Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z
Main article: List of Dragon Ball Z episodes
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.[7]

Following the cancelled dub of Dragon Ball, Funimation Productions licensed Dragon Ball Z for an English language release in North America, and contracted Ocean Studios to produce an English dub track. Like the original dub of Dragon Ball, Ocean's dub of Dragon Ball Z was heavily edited for content, as well as length, reducing the first 67 episodes into 53. The series premiered in the United States on The WB Television Network in September 1996 and aired until May 1998 before being cancelled, once again due to low ratings. Three months later, the dubbed episodes began airing on Cartoon Network as part of the channel's new Toonami programming block, where the series received much more attention. Soon after, Funimation continued dubbing the series from where the cancelled dub left off, now using its own in-house voice actors, a new musical score, and less editing. The new dub of Dragon Ball Z aired on Cartoon Network from September 1999 to April 2003.

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 dubbing with its in-house voice cast. These re-dubbed episodes aired on Cartoon Network throughout the summer of 2005. The Funimation dubbed episodes also aired in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Republic of Ireland.[28][29] Beginning with episode 108, another dub produced by Ocean Studios was created. This new dub was edited for content, and was broadcast in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland instead of Funimation's dub. 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 Dragon Ball Z and the 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.[30]