The original Dragon Ball Z is an anime that has been reviewed to death on various platforms. It's so well-known, both among the general public and hardcore anime fans, that there’s not much need to introduce it.

Instead, I’m using this review as a personal soapbox for my thoughts on the series.

Like everyone else, Dragon Ball Z was one of the first animes I ever watched as a kid, before I even knew Japanese animation was a thing. The only ones I watched before this were Pokémon and Digimon.

Despite being a sequel to Dragon Ball—where Goku and Krillin were kids—Z essentially skips ahead in time. I think the series is simple enough that you can jump in anywhere, not needing much backstory to enjoy it. That’s part of why it’s so popular, both among long-time anime fans and newcomers.

While it would have been nice to experience Dragon Ball before Z, there are many people who’ve never seen the original, probably because it’s so long and has a much different tone from Z.

But it’s that over-the-top simplicity and ease of getting into it that makes Dragon Ball Z better than many other shonen that came after it, like One Piece, Naruto, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, and Jujutsu Kaisen. Martial arts fighting and energy ki blasts are the core of the show, which makes it easy to follow. The main differences are just the shape of the blasts, the power of the opponent, and the characters’ personalities and development.

Dragon Ball Z does suffer from power creep, where it’s almost required to be a Saiyan to be relevant, both in terms of power and character development. Still, almost everyone in the cast—from the main characters to the side characters, even the villains—is lovable in their own way.

As much as I love the over-the-top martial arts and beam battles, I think the reason I enjoy them so much isn’t just because of how cool the fights look or how loud the characters scream. It’s because of how simple yet engaging their motivations are. Sure, many of the villains want to take over the world or be the strongest in the universe, but there’s enough variation between them to keep things fresh.

On the protagonist side, Goku’s motivation is unique: he wants to get stronger, with protecting his friends coming second. Gohan struggles with self-doubt and hates fighting. Vegeta wants to surpass Kakarot. Piccolo fights with his heritage and is on a journey to discover his purpose. These motivations all tie together extremely well, from start to finish.

I’ll discuss each arc in more detail later, but that’s better saved for a Dragon Ball Z Kai review, where I’ll focus purely on my opinions on the canon content.

That said, Dragon Ball Z does have some unfortunate issues that make it feel inconsistent compared to Kai. The biggest one is the filler arcs and episodes. In a vacuum, most of the filler isn’t bad—there’s a reason the Goku and Piccolo driving episode is so popular; it’s legitimately funny. But I think that episode is more of an exception to the rule.

While most of the filler episodes aren’t bad on their own, they feel like unnecessary padding, slowing down the story. It doesn’t help that filler episodes are rarely referenced later on, so when you’re watching Dragon Ball Z from start to finish, it can be tough to get through them.

Filler is part of the broader pacing issue with Dragon Ball Z. Like many older anime, it struggled with how fast to adapt the manga. Unfortunately, the method Dragon Ball Z used was to drag things out, rather than spacing things out over multiple seasons like more modern shonen series do. This makes even the canon episodes go slower than necessary. The Namek and Frieza arc, for example, is an excellent part of the show, but there are so many episodes that it became a meme on TV Tropes: “Are they still on Namek?” This flaw makes Dragon Ball Z harder to revisit than Kai for me.

Then there’s the English dub. For those who prefer the FUNimation dub, it does have an old-school charm, but it’s clearly more amateur than later dubs in the Dragon Ball series. While some scenes work well in the original dub, on average, it doesn’t compare to later iterations.

Even if the original Dragon Ball Z dub is your preference, you can’t go wrong. Both Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Z Kai cover the same content—it’s mostly about personal preference.

All in all, Dragon Ball Z is a consistently entertaining series with flying martial arts, memorable energy beams, and surprisingly good character development (mostly for the main five characters). There’s a reason it’s the shonen that appeals to both the oldest anime fans and even newer ones.