It is no secret that people are in need for entertainment these days, and that has prompted a good few people to check out anime and its classics like Dragon Ball. The franchise is a staple in the industry, and Dragon Ball Z brought anime to an international level decades ago… but there is a more recent series out there starring Goku. After all, Dragon Ball Super came out in the mid-2010s following a string of successful movies, and it has plenty of epic moments to binge. But a question has been asked amongst the fandom about which Dragon Ball anime needs to be watched first, and we’re here to break down a viewing order for all you new fans.
First, it’s pretty obvious why the question comes up more and more, these days: Dragon Ball Super is the shiny new thing in the franchise, and if new people are coming to the franchise, then images of a blue or silver-haired Goku is likely what brought them in. However, Dragon Ball Z has the reputation of being the series that really put the franchis eon the worldwide map. It’s revered so highly that even now, three decades later, It’s still being carried on word-of-mouth, and remastered into new versions, for new generations.
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But is Dragon Ball Z actual required viewing in order to watch Dragon Ball Z? Yes to an extent, but to larger extent, no.
By now Dragon Ball Z is big and well-known enough for most people to get the major points of the series pretty quickly. Who Goku and Vegeta are; who major enemies like Freeza, or Buu are; what the Super Saiyan power-ups are all about. Therefore, it would be somewhat easy to get into Dragon Ball Super‘s initial “Battle of the Gods” arc, where Goku begins to leave the old DBZ Super Saiyan rules behind, and starts down the divine path of Saiyan power that now defines the series.
The biggest hurdle to skipping DBZ to watch DBS is having to fill in the blanks at major callback points in the newer series. When Freeza comes back in the “Resurrection F” arc, it’s hard to get the full impact without having seen just how epic (and drawn-out) Goku and Freeza’s milestone battle on Namek was. That’s even more true for Dragon Ball Super‘s Future Trunks Saga, which is a convoluted time travel mystery that builds directly upon a convoluted time travel story that Dragon Ball Z told (the Trunks, Android, and Cell Games sagas).
However, the real highlight of Dragon Ball Super that people come to see are the major galactic tournament arcs, like the Tournament of Destruction and its followup, the Tournament of Power. For those standout storylines, you don’t really need much Dragon Ball Z education – just like you don’t need to watch much of the other Dragon Ball Super storylines, either.
You can catch Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super on available streaming platforms.
