The Z Fighters
Dragon Ball z is a Awesome super cool Manga and Tv Show made in japan and created by Akira Toriyama.With the ending of Dragon Ball, Toei Animation quickly released a second anime television series, Dragon Ball Z (ドラゴンボールZ(ゼット) Doragon Bōru Zetto?, commonly abbreviated as DBZ). Picking up where the first left off, Dragon Ball Z is adapted from the final twenty-six volumes of the manga series. It premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on April 26, 1989, taking over its predecessor's time slot, and ran for 291 episodes until its conclusion on January 31, 1996.
Following the short-lived dub of Dragon Ball in 1995, Funimation Entertainment began production on an English-language release of Dragon Ball Z in North America. They contracted Saban Entertainment to help finance and distribute the series to television, and sub-licensed home video distribution to Geneon Universal Entertainment. Saban hired Ocean Productions to dub the anime into English and contracted Shuki Levy to compose an alternate musical score. This dub of Dragon Ball Z was heavily edited for content, as well as length, reducing the first 67 episodes into 53.The series premiered in the United States on September 13, 1996 in first-run syndication, but also struggled to find a substantial audience during its run, and was eventually cancelled after two seasons. Funimation dissolved its partnership with Saban and Geneon soon after. On August 31, 1998, however, the same 53 dubbed episodes began airing on Cartoon Network as part of the channel's action-oriented programming block, Toonami, where the series received much more popularity. With new success, Funimation continued production on the series by themselves, with less editing due to fewer restrictions on cable programing. However, they could no longer afford the services of either the Ocean voice cast or Shuki Levy's music without Saban's financial assistance, resulting in the creation of their own in-house voice cast and a new musical score composed by Bruce Faulconer.Dragon Ball Z was now in full production in the United States and the new dub of the series aired on Toonami from September 13, 1999 to April 7, 2003. The Funimation dubbed episodes also aired in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand. Beginning with episode 108, however, an alternate dub, produced by Westwood Media (in association with Ocean Productions), was broadcast in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Ireland (as well as Canada beginning with episode 168), while Funimation's in-house dub continued to air in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. In 2004, Geneon lost its distribution rights to the first 53 dubbed episodes of Dragon Ball Z, allowing Funimation to re-dub them with their in-house voice cast and restore them to the original 67 count. These re-dubbed episodes aired on Cartoon Network during the summer of 2005.[30][31] In 2006, Funimation remastered the episodes in 16:9 widescreen format, and began re-releasing the series to DVD in nine individual season box sets. The first set was released on February 6, 2007; the final set on May 19, 2009. These sets were notable for including the option of hearing Funimation's in-house dub alongside the original Japanese music, an option that had previously not been available. Other options included hearing the in-house dub with the American soundtrack composed by Bruce Faulconer, and a third option included watching the original Japanese version, with the original Japanese soundtrack and English subtitles. In July 2009, Funimation announced that they would be re-releasing Dragon Ball Z in a new seven-volume DVD set called the "Dragon Boxes," which were previously released in Japan as a five-volume set containing the entire anime franchise. Based on the original series masters with frame-by-frame restoration, the first set was released on November 10, 2009.Unlike the season box sets, Funimation's "Dragon Box" release is presented in fullscreen 4:3 format. It was also seen on RPN-9 from 1994 to 1995 and from 1997 to 1998 during Sundays. Later moved to GMA-7 from 2000 to 2001 and it returned onwards as the longest running anime.