| Season Number: | 1 |
| Bgcolour: |
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| Num Episodes: | 39 |
| Network: | Fuji Television |
| Prev Season: | Dragon Ball |
| Episode List: | List of Dragon Ball Z episodes |
The first season of the Dragon Ball Z anime series contains the Raditz and Vegeta arcs, which comprises the Saiyan Saga, which adapts the 17th through the 21st volumes of the Dragon Ball manga series by Akira Toriyama. The series follows the adventures of Goku. The episodes deal with Goku as he learns about his Saiyan heritage and battles Raditz, Nappa, and Vegeta, three other Saiyans who want Goku to join them and help them destroy life on Earth.
The season initially ran from April 1989 until March 1990 in Japan on Fuji Television. The season was then licensed for a heavily edited dubbed broadcast by Funimation Entertainment. Their adaptation first ran in September 1996 through September 1997, primarily on FOX,[1] UPN and WB affiliate stations in the United States. The 39 episodes were cut down to a mere 28. Their edited adaptation was syndicated to television by Saban Entertainment, and was released by Geneon Entertainment (then known as Pioneer) on VHS and DVD between 1997 and 1999. Eventually, Geneon Entertainment lost the distribution license to the first 67 episodes and Funimation began redubbing the series for an uncut broadcast. The unedited version was released on DVD in 2005, but later cancelled and Funimation eventually began releasing season box sets of Dragon Ball Z and they re-released their first season on February 6, 2007. In late 2013, the company released the first season box set on the Blu-ray Disc format. In June 2009, Funimation announced that they would be releasing Dragon Ball Z in a new seven volume set called the "Dragon Box". Based on the original series masters with frame-by-frame restoration, the first set was released November 10, 2009.[2]
Two pieces of theme music were used throughout the season. The opening theme, "Cha-La Head-Cha-La", is performed by Hironobu Kageyama and the ending theme, is performed by Manna. The theme for the original 1996–1997 English dub is "Rock the Dragon", performed by Jeremy Sweet. The uncut English redub from 2005 uses "Dragon Ball Z theme" by Dave Moran. The remastered season one boxset uses "Dragon Ball Z movie theme" by Mark Menza.
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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".[3] 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.
The first English dub of the episodes was produced by Filipino company Creative Products Corporation, airing on RPN 9 in the Philippines during 1993.[4] In 1996, Dallas-based company Funimation began working on their first season of a North American dub for Dragon Ball Z. The company had previously produced a dub of Dragon Balls 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, and Funimation partnered with Los Angeles-based Saban Entertainment (known at the time for shows such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and ) to syndicate their Dragon Ball Z adaptation to Fox, UPN and The WB affiliate stations.[5] [6] [7] While Saban had a history of acquiring the rights to various anime series to be dubbed, Funimation still controlled the American license to the property during this period.[8] Like with the prior Dragon Ball dub from 1995, Canadian voice actors from Vancouver, British Columbia were used. However, this time ADR work was handled by The Ocean Group (now known as Ocean Productions), leading to some fans referring to this dub as "the Ocean dub". Funimation producer Barry Watson would regularly fly out from Dallas to Vancouver to coordinate the voice actors at Ocean.
The program aired during early morning time slots in most markets. It was part of the "Saban Network for Kids", a 1996–97 syndicated programming block[9] which included other Saban anime dubs, such as Eagle Riders and Samurai Pizza Cats,[7] [10] [11] as well as Masked Rider, Saban's Adventures of Oliver Twist and The Why Why Family.[1] [7] Heightened exposure from Saban helped ensure a larger audience for the series, which led to Funimation creating a second syndicated dub season in 1997, intended to air in its own hour long block.
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, butthere were a lot of other instances in which we felt they crossed the line."[12]
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.[12] In other scenes, lines were added which implied that buildings destroyed by Vegeta and Nappa were empty or evacuated. Vegeta actor Brian Drummond's reading of the line "It's Over 9000!" in the episode "The Return of Goku" later became a popular internet meme in 2006, nine years after the scene originally aired on American television.[13] 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!".[13]
Funimation decided to replace the original Japanese score by Shunsuke Kikuchi so they wouldn't have to pay him music royalties, and outsourced the role of music to Saban Entertainment. Saban in turn hired their former in-house composer Ron Wasserman, who went uncredited so Saban could collect the music royalties.[14] [15] 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 1995 due to being overworked.[14] Saban let Wasserman compose for Dragon Ball Z from his home in Los Angeles, and he was allowed more creative freedom, giving it a darker sound than previous shows he had worked on.[16] 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, presumably so they could earn maximum music royalties.[17] 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.[18] [19]
The theme song "Main Title" (known by fans as "Rock the Dragon") was created by Saban before they hired Wasserman to do background music for the show,[17] [20] with the vocals performed by Jeremy Sweet, another composer who had previously worked on the Power Rangers franchise.[21] [16] "Rock the Dragon" and Wasserman's background music for the first season were included on an album titled Dragon Ball Z: Original USA Television Soundtrack, which was released on December 9, 1997.[22] 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.[21] This soundtrack would continue to be used for the second season of the syndicated dub, before being replaced in 1999 by Dallas-based composer Bruce Faulconer and his team of musicians in the third season, which was the first produced without Ocean or Saban Entertainment's involvement, and the first to air on Cartoon Network's Toonami block instead of syndication.[12] Wasserman has stated that he was interested in composing for the third season and beyond, but received no response from Funimation when he reached out to them.[16] Fukunaga said in 1999 that "we had to change the composer. We were not very pleased with the music for the first two seasons. We're much happier with this new composer, we just feel that the newer music is much better." He added, "we wanted to have more control over the music. Previously, we had almost no control. Saban wouldn't deliver the music on time, and we couldn't have it adjusted the way we wanted. Now, with it being done locally, we've been given a lot more control."[12]
In 2004–2005, Funimation redubbed the first two syndicated seasons, with their American voice actors from Dallas, who had been used by the company from the third season onward. Unlike the 1996–1997 Ocean/Saban co-production, this dub had no episodes or scenes cut out and no visual censorship. While the script was still based on the script of the syndicated dub, they did slightly rewrite it to remove inaccurate lines and instances of censorship. Examples include the removal of the line "I can see their parachutes, they're okay", removing a line where Vegeta incorrectly claims that Goku's father was a "brilliant scientist", and removing another where Goku incorrectly states that it was Vegeta in his ape form who killed his Grandfather Gohan. The "It's Over 9000!" line was not rewritten, and it had not yet become an internet meme when the re-dub was being made. It featured a new background score by Dallas-based composer Nathan M. Johnson, who later became a Texas state senator.[23] 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.[24]
Beginning in August 1997, the syndicated English dub was aired on Canada's 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 Indian Hindi-language dub of the first two seasons was based on the syndicated dub, even using Saban Entertainment's score and a Hindi-language version of the "Rock the Dragon" theme song, instead of the original Japanese music like most other non-English dubs.[25] This dub began airing on the Indian version of Cartoon Network in 2001.