Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
PraneshChow
I watched Dragon Ball Z a long time ago. And I still love its incredible fights and power up moments. For me, it will always be one of the greatest anime of all time.
My favorite characters are Goku, Gohan, Piccolo, Vegeta and Krillin. I especially enjoyed Goku's journey a hero who constantly faces powerful enemies and trains hard to protect his friends, family and Earth. The friendship among the characters feels genuine. And in every battle, they risk their lives to save one another. The entrance of each character into an intense fight always gives me goosebumps because the series builds such strong emotional bonds.
The nostalgia this anime gives me is unforgettable. I first watched it in 2008 and then I watched the entire series again with my younger brother in 2023. Even after all t…
Read at the sourceAstoranime
Dragon Ball Z is no mere hype. It’s probably my favorite anime. As a Latin American, there’s probably bias in this statement. However, I truly believe the show is amazing, even after watching lots and lots of other anime.
The characters might not have the deepest character development, but most of them don’t need it. The plot is, most of the time, simple, and it works. There’s a threat, and it’s up to Goku and his friends/allies to stop it. There are power-ups for the heroes and the villains, and you can feel the stakes at play.
The Raditz intro, with Goku revealed as a Saiyan, is probably one of the best time skips and plot twists of all time. Now that’s how you start a sequel. Then we get more Saiyans, and it reaches its potential best on Namek with Frieza. After that, the quality might…
Read at the sourceZynxio
Dragon Ball Z takes you on some of the most memorable and legendary adventures of all time. This is one of the most influential and legendary shows ever. It has inspired countless mangakas and even video game creators, I never get bored of this show, and I have rewatched this a dozen or more times. The characters are peak and the story is great too.
I absolutely love all the main characters and all the villains, from Raditz, Vegeta, and Nappa to Buu, all of them are amazing and I also absolutely adore the character development every character goes through. We'll genuinely never have a better written successor character than Gohan in anything.
Read at the sourceManjirin
When it comes to the gargantuan that is Dragon Ball Z there is hardly anything that I can add that hasn't already been said elsewhere and at considerable length. In an effort not to retread ground, I'll try to concisely encapsulate what elevates this series to masterpiece status and why I feel it is and will remain unmatched into the distant future.
This series does tension and buildup in a way that no other series to my mind has ever approached and that most never even attempt. The pacing of the original 291 episodes is such that every twist and turn in the plot is given its due time to breathe and for the impact to be felt by the viewer. Those who consider the series too slow are missing the bigger picture in my view, and that is to savor every bit of showboating, backtalking, character…
Read at the sourceKingdomOfSalt
Upon joining this website, I wasn't particularly surprised to find out that not only have many of the active users not watched Dragonball Z, but much of the user-base actually /hate/ battle shounen as a whole. I knew that I would be an outlier in my love for Dragonball Z in a space where most of the mainstream action anime is commonly seen as tiring and bland.
While I can understand why more-involved anime fans may feel this way, and acknowledge the repeated "refrain from talking about personal feelings" messages on the review page, I wanted my first review to be a panegyric on my favorite anime of all time, explaining in-depth what it means to me as a person, making a case as to why it is more than it seems on a surface-level, and hopefully convince people who turn their nose up at it to…
Read at the sourceanen0me
This is the patient zero for every trope i hate in modern shonen anime. It didn't create most of those tropes, but it's the work that put them all in the same show and inspired every mediocre time waster that came after it. The author saw how popular Hokuto no Ken was getting and immediately decided to entirely reinvent his own perfectly good show to ride its coattails. He knew absolutely nothing about martial arts, but he was fantastic at creating an action comic book formula that fit into a weekly release schedule. This thing getting popular is the worst thing that's ever happened to anime, short of maybe Sword Art Online. I watched this on the TV growing up and didn't love it even back then, and coming back later to give it a fair shot from start to finish did not end up being rewarding…
Read at the source_Bubassotto_
I waited a long time and received much more than I expected!
I'll start this review with a more personal note, as I believe many people can relate to what I'm about to say. I've always been a Naruto fan, and because there was a strong rivalry between Naruto and Dragon Ball in my social circle during childhood, I ended up not watching Dragon Ball and treating it as just an anime without a story, that only had fights. This prejudiced view I had of the work prevented me from properly appreciating Dragon Ball, and it was only almost 10 years after I started watching anime that I decided to give it a chance.
