immediately after the Funimation logo. Like with the prior
Dragon Ball dub from 1995, a group of Canadian voice actors from
Vancouver,
British Columbia were used. However, this time voice work was done at
Ocean Studios, rather than at Dick & Rogers Sound like with the prior
Dragon Ball dub. This has led to some fans referring to this dub as "the Ocean dub". which included other Saban anime dubs, such as
Eagle Riders and
Samurai Pizza Cats, as well as
Masked Rider, ''
Saban's Adventures of Oliver Twist and The Why Why Family. These live action segments were also used on the other shows from the "Saban Network for Kids", and some of them had Power Rangers'' actor Greg Bullock, who played Lt. Stone on that series. The first season was a success, which led to Funimation creating a second dub season, that aired in syndication between late 1997 and mid-1998. When the first season was still airing in early 1997, Saban announced they would be airing the upcoming second season in its own two episode hour-long block, For the second season, non-live action bumpers replaced the live action ones from the first season. This dub edited down the first season to 26 episodes in order to make it fit within a standard American television season. Due to broadcasting regulations of the time, Saban forced Funimation to remove all references to death, often replacing it with a euphemism for death known as "the Next Dimension", and digital paint was utilized to alter content that was deemed unacceptable, such as blood. The word "Hell" was also digitally removed from two characters shirts in the eighth dub episode, and edited to say "HFIL", which in the dub stood for "Home for Infinite Losers." The tenth dub episode "Escape from Piccolo" never aired in syndication, due to concerns from Saban over its content. It was first released via
Pioneer Entertainment's VHS release of the dub in late 1997. Regarding this episode and Saban's censoring of the dub, Funimation president
Gen Fukunaga remarked in a 1999 interview, "we had a lot of arguments with them, saying they were going way too far with the censorship, but they would refuse to air it unless it was cut to their liking. In fact, I recall one show that we censored a little less than usual, and they just refused to air it. That was the only actual episode that didn't make it to the airwaves, but there were a lot of other instances in which we felt they crossed the line." According to Fukunaga, Saban initially wanted Funimation to cut out a scene in episode 17 where Nappa blows up a helicopter with journalists in it. They only allowed the scene to be kept after Funimation wrote a line where
Tien says "I can see their parachutes, they're okay", immediately after the helicopter explodes and the journalists are killed. This line was a mistranslation in a scene where Vegeta reacts to Goku's power level, and did not appear in the Japanese version, with the original line being "It's Over 8000!". In an uncredited capacity, Wasserman had also previously composed the music and theme songs for shows such as
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and
X-Men: The Animated Series, and had already left the company in September 1995 since he was being overworked and was refused a pay rise. He later claimed that Saban didn't care about the show, and that the only instructions they gave him was to make sure that it had continuous background music playing, so they could earn maximum music royalties. He said "I got to do whatever I wanted, so I went with this really heavy, weird stuff", remembering that he would never receive any creative notes after sending the music to Saban. Since Wasserman was no longer employed by Saban at this point, they paid him on an episode by episode basis to score
Dragon Ball Z, instead of giving him an annual salary like when he was still part of the company. with the vocals performed by Jeremy Sweet. Sweet had also done music for
Power Rangers Zeo (1996), which was the first
Power Rangers season to have been made after Wasserman left Saban in late 1995. On this album and the credits of the dub, the music is credited to Saban founders
Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahehi (an alias for
Haim Saban), instead of Wasserman and Sweet, who are only listed as "music producers" in the credits of the dub; the actual extent of Levy or Saban's involvement remains unknown. Wasserman has stated that he was interested in composing for
Dragon Ball Z's third season, but was under the impression that Saban had lost the rights to another company for that season, since he wasn't even aware of who Funimation was while working on the first two seasons. When Funimation hired Johnson, he was working as a lawyer, and had no experience in composing for films and television. He later noted in 2012 that his music received a mixed response from fans, many of whom wanted Faulconer to re-do the first two seasons instead of him. Initial home video releases of the re-dub in 2005 were titled the "Ultimate Uncut Edition" and included a small number of episodes per DVD. These DVDs only used the Nathan M. Johnson score, as well as a new
heavy metal theme song by Dave Moran, which replaced "Rock the Dragon". Funimation's 2007 season set release of the first season included an alternate audio track which combined the Dallas voices with the original Japanese score, and it also replaced Dave Moran's theme with a different theme from Mark Menza. This uncut version has since become the standard dub that Funimation has used on streaming services and subsequent
Blu-ray releases. However, they did eventually re-release the syndicated dub of the first two seasons in 2013, as part of their "Rock the Dragon Edition" DVD set. In 2017, the rights to both the syndicated dub and the uncut redub were transferred to
Sony, following their purchase of Funimation.
TV airings When the North American version was first airing in syndication during the 1990s, U.S. cable network the
International Channel was simultaneously airing the original uncut Japanese version. The International Channel broadcast did not include subtitles, since the network was primarily aimed at the
Asian American Pacific Islander demographic, rather than a more general audience. Beginning in August 1997, the syndicated English dub was aired on Canadian cable channel
YTV. In 2000, the syndicated dub of these episodes began airing outside of North America, being shown on
Network 10's
Cheez TV block in Australia, New Zealand's
TV3 and on the British version of Toonami. During the early 2000s, the syndicated dub also aired on
SABC 2 in South Africa, with subtitled versions of the dub appearing in the Netherlands and Finland as well. The uncut Funimation re-dub is only known to have aired in 2005 on the American Toonami, which had previously aired reruns of the syndicated dub prior to the creation of the uncut re-dub. The Toonami reruns of the syndicated first season cut out Saban's logo from the credits, in addition to cutting out the live action segments which originated from the "Saban Network for Kids" block. The live action segments were also not used by any of the non-North American broadcasters, such as Cheez TV/Network 10, TV3 and Toonami UK. To celebrate YTV's 20th anniversary in 2008, they had a one-off airing of the syndicated first episode "The Arrival of Raditz". This was the last time YTV ever aired
Dragon Ball Z, and this airing kept the live action segments from the original American syndication broadcast. In mid-2010, Cheez TV's successor
Toasted TV (another morning cartoon block on Network 10) began airing the first season of
Dragon Ball Z, using the syndicated dub rather than the uncut Funimation redub, presumably since the uncut version wasn't acceptable to air in that timeslot. This was also the last time Network 10 ever aired
Dragon Ball Z. The 2010 airing came six years after they had last aired
Dragon Ball Z as part of Cheez TV in 2004.
Stations (1996–1997) The following stations aired the first season of
Dragon Ball Z''s syndicated dub in 1996 and 1997. ==Episodes==