Re the OP:
No. There is no explanation for the appeal of Dragonball Z.
raisinbread, this might be a tall order, but could you PLEASE explain the whole Buu saga? I’ve been watching it the last three weeks and im still lost. 
From http://www.mlanime.com/animes/dbz/index.shtml
The Buu Saga Seven years pass since the Cell Game. Krillin marries [android]#18 (who was wished to human by the DragonBalls) and has a daughter named Marron. Chi-Chi has a second son named Son Goten. Son Goten and Trunks (Chibi) turned SSJ at an early age. Son Gohan has a girl friend named Videl, the daughter of Satan [Hercule] ( Satan takes all the credit for killing Cell, this got him really famous ), Son Gohan is also a super hero named the Great SaiyanMan. During The Tenkaichu-Boudoukai, Son Gokou is granted a single day of life to meet with Gohan, Goten, Trunks, Chi-Chi, and all the Z warriors, including Vegeta. Two of Buu’s slaves steal Son Gohan’s energy, then a man named Kaiosen revives Son Gohan, he then tells of an evil demon named Buu trying to destroy the Earth. If Buu’s slaves gather enough energy, he will be revived. Vegeta learning that he can become stronger by turning into Buu’s slave, turns evil again. This time he is Majin Vegeta and can turn to SSJ2. This gives Buu enough energy to be revived. Gokou then learns to turn to SSJ2 and fights him and convinces him that good always triumphs over evil. Vegeta finally realizes and self-destructs in hope to kill Buu. Son Gokou then heads to battle aganist Buu. Son Gokou turns SSJ2, and SSJ3! But he still can’t defeat Buu. Later, Son Gohan heads to the Kaoiu-sin’s planet for training. Then before Son Gokou’s time is up on Earth he teaches Son Goten and Trunks the fusion technique, then they get trained by Piccolo so they can be strong enough to beat Buu. Soon after Son Goten and Trunks fuse to become Gotenks, Gotenks turns SSJ1, and then, SSJ3! But Buu has made a twin of himself, but he is a lot more evil than Buu, he even absorbed Buu and thus turning him into Super Buu. Gotenks is defeating Super Buu, but Gotenks is an inexperienced and careless fighter. Buu absorbs Gotenks and becomes a lot stronger, and then he absorbs Piccolo. Dia Kaoiusin then sacrifices his life so Son Gokou can live. Gokou then gets a pair of Potara Earrings for fusion, this way the fused person won’t diffuse in 30 min. Son Gokou now alive teleports to the battle. Then King Yama grants Vegeta life to fight Buu. When Son Gokou arrives to the scene he tells Son Gohan to fuse with him, Son Gokou then throws a fusion earing at Son Gohan. Son Gohan drops the earing and Buu absorbs Son Gohan, thus turning himself into Ultimate Buu. Then Vegeta comes to the scene. Vegeta then fuses with Son Gokou to become, Vegitto. Vegitto defeats Buu but purposely gets absorbed to rescue their friends. This somehow wears off the permenent fusion. They rescue Son Goten, Son Gohan, Trunks, Piccolo, and Fat Buu through Ultimate Buu’s pores. All of the energy that Buu has taken restores him back to his normal form, Majin Buu. Then he destroys the Earth. Kaoiu-sin teleports to help Son Gokou teleport Vegeta, Satan, his dog, and Dende to Kaoiu-sin’s planet. Vegeta gets angry because he rescued them instead of his son and the rest of the Z fighters. Son Gokou was speechless. But there wasn’t any time for that, Majin Buu also teleports to the planet Gokou’s on, and start to fight. Then Son Gokou starts to get beaten up badly. Vegeta jumps into battle so Son Goku can create a Genki-Dami. The Namek DragonBalls are gathered to wish back the Earth and to wish back everyone killed by Buu. The third wish is stored for later use. Son Gokou’s Genki-Dami (Energy given by the Nameks, the people in the Heavens, and everyone on Earth) is ready to throw, Son Gokou throws it, and Buu pushes it back. Vegeta tells Dende to wish back all of Son Goku’s strength back. Now with all his strength restored Son Goku throws back the Genki-Dami at Buu. Buu can’t counter it any longer, so he is killed. Ten years after the battle aganist Majin Buu, Fat Buu is revived into an evil cleansed form called Uboo. Son Gokou decides to train him since he has great potential. Son Gohan and Videl get married and have a daughter named Pan. This concludes DragonBall Z.
I’ve seen most of the series by now, and a good hunk of this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, either. But there you go. The main thrust of the DBZ story: People get blowed up good. Then they come back and blow up other people good. Then they get blowed up good again. Repeat.
Thanks Gr8kat, that site helps clear lots of things up.
