37 years ago today, Dragon Ball kickstarted a new era of its anime franchise in Japan with the debut of Dragon Ball Z, and the world really hasn’t been the same since. Although anime is now one of the hugest industries in the pop culture circuit these days, it wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t always as the case as anime releases used to not only be much harder to come by, but were also harder to keep track of. But that began to change in the last 1990s and early 2000s thanks to some key breakouts.
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37 years ago today, on April 26, 1989, Dragon Ball Z made its premiere in Japan as the second major era of the Dragon Ball franchise. Little did fans know at the time, this series would go on to be such a massive hit outside of Japan long after it ended its run and then become one of the biggest hits in the world. It was such a massive hit that it can also largely be credited with expanding anime’s reach in North America and other international territories to the level we enjoy anime today.
Dragon Ball Z Premiered in Japan 37 Years Ago Today
Dragon Ball Z was the official anime sequel to Dragon Ball, and picked up with the new era of Goku and Earth’s protectors as they headed into a new slate of battles. Although the series continues to adapt Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball manga following the fight against Piccolo Jr., and takes place five years later. Goku has become much older, and he’s even had a son (named after his grandfather Gohan). But Dragon Ball Z immediately ushered in a much bigger scale for the franchise as it had revealed that Goku was secretly a space alien this entire time.
Not only that, but he belonged to a race of conquering warriors that went from planet to planet destroying things. With his brother arriving in the hopes of recruiting Goku to the cause, Goku finds himself wrapped up in increasingly tougher fights in the years that followed. He would go on to fight space aliens, space emperors, demons, androids, magical creatures, and even gods before it all came to an end. But for much of the world, this was likely the only version of Dragon Ball that they knew about.
When Dragon Ball Z was licensed to other territories like North America, it was this version of the series that ultimately broke through the pop culture barrier. While Dragon Ball had an attempted English license before, the dub was ultimately dropped before it was able to end. But when Dragon Ball Z came around, renewed interest in the series reached such a fever pitch that the original Dragon Ball anime was able to later air as well. For quite a long time, there was a generation of Dragon Ball Z fans that likely had no idea that there was an entire anime series before it.
Dragon Ball Z Was Anime’s First Real Worldwide Success
While there had been other anime franchises that were able to break through to the mainstream pop culture, Dragon Ball Z was the first one that really felt like a worldwide success. The series offered a lot of things that other animated shows did not at the time. It not only offered a serialized story spanning months of television watching (making it necessary to be home as soon as possible to see the latest episodes), but also felt like it was paying off a character’s journey. Fans couldn’t help but love seeing how far Goku could go.
That might be the norm now with popular releases like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba or Jujutsu Kaisen, but it really felt like a cool new kind of idea. Despite the many differences the multiple language dubs had compared to the Japanese, and despite the ways it was censored or altered from Toriyama’s manga, Dragon Ball Z was the show that really broke through. It drew in more than the then current anime audience, and was honestly the show that helped an entire generation get into the world of anime as a whole.
It was such a massive success that Dragon Ball was able to take this into an entire future of new releases. We’ve gotten reboots, sequels, multiple films, and even more new projects currently in the works as part of the 40th anniversary of the manga. Dragon Ball Z helped anime reach a new level that fans likely never could have seen coming, and it broke through the limits to reach the mainstream in ways no other show had been able to do pre-Internet. Everyone knows Super Saiyans, Kamehamehas and more because of this show, and all these years later it still rocks the dragon.
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