I’ll give you over 9,000 hints!
The Big Picture
-
Dragon Ball Z
is a massive narrative, but the beginning, specifically the Saiyan Saga, is the most emotionally resonant and psychologically challenging part of the series. - The emergence of Goku’s character and the revelation of his alien heritage in the Saiyan Saga sets the foundation for the rest of the show.
- The Saiyan Saga expands on the world of
Dragon Ball
in various interesting ways, introducing new concepts and raising the stakes, while still keeping the fights on a manageable scale.
Dragon Ball Z, created by the late, prolific Akira Toriyama, is such a massive, sprawling narrative that it’s probably hard for many people to pick which saga is their favorite. The series really finds itself around the Frieza Saga, with its giant, planet-threatening battles, focus on powering up to Super Saiyan, and losing (and bringing back to life) various characters. The Cell Saga takes these things to another level, and it really comes close to being the best part of this show for focusing on Goku and Gohan’s relationship more than ever. The Buu saga is absolute insanity, and kind of shows the series at its most fun (if also its sloppiest). Contrary to popular opinion though, none of those sagas are the best part of Dragon Ball Z; the beginning is.
The Saiyan Saga kicks this series off perfectly. Sure, we do get some of the bombastic and prolonged battles that would make up large chunks of Dragon Ball Z, while also getting to meet iconic characters like Vegeta and Gohan, but those aren’t really the aspects that make the Saiyan Saga stand out. More than anything, this stretch of Z works because of what it does with Goku’s character. Until Z, he always just thought that he was a weird kid with a monkey’s tail. After learning that he’s actually from another planet, hailing from a nearly extinct race, Goku’s world shatters, and he has to find where his allegiance truly lies. It’s the most emotionally resonant saga in the entire series and actually tries to give its characters a true psychological challenge — an endeavor that wouldn’t really be attempted very much beyond Z‘s early days.
Dragon Ball Z (1989)
With the help of the powerful Dragonballs, a team of fighters led by the Saiyan warrior Goku defend the planet Earth from extraterrestrial enemies.
- Release Date
- September 13, 1996
- Cast
- Christopher Sabat , Scott McNeil , Sean Schemmel , Brian Drummond
- Main Genre
- Anime
- Seasons
- 9
Akira Toriyama’s ‘Dragon Ball Z’ Is the Greatest Anime Series of All Time
Dragon Ball Z is the greatest anime of all time, hands down. You can try and argue for Naruto and One Piece, or maybe a bit of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop if you’re a little fancier, but let’s be honest, nothing beats Dragon Ball Z. Let’s get the basics out of the way first — this show just kicks ass. It pummels us and its characters with one never-ending fight after the next, but we don’t care that they never seem to end. They’re just too much fun. Kamehameha waves, spirit bombs, Super Saiyan levels, and more make this an adrenaline-fueled experience that no one on this Earth should miss. It’s also full of fascinating world-building. The character designs and geographical concepts found in Z are too cool to beat, and make this a hard universe to spend too much time away from.
The Saiyan Saga Is the Best ‘Dragon Ball Z’ Saga Because It Puts Goku Through the Wringer
More than anything, Dragon Ball Z works because of its characters. We get to meet many of them in the previous series, simply titled Dragon Ball, but in Z, they both mature and have their stakes raised. This is all evident straight out of the gate. The series kicks off directly into the Saiyan Saga, a stretch that finds three members of a nearly extinct race, the Saiyans, coming to find Goku so that he will join them in their efforts to destroy all life on Earth. This might seem like just another day by Dragon Ball Super‘s standards, but compared to anything that happened in Dragon Ball, this is a huge threat.
Not only are the Earth and its people threatened, but Goku learns that the first Saiyan to come to Earth, Raditz, is his brother. Hang on, it gets worse! Raditz breaks the news to Goku that he’s actually a member of a dying alien race! This shatters Goku’s whole concept of his existence and momentarily challenges his worldview. Will he join his brother and the other two Saiyans, or will he save the Earth? Dragon Ball Z would continue to find interesting ways to deepen Goku as a character, but rarely ever would they be able to this degree. This is the foundation that his character will be built on for the rest of the show! So, while the idea of being a Saiyan ends up becoming fun later in the series, this initial news isn’t met with much joy.
Goku teams up with his former enemy Piccolo to fight Raditz, only to sacrifice himself in the end so that Piccolo can shoot Raditz with his Special Beam Cannon, killing them both. Goku losing his life, having to kill his own brother, andcut his species’ population in half, all in one fell swoop, is a pretty tragic way for this series to open, but it tells us everything that we need to know about its central hero.
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The Saiyan Saga Expands the World of ‘Dragon Ball’ in Other Interesting Ways
The rest of the Saiyan Saga continues to expand on the world of Dragon Ball in various interesting ways. Whether we’re taking our first venture into the afterlife, seeing the reckless nature of the Saiyans, or studying how Piccolo begrudgingly takes Gohan under his wing, Akira Toriyama quickly makes it clear that Dragon Ball Z will be bigger than its predecessor in just about every way. Physically, yes, but also emotionally.
The fights in the Saiyan Saga might not be remembered as well as those with Frieza or Cell, but they shouldn’t be overlooked so quickly either. They’re the perfect middle ground between the simple duels in Dragon Ball and the Earth-shattering destruction of future sagas. These fights get pretty nuts by the time Goku and Vegeta are facing off against each other, but they don’t quite get caught up in powering up ad nauseam just yet, and definitely don’t get lost in the shuffle of powering up to different Super Saiyan levels. The Saiyan Saga keeps the scale large, but doesn’t get too big.
Dragon Ball Z wouldn’t work if the series continued to only have simple fights like the ones we see in the Saiyan Saga, but it’s a shame that the series didn’t continue to focus on the emotions and psychology of our lead characters to the same degree. There are flourishes of these touches again in characters like Trunks, as well as the way that Gohan has to pick himself up enough to face Cell without his father, but nothing would ever be as big of a series pivot as the Saiyan Saga. If you’re looking for a way to shake things up, expand on a fictional world, raise the stakes, and invest audiences in your characters, then take your notes from the way that Akira Toriyama started Dragon Ball Z.
Dragon Ball Z is available to stream on Crunchyroll in the U.S.
Watch on Crunchyroll
This article was originally published on collider.com