Sure there is:
- It’s told in serial format, so it’s got the soap opera better-tune-in-to-see-what-happens-next thing going on. It’s more a soap opera for teen and pre-teen boys; instead of tuning in to see who sleeps with whom, you tune in to see who beats up on whom.
- Very simple characters and lots of comic relief make it accessible. The hint of Japanese and Chinese folklore and mythology (mostly in Dragonball, not in Z) make it just exotic enough to stand out.
- Ridiculously overblown fight scenes with tons of special effects. It’s the same thing as asking the appeal of Hong Kong action movies; they’re just big and dumb and over-the-top.
- Here is one guy’s attempt to explain the popularity of Dragonball Z. I’m not a fan of the show myself, but I can totally see how I would’ve flipped for it when I was 10 or so.
I like DBZ more for the fun, light-hearted interactions between the characters than for the interminable (but impressive) fight scenes. But, as others have remarked, the original Dragonball has much more fun and fewer “Ahhhhhhhhhh[three days later]hhhhhhhhhhBOOM!” bits.
(One of my favorite Dragonball exchanges:
Krillin: “Gokou, you’ve got a tail growing out of your back!”
Gokou: “Well, that’s where tails grow, silly!”)
On the plus side, if you’re pressed for time and patience you only really have to watch every third episode. What happened in the last episode is recapped at the beginning, and each episode ends with something along the lines of, “What will happen now? Will Gokou defeat the evil Freeza once and for all? Find out next week in ‘Gokou defeats Freeza once and for all!’”
Freeza, or Frieza, or however it’s spelled in English, is male, by the way. Gods only know why they picked a female voice in the English dubbing.
Whenever I’ve tried to watch it (my son likes it) my eyes just glaze over and my brain shuts down.
I can take Dragonball. It can even be enjoyable. But I can’t follow DBZ. Mr. Naz likes it, and occasionally watches it, so I’m familiar with most characters and who hates who and so on. But even he admits that the fights are looooooong, dull, and akin to having wisdom teeth removed with a rusty crowbar.
Ugh. DBZ ranks right up there with Yu-gi-oh or whatever that thing is on the stupid anime scale for me.
I’m glad; it means that the cycle of kids getting totally screwed up by Japanese animation will continue. The tradition of despicable, androgynous villains goes back to the 50’s with Mr. B Natural. I remember watching Battle of the Planets and its unsettlingly androgynous villain Zoltar. At the time I didn’t really care much whether it was male or female, but it planted a vague discomfort in my subconscious.
I knew I was forgetting something – that’s reason (5) to explain its appeal!
I enjoy it. Though I find they are really running out of villans later in the series. I think the villans start pretty good, but then gradually peter out.
Raditz was interesting in that he was probably what Goku had been like had he not fallen on his head when he was young. As Goku was originally sent to earth to wipe out all life, but the accident gave him amnesia and he turned out a normal kid. Also the fact that he was Goku’s brother, although the fact that it was their first reunion probably meant Goku had no stipulations stopping him (especially since he had Goku’s son Gohan hostage)
Vegeta and Nappa introduce the team element of the show, in which many fighters band together to protect Earth. I find it rather frustrating, though that they didn’t use more psychological warfare on Nappa- he’s a brute and overpowering him was definitely not the easiest way to deal with him. The tension with waiting for Goku’s return to help them was good, as was the increasing body count on the good guys side, but when Goku shows it kills the suspense. He does in five seconds what the other guys couldn’t do fighting him all day. And though the fight with Vegeta was close, its obvious Goku is going to win because of how arrogant Vegeta is.
Freeza, for a tyrant, seems to lack cunning. He didn’t really seem to think through getting the dragon balls. He just tries brute force. Also annoying was the fact that he only once demonstrates his power (blowing up a mountain range) which besides that makes you really question why so many goons are afraid of/loyal to a little effeminite-talking alien. And the fight with Goku was too drawn out. Geez, thats gotta be the longest “five minutes until the planet explodes” I’ve ever seen. I kept hoping the planet would explode in mid-fight and kill everyone so there’d be SOME closure.
Cell, having the strengths of everyone in the series up until then, seems more the ‘monster’ villan, an individual with a very single-minded purpose (destruction/assimilation of everything). Also the “annihilated but one brain cell was intact and cell totally regenerates” seemed like a lame attempt to stretch out the fight more. At least we see Gohan the one saving the day, instead of Goku.
Buu is another monster who just wants to destroy everything which gets kind of dull. They make the main characters so strong that the bad guys have to be ridiculously god-like to be beaten (Buu was repeatedly pulverized into dust but kept re-forming).
My take on DBZ:
Its an anime version of WWF wrestling. The “build up” of the action is very long, drawn out, and dramatic. What this does, like the WWF, is make the want for the climax much greater than the climax can ever be.
Nevermind. Its a DBZ thing.