One of the reasons I started watching Dragon Ball was the Buu saga. I followed this saga on broadcast TV during my childhood, but, since I didn't have the complete context of the Dragon B…
Read at the sourceProudElitist
Do you like Epics with a capital E like Star Wars and Sailor Moon? well, I have a news for you, there's another Epic with a capital E you might want to check out, this series. Because this series is exactly like those two, an Epic on the screen where the main focus is on the titular family (Son Goku's on this case, Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker's on the other) and/or the extended family of friends, rivals turned friends, rival turned friends and then again rival etc, in something akin to an animated version of War and Peace in a cosmic/martial art setting. Even if there are indeed some chinks on the armour - NOT the pacing nor the "fillers" (these ones accounting to the "impressive" low percentage of 13% total according to sites focused on highlighting this statistic, the same one of the 19…
Read at the sourceIgoe
I’m giving this a 10 purely for the nostalgia.
Back in my teenage years, Dragon Ball was the greatest thing ever—it was the best animation I had ever seen. I didn’t even know the term "anime" back then. Even though I also watched Pokémon, Digimon, and Yu-Gi-Oh, I just saw them all as cartoons, and Dragon Ball stood above everything else I watched.
I’ve tried watching it again in my twenties, and of course, it didn’t hit the same. It didn’t bring back the same feeling. But this score is for how I felt the first time I watched it and for all the incredible memories it gave me during my childhood.
Read at the sourceAnasyub
Let me start by saying yes most of us grew up with this show so i did start this and dragon ball as a proper rewatch/watch now as an adult out of nostalgia but i truly mainly remember bits and pieces of the frieza saga or cell saga and i was ready to experience this as an anime from the start like god (toriyama) intended.
Yes i now think the frieza saga is truly a masterpiece and one of my fav shonen arcs and yes the buu fight in the end genuinely had me screaming at my screen for goku to beat him just like i did at age 7 (even tho the cell saga and buu saga did drag on a bit lol). the joy goku brings to me and many of us coz u just wanna root for him and wanna see him win honestly, toriyama created something beautiful truly
(very minor spoilers)
I will say everything surpassed my expect…
Read at the sourceSteeJans
The grandfather of modern shonen. A timeless power fantasy with real heart.
When I heard of Toriyama’s passing, I felt a genuine loss. His creativity shaped anime as we know it today. DBZ introduced many of the now-iconic staples of shonen: multi-episode battles, beam struggles, over-the-top transformations. These elements would go on to define shows like Bleach, One Piece, and Naruto. Creators including Masashi Kishimoto and Eiichiro Oda have directly credited Toriyama’s work with shaping their own storytelling approaches – adaptations ranging from pacing to combat staging draw clear lineage to DBZ.
But all that aside, it was how impressionable the characters were. The characters legitimately molded me into who I am today, and I remember thinking “would Vegeta do this?”
-Goku proved th…
Read at the sourceIogicom
Dragon Ball Z remains one of the greatest shonen anime of all time, delivering incredible battles, iconic characters, and a story that still holds up today. Among its many arcs, the Cell Saga stands out as the best, thanks to Gohan’s growth and Perfect Cell’s villain character. Gohan’s journey from a timid child to the strongest fighter is one of the most satisfying parts of the series, culminating in his legendary Super Saiyan 2 transformation. Cell, on the other hand, is a villain with both brains and brawn, making for a thrilling final battle.
The action is top-tier, with fights that are grand in scale and tension-packed. Though the pacing can be slow, the payoff is always worth it. The storytelling remains compelling, with themes of perseverance, self-improvement, and surpassing limit…
Read at the sourceKira666_
Although I didn’t grow up with Dragon Ball, it’s still one of those anime that I had an absolute blast watching. What stands out to me the most is Goku’s growth throughout the series, and the way the anime manages to combine action with heartwarming moments.The characters are incredibly likeable, each with their own charm, and the relationships between them are healthy and supportive—something I really appreciate after watching other series like Naruto, where the drama can feel overwhelming, especially with characters like Sasuke. Dragon Ball keeps things light-hearted without relying on excessive melodrama, and that’s exactly what makes it so enjoyable.I watched the first two arcs, and I’ll never forget the pure joy of experiencing it for the first time. Those first seasons will always ho…
Read at the sourceMarkusAkaMarkos
Masterpiece. Even to this day, Dragon Ball Z still has a story that can rival modern shounens and the way Toriyama sensei wrote it was in a way where we have to rewatch certain scenes in order to understand certain plot points and character decisions which are misunderstood as most people dont get Toriyama sensei´s writing style. The cast is pretty much amazing, Son Goku, Vegeta, Picoolo, Son Gohan, Trunks, Tien Shin Han, Yamcha, Yajirobe were all amazingly written and for me to explain each one´s depth would take a long long essay. Raditz Vegeta Frieza Cell the androids Majin Vegeta and Buu also were amazing villains with Vegeta cell and frieza being my personnal favorite. Sad of how it is misunderstood by the dragon ball and the anime community people just need to pay attention to the go…
Read at the sourceDompa112
The nostalgia is obviously strong with this one why its rated so highly despite being so dull and mediocre show. Nothing wrong with it i guess. It obviously helped spread anime worldwide. Its an important piece of media and anime and should be respected. But when you cut that of and only review it for its content its just nothing special at all why i give it a 6 as someone who didnt grow up with it. Maybe if i was 7 years old id give it a higher rating without a nostalgia factor, but a grown adult this cant appeal more than that if you have a functional and normal developed brain.
