Intro

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 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 canceled dub of Dragon Ball, Funimation Productions licensed Dragon Ball Z for an English language release in North America. They contracted Ocean Studios to handle the dubbing, Saban Entertainment to handle television distribution, and Geneon Entertainment to handle home video distribution. Ocean's dub of Dragon Ball Z was heavily edited for content, as well as length, reducing the first 67 episodes into 53.^[1] The series premiered in the United States in September 1996 on The WB Television Network and aired there until May 1998 before being cancelled, once again due to low ratings. Three months later, the Ocean dubbed episodes began airing on Cartoon Network as part of the channel's new Toonami programming block, where the series received much more popularity. Soon after, Funimation continued dubbing the series from where the cancelled dub left off, now using their own in-house voice cast, a new musical score, and less editing.^[2] The new dub of Dragon Ball Z aired on Cartoon Network from September 1999 to April 2003.

The Funimation dubbed episodes also aired in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Beginning with episode 108 however, an alternate dub produced by Ocean Studios was broadcast in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland, while Funimation's dub continued to air in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. In August 2004, Geneon Entertainment lost its licensing rights to the old Ocean dubbed episodes of Dragon Ball Z, allowing Funimation to re-dub the first 67 episodes, restore the removed content and replace the old voice cast with their in-house one. These re-dubbed episodes aired in the United States on Cartoon Network during the summer of 2005.^[3][4] In 2006, Funimation remastered the episodes then began re-releasing the series in nine individual season boxsets. The first set was released on February 6, 2007; the final set on May 19, 2009. In June 2009, Funimation announced that they would be re-releasing the episodes and movies in a new seven volume set called the "Dragon Boxes". Based on the original series masters with frame-by-frame restoration, the first set was released on November 10, 2009.^[5]