Dragonball Z is the follow up series to another anime called Dragonball. However well successful and popular Dragonball was, Dragonball Z had been the more popular and successful series. The characters from Dragonball return as adults, and have grown up since the last couple of years since King Piccolo from Dragonball had died. In the first season of the show, the main character Goku meets his alien brother who’d he never met. His brother Raditz tells him how he’s actually an alien, kidnaps his kid, and the first conflict is introduced. Goku is forced to team with his enemy Piccolo, and together they take on Raditz. After the battle Raditz tells Goku how two even more powerful Saiyans (the race Goku and his brother are) are coming to Earth in one year, and thus our show gets going. I’ve reviewed each episode in season one, and the ranks are all positive. The worst rank was average, and that’s not bad at all, especially when dealing with thirty-nine episodes. Also the season as a whole holds more. Some things you think more on the level of a episode, some as a show. For instance I love the fighting mechanic in DBZ. In fact, it is my favorite fighting system in any form of any entertainment. Characters are able to fly around, have ultra speed, go head to head in normal hand to hand combat, have special unique abilities, and most important use energy. Energy is the inner strength of a person you can shape into outer form to special moves that the characters create. The fights are awesome, and just the idea is cool. Also just the damage the characters can do is astronomical. By the end of the season you feel like the characters are well up in terms of superhero strength, and this is only season one. Also the characters are also really well thought of. Each character is usually widely different with his or her personality, also the character designs are all unique. Each character has their own moves, and even the characters who don’t fight like Master Roshi and Kami are really interesting. Now in this season there is a lot of filler. Personally I don’t care about filler, if it helps the show throw it in, but I can see why people complain about it. Sometimes in the show it feels like things are going slow, and doesn’t seem like the story is really moving, only the characters have subplot. However, some filler episodes I’ve reviewed I really enjoyed, and in the end these episodes don’t hurt anything, and help the show as a whole. Also the episodes that have a single episode story like the episode about the orphans or Goz and Mez are still really entertaining, and make you look at the show better as a whole, especially with the amount of characters introduced by the end. The characters have good chemistry, and the antagonists of the Saiyans are definitely worthy of having their own season to take them down. The two characters I think stole most of the show in the first season were Goku and Piccolo. Sure Vegeta was introduced, but he’s only a form of his future self. Piccolo starts as pretty much as an antagonist himself, but grows through the show and slowly becomes a good guy, but has such good chemistry with his pupil Gohan it doesn’t feel forced like Toriyama just made him a good guy to be a good guy. Another well done feeling was the suspense. Whether it was anxiously awaiting Goku to make it to Earth in time or the suspense of the fights themselves, you are definitely gripped. Another great thing is the settings. Although this is called "Earth,” this is not a normal Earth. There are flying cars, dinosaurs, and a million other little strange places. Anyone from Dragonball knows the world, and since the little places like Kami’s Lookout and Kame House are still in it, it still feels like the old show. Even knew places like Snake Way and Other World are really cool new places and definitely the show flavor, especially when considering the characters associated with the places. One thing I don’t like though is how in DBZ it feels like an exchange with the spotlight. It goes back and fourth between characters getting the spotlight, unlike other anime I’ve seen where all the characters grow while also introducing new ones like Naruto. For instance Krillin isn’t in this season a whole lot, and is not a central character. But by the end you see he’ll be a big character in season two. Anyway there could be a lot of little things you could get bothered with, and you could let these things bother you until they ruin the show for you. But I try to think positive, and due to my personal childhood history with the show as well as how much I enjoy the show by how entertaining it is, it’s hard to look at it under a negative light, also some people arguing about bad things about the show have valid points. But another thing I like is the show I feel like I could watch a good amount of times. A good amount of episodes got the long lasting badge, but even when I don’t watch certain parts for a couple years and come back to it, It definitely keeps me coming back even though I don’t feel like I could watch it over and over again. And a lot of the times it feels like there’s so much content that you don’t want to watch any of it ever again, but that’s not the case here with me. But DBZ paved the way for action anime, introduced anime to people like me, grew up with me over the years, and just is hard to think of as bad. This one season I realize is probably not the best one, it’s amazing, but after reviewing all the episodes I feel like I’ll review a better season. For now I’ll have to give season show a nine, so far it is amazing, but it still has a couple grips and the characters haven’t really developed to how I want to think of them quite yet. If the season ended here I’d also feel like it didn’t really have closure at all. But in the end it easily earns a solid elite, and this is just season one, and with eight to go Dragonball Z shows while it is possibly the best anime of all time.
