Dragon Ball Z is probably the most famous anime ever made. How famous is it? People that are hardly otaku still watched this show growing up and loved it. Rafael Nadal has admitted to owning the DVD box set! If you haven't seen DBZ, you have at least heard of it. Hell, even my ex-girlfriend had heard of DBZ and she had never heard of the Wizard of Oz! Although DBZ absolutely revolutionized Shonen anime and is considered the definitive Shonen series, it still had its share of flaws. It wasn't exactly a perfect adaptation of Toriyama's manga as I will explain in a moment. Now lets look at the most famous popular anime of all time!
Story: 8/10
The story of Dragonball largely parodied Chinese mythology along with the famous Chinese novel Journey to the West. In terms of story it was a sort of action/comedy retelling of fairy tales that were familiar to an East Asian audience in the way that Shrek parodied fairy tales that Americans were familiar with. The character of Son Goku is based on the Monkey King Sun Wukong in Journey to the West. A brief example: Goku's staff and magic cloud Kinto-un (flying nimbus in the English dub), were also used by Sun Wukong in the original novel. DBZ on the other hand, which began after volume 17 of the original manga, largely parodies and homages Western science fiction including Superman, the Terminator, and several others. Goku and his friends must fight in epic battles against increasingly strong opponents with increasingly higher stakes at risk. Eventually Goku must battle a powerful demon called Buu that has the power to threaten all life in the universe. The epic scale of DBZ's battles make it truly fun to watch. I rushed home every day from school to watch the next DBZ episode. My mom tutored downstairs, so my brother and I had to watch upstairs. Even if the AC was broken and it was 110 degrees upstairs, FUCK IT! DBZ was on, so we were gonna watch it no matter what! That was the level of devotion that kids growing up in the 90s had for this show! Unfortunately, the anime had to create a LOT of filler in order for the manga to stay ahead. Characters would power up for minutes on end, minor dialogue would be exchanged about how strong character "A" is, back to still shot of another character powering up. In the Freeza Saga, this took up entire episodes. A common joke in the 90s was "How many DBZ characters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" The answer: 1, but it will take 20 episodes!
Characters: 8/10
The characters in DBZ were quite good and rather memorable. Goku may be seen as a generic shonen hero today, but that is largely because he served as the basis for most shonen heroes to follow. Vegeta was an amusing anti-hero and although he would whine perpetually about how unfair it is that he isn't the strongest, we still thought he was cool anyway. Krillin was a good comic relief character, although that role later was transferred to Goten and Trunks. Some fans of the original Dragon Ball were disappointed that many characters that were big roles in the original like Yamcha, Tien, and Lunch were not important in DBZ. Like most people outside Japan and Hong Kong, I had never seen Dragon Ball when I first saw DBZ so it wasn't really an issue for me. The only real complaint I have with the characters is that the villains grew increasingly simplistic and lame as the series went on. Freeza was actually a decently written and truly despicable villain, but all the ones after him/her/it were rather weak in character development. Cell simply wanted to become the strongest being and later to destroy all that he could, and Buu was a brainless killing machine that simply wrecked shit. Well Evil Buu anyways, Fat Buu was admittedly pretty funny. Overall, these may not be the psychologically deepest or most brilliant characters ever created, but they were fun and fit with tone of the series very well.
Sound: 9/10
The openings were AWESOME, the battle music was awesome, this was a phenomenal soundtrack. I'm talking about the Japanese soundtrack by the way, the US soundtrack was ok, but not nearly as good.
Art: 3/10
Animation: definion - The process of creating movement. To call DBZ an animation is kind of insulting to other animations. Almost all of DBZ was still shots and using the same key frames over and over again. The only movement during a power up will be something like a characters cape flapping, which consists of 2 frames of animation rapidly going back and forth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uldSCaNDGD0
Here is a typical DBZ scene. Notice how little anything ever moves and marvel at the absolute laziness of the animators. Now watch any Disney movie EVER made, and you will see just how cheaply and lazily DBZ was made.
Enjoyment: 4/10
The filler really takes a lot out of the enjoyment for me. Some anime that I watched as a kid I can watch again as a 26 year old medical student and still enjoy. Shows like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Rurouni Kenshin. DBZ on the other hand is a lot harder for me to enjoy. I have no problem with the manga, but the anime I can't really sit through. It takes so long for anything to actually happen! I don't have that kind of time anymore in my life! "This planet will explode in 5 minutes" - Freeza...about 20 episodes before Namek explodes.
Overall: 6/10
DBZ has some elements that it does amazingly well like creating quirky comedy, fun characters, and battles on an absolutely EPIC scale. It also features some of the most tedious filler ever created and horrendously cheap animation. It is certainly a classic and a Shonen masterpiece, but it is a flawed masterpiece.
