Dragon Ball Anime

Dragon Ball is an anime that was produced in the late 1980s, being an adaptation of the the first sixteen volumes of the Dragon Ball Mangga written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama and published in Japan in the Weekly Shonen Jump Mangga anthology comic. Volumes seventeen through fourty-two of the manga series were adapted as Dragon Ball Z.

The Dragon Ball anime is composed of 153 half-hour episodes and ran in Japan from February 26 , 1986 - April 12, 1989. It follows the early adventures of the child version of Son Goku as he and his friends search the world for the seven magic Dragon Balls.

Two early attempts at releasing Dragon Ball to American audiences failed. The first attempt was in the late 1980s by Harmony Gold. It featured strange name changes for nearly all the characters, such as changing Goku to Zero and Karin to Whiskers the Wonder Cat. It is not well-known, and has been referred to as "The Lost Dub" by fans. The second and more well known attempt was in 1995 with only the first 13 episodes translated and aired. This release was put out by KidMark and utilized Ocean Group for the dubbing. These original 13 episodes are still available on DVD as The Saga of Goku. After Dragon Ball Z became immensely popular on Cartoon Network, the entire series was translated by FUNimation and released in the same scheduling block as its successor on the network. The complete series ran in the US between August 20, 2001, and late 2003. Unlike the theme songs for Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT, FUNimation made English versions of the original Japanese opening (OP) and ending (ED) themes for these episodes and left in the original BGM, which was met with delight by most fans. However, some insert (IN) songs were removed or have dialogue dubbed over them.

Dragon Ball is known as being a much less serious anime than its successor, Dragon Ball Z , though later sagas blur the lines a bit.