Theres no real story here. Like say the superior Naruto or One Piece in the same genre. Its just a bunch of characters, mainly Vegeta and Goku wanting to be the strongest. Constantly going on about their power…
Read at the sourceLittleCholo69
This is the Latin American Bible. I think Goku could be seen as a modern day Jesus, a role model for many and a good one at that. Just a sound guy innit. If it wasn’t for this show me and my fellow latino brothers would not have grown up watching this weird Japanese stuff so I’m eternally grateful. If you don’t know where to start with Dragon Ball I would definitely say this one, just the undeniable GOAT, I mean it’s got the cell saga c’mon man. Original and Super are great in my opinion but Z is just different gravy, please do avoid GT at all costs let’s forget that ever happened… super saiyan 4 is p cool tho ig.
Read at the sourceSnocZz
This show means everything to me, and forever will. It's my personal favorite (FAVORITE, not best) piece of media in existence and I don't see that ever changing. And honestly? Whilst there's so much of the show that I adore, from the aesthetics, to the individual arcs, to the themes and storytelling...The main thing that solidifies it as my absolute favorite piece of fiction is the characters.
Goku's my favorite fictional character, Vegeta has the greatest character arc ever done in all of fiction imo (even goku, gohan, trunks and piccolo for example have phenomenal arcs), Cell's the coolest villain ever to me, and fellas like Chi-chi and Krillin just make me happy. Characters are the most important thing in any piece of fiction to me, if you're trying to write a defined story than the o…
Read at the sourcenurBeL_xelA
I had been meaning to watch DBZ for YEARS. I remember watching one episode of it on Adult Swim when I was a kid. At the time, I had definitely heard of the show before but I hadn’t seen a single episode. I don't remember exactly what episode I watched (I think it was during the Planet Namek saga where Vegeta and Frieza or maybe it was Piccolo floating in the air and talking to one another about something idek) but I do remember changing the channel after 5 minutes because 13 year old me thought it was boring as shit. I was like: "Where's the fighting at?"
I was always curious in watching this show somewhere around that age but I just never got around to doing it. I think watching that small part of whatever episode I happened to stumble across dashed my interest in watching it. I think I…
Read at the sourceloopingbeats
This very funny, because people here in mal always wanna try to look cool and theyre just pretentious and give low scores
Whats funny to me is how they hate dbz and love other animes like one piece or naruto , and even naruto and one piece mangakas said its their fav manga,now onto the anime itself
Story 10/10 i freaking love dbz i could always rewatch it its awesome how i can be at a restaurant and ep is running and i just freeze watching, its not without its flaws of course but i dont think a masterpiece is completely perfect i dont there is such thing as objectively scores because anime is art and art is subjective
Characters 10/10 every characters is this series is amazing theyre so unique and have a motivation its awesome how even master roshi can teach you a lesson to me dragon bal…
Read at the sourcefabiopires10
Dragon Ball is a masterpiece that has endured for decades, and it's not hard to see why. The anime has spectacular fights that leave viewers glued to the screen and iconic villains, especially Freeza.
Vegeta has, in my opinion, the best character development I‘ve ever seen, going from a ruthless Saiyan to a family man while keeping his pride intact.
And who can forget the mythical transformation into Super Saiyan? A landmark in pop culture, this transcendent evolution is one of the most iconic moments in the series, taking battles to a whole new level.
Besides Vegeta the anime has a lot of other great characters like Gohan, Goku, Piccolo, Muten Roshi, etc.
It's no wonder that Dragon Ball is considered the progenitor of anime classics like Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach. Its unmistakable…
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