The WWF parallel is actually a pretty good explanation. Most of my friends who are really into wrestling are also really into Dragonball.
Personally, I’d rather watch paint dry. Can’t wait until Funimation runs out of Dragonball and switches over to its next cash cow, One Piece. I actually like what I’ve seen of One Piece so far…
My nephew is really into this, and wanted me to watch it with him when I was visiting. He tried to explain it to me but I didn’t follow any of it (and I watch “Doctor Who!”). Within ten minutes of watching, I was lying down in a dark room, my head throbbing. Everything on the screen was screaming, flashing, or usually both. I had already had a bit of a headache before I started watching it, but a few minutes brought on a full-fledged migraine.
Every now and then I see it when flipping through channels, and it always looks like the same scene to me. But like I said, my nephew (he’s 13 and has been into it for about a year) really enjoys it - I’m sure he sees it through much different eyes.
Well, there are only a few episodes left in the Dragonball Z line, but then comes Dragonball GT. Sorry about that slotar.
I believe there are a lot of Dragonball episodes left to translate.
One brief nitpick/clarification to raisinbread’s fine summary: Dead people, for the most part, are stuck in another dimension. Baba (Roshi’s sister and a witch) has some kind of deal with King Yemma (head accountant of the afterlife) to occassionally bring someone back for short times. That’s how you get people with halos mixed with the living (no halos). Baba first used this back in Dragonball with Gohan (senior - Goku’s adopted father) to fight against Goku. Guess who won.
Another nitpick to raisinbread’s summary: You didn’t need to lose your tail to become a Super Saiyan; according to legend, the first Super Saiyan could only reach that level when he was transformed (a monkey) – Vegeta described this on Namek. It’s just that by that point in the series, the whole “tail/monkey transformation” idea was discarded (we see briefly that Gohan had a tail, but by the time Trunks/Goten are born, they just don’t even bother with it anymore).
It probably was, sort of. Can’t give you any cites on this, but apparently, at one point, the budget was so low they could only budget about 300 frames per episode. Explains a lot about the show. 
Hm. Dragonball does beat the crap out of some of the drek I watched growing up, although that might be something of a backhanded complement.
Ugh, Dragonball GT. Forgot about that. throbbing headache
Here is how you get into Dragonball Z…
It starts innocently … weird, half-remembered evenings channel-surfing and landing on the International Channel … hey, a cartoon! …little samuri-lookin’ dude … pig in Mao jacket … boy with tail … people dressed as rabbits … foxes dressed as people …
Curious.
Years pass and I have among my roommates a couple who are Anime fans in general and Dragonball Z fans in particular. Strange noises from the other room … kaaaaAAAAAHHHH - meeeeEEEHHHH - haaaaAAAAAAAA - meeeeEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHH - HA!
'tha hell?
Finally intrigued enough to peek in.
“Hey is that that same kid?”
“No that’s his son, Gohan. Goku was the kid…”
ahh.
As the episode failed to resolve at the end, I needed to watch the next one … simply for the sake of completion. Questions arose and my roommates were a valuable resource, happy to talk at length on the subject.
“Do you want to start at the beginning?”
Video tapes and DVD’s are produced. Months pass and we watch them every night … Raditz … Vegeta … Garlic Junior … Namek …
I know the story. I am one of them now.
Epilogue: We had a new roommate move in when the couple left. One night he had to look in to see what we were watching…
“What the hell is this?” “Who’s that guy?” “Isn’t he stronger than him?” “What’s their relationship, again?”
Recently we caught him watching it when we weren’t there…
I can agree there is a parallel between wrestling and Dragonball Z where the bad guys and the good guys build up to their fights but I must nitpick.
With the WWF, they get right down to the matches nowadays unlike the early days of the WWF where they teased a Hogan/Andre match for a whole year until they met at Wrestlemania III which made everyone get excited about what would be an amazing match between two titans. Nowadays some upstart taps a champ or fan favorite and they go out into the ring rather than creating a rapport of some sort with no exposition or reason.
Dragonball and Dragonball Z have charm and humor with likeable characters. The WWF does not. Case in point: Katie Vick. Kane, a wrestler whose gimmick is he was badly burned and has to wear a mask, is accused of committing necrophilia with Katie Vick who was his friend but wouldn’t put out in life. Vince McMahon then had Triple H do an excruciating twenty minutes of imitating Kane humping a dummy in a funeral home. The next week they had a scene where doctors were removing large items from Triple H’s colon that were placed there by Kane out of revenge.
Sigh.
At worst DB gets a little perverted but it’s the kind of perversion twelve year olds can understand (at least in the American version, the Japanese is a bit racier but not by much).
Of course people who aren’t into either will not see or realize these differences but I had to respond.
Wait till you guys get a load of DB:GT…
By that time, practically anyone that sneezes becomes some form of a Super Saiyen