Alright, I did a little research on the mythology aspect of DragonBall and DBZ 'cause of what I had originally heard on another message board about it. Here’s what I got so far:**[sub]
Sennin are immortals living in the mountains - some kind of hermits. They are capable of a lot of magic tricks like flying on an animal in the air. Sennin may appear mortals in their dreams. There are about 500 of them. Like in life, only a few of the sennin are frequently mentioned and depicted. The rest belongs to the “silent majority”. By the way, the Japanese mythology knows not only male but female sennin as well.
Sennin: The immortal spirit of a saint living in the mountains in Japanese mythology. This saint, a hermit, who has acquired so much merit by his asceticism that he can perform miracles, such as speaking after death, flying on the back of a tortoise or on a cloud, or causing a gourd to give birth to a horse. Sennings may speak to mortals in dreams or appear in the shape of ordinary men. They are accompanied by their familiars: a toad, a horse, or a tortoise. **[/sub]
Some of the mythology adds up with the characters in DragonBall, and some of it doesn’t, but it makes sense to say that the Sennin are partly what the Saiyan characters are based upon in the series… even if they do make it a little far-fetched as they go along. This fansite has a little bit more mythological background to add to the understanding of the series.
I have nothing to add to this discussion, other than to say that I’ve never been able to make it through a complete episode. And I’ve tried to on several occasions, only because one of my childhood friends does the voice for Krillin and some other characters for FUNimation.
There’s nothing too strange about Freeza having a female voice: in Japan, many of the male characters, including Goku, were voiced by females.
Bart Simpson is a girl.
Not true. Goku goes SS3 (super saiyan level 3–acknowledged by the thicker eyebrows and really long hair) during Buu saga several times without fusing with anyone. Only Goten and Trunks (Goku’s and Vegeta’s sons, respectively) combine (fused form named Gotenks) to SS3 to fight Buu. Goku and Vegeta fused into Vegeto, but only got as high as SS2 I think.
In DBGT, Goku and Vegeta independently power up to SS4. SS4 is totally different looking from the previous 3 stages of Super-Saiyanism. Instead of the gold hair and gold aura, the hair is black, the tails are grown back (from God-knows-where), and their upper bodies are half furry (mostly just arms i think).
I’ve been training since I was a fetus, but I just can’t seem to get to SS1. . . . I guess I’m not pure of heart 
Just as a side note regarding DBZ, for the people who dont’ like it.
Unless you watch from the Arrival of Radditz (Goku’s brother) and up through all the sagas, it’s hard to understand how things are. You can’t appreciate the power that the Z Fighters have b/c you haven’t watched them fight stronger, faster, more skilled opponents. It’s the ending of Frieza Saga that really makes DBZ explode b/c that is when Goku becomes the legendary Super Saiyan. It’s an incredible moment b/c his anger grabs hold of him after Frieza kills Goku’s friend, Krillin. Goku looks are Frieza, says something along the lines of “FRIEZA, STOP HURTING MY FRIENDS!!!” and at that moment his hair flashes gold, his eyes turn green–one of the few moments I remember jumping out of my chair to run closer to the tv. Unless you watch it from the beginning, you can’t appreciate and understand this awesome cartoon.
As a side note of the previous post, Arrival of Radditz is the first episode in the DBZ series.
Sadly, any Korean or Japanese male born within the last 25 years are “blessed” with at least some sort of basic knowledge of the DragonBall series. It’s inevitable.
I read the whole series in comic book form in middle school (translated into Korean) and I enjoyed it immensely, despite the fact the reoccuring scenario got tiring near the end. But the cartoon incarnation i simply cannot stand, because the pacing is so…fucking… slow.
Well to answer some questions I’ve read (if they haven’t been answered already);
-Yes I’m fairly certain that the DragonBall (not Z) is loosely based on the chinese monkey king legend/myth.
-Reportedly, the creator of DragonBallZ used to draw “adult” comics before he hit big bucks with DragonBall, so that’s why there are certain “racy” parts near the beginning of the series.
-In case you’re wondering what the reoccuring scenario, it’s Goku/decendent struggling to defeat an enemy, barely comes through, gets more powerful and kills/befriends the enemy and goes on to fight greater foes.
Remember, if you ask about DragonBall to any Korean or Japanese male, chances are they know quite a bit.
It actually works MUCH better if you can watch multiple episodes together. And fast forward through the inevitable intro and exit scenes that are there largely to pad the time.
Would that be Dr. Slump, his hit series targetted to much the same audience as Dragonball, which he did right before it and has a very similar feel to the early episodes of Dragon Ball? It’s not really “adult”, and I don’t think that Toriyama ever did any adult books. For those curious about Dr. Slump the first three or four episodes in the current Cartoon Network batch of Dragon Ball episodes are a crossover with the Dr. Slump show…
I think my feelings about DBZ can best be summed up by lines from the Guess Who classic American Woman:
Colored lights can hypnotize/go dazzle someone else’s eyes.
The appeal is simple.
Big, over-muscled men beat the living shit out of each other.
Basically, if you can explain the appeal of American Professional Wrestling, you can pretty much explain the appeal of Dragonball Z!
Here’s an interview with Akira Toriyama explaining, in the author’s words, where the ideas for Dragonball come from. DBZ fans who haven’t come across this, enjoy.
That’s pretty much it, yeah. I love it because I like the soap-opera format and because a single fight can keep me entertained for days on end.
The show is really good at making the absolutely ridiculous seem incredibly cool.
“Hahaha, Goku, you think you have defeated me… but wait until you see… MY ULTIMATE POWER!!!”
“Oh… no! It’s… the ultimate power, I… can’t believe it… ah!”
“We’ll help, Goku!”
“No, only I can defeat the ultiamte power… by powering up… to the NEXT LEVEL! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
“No way! The next level, it’s… awesome wow!”
People in general like soap operas in general.
Little children like cute cartoons.
Young children in particular like cartoons where people beat the unholy snot out of each other in incredible, bombastic, superhuman, unbelievable ways. They always have.
Combine those three factors, and you have a no-brainer, really…
Ten minutes of people staring at eachother making grunting sounds while the screen rapidly flicks back and forth between the same two frames of animation to show “movement”, punctuated by some rapid fighting before another stare-off, with heros that are constantly faced by more powerfull bad-guys untill they find some magical way to become just as powerfull and destroy the bad-guy, upon which they have to find another more powerfull badguy, preceded by 5 minutes of “what happened last time” that includes at least as much fighting as will be in the current episode, ended with 5 minutes of “what’ll happen next time?!” that all but tells you what’s going to happen next time, and mixed up with another 10 minutes of comercials.
But it’s “anime.”
The whole appeal is that a bunch of things get blown up, lots of beating the crap out of people, people getting more and more absurdly powerfull, lots of special effects, and with those 5-minute grunt matches, extra-long fight scenes comprised of one guy doing the same move about 300 times while the other guy snears and does the same block about 300 times, and super-long intro/preview bits, you have to watch ten episodes to see what any normal show could spaciously pack into one show, or maybe a nice two-parter.
And then people start thinking that’s what all anime is like.
The only time I would watch that show was when I tuned in durring the last couple minutes, waiting for Cowboy Bebop to start. No super-powerfull people there, or extra-long stare-offs. And yet, the fights were somehow that much more impressive. So were the occasional (Much shorter!) stare-offs (I’m thinking of the church fight here). DBZ tries to dramatize the fights by making them huge and over-blown, but I think it just makes the fights -less- impressive. The hero will get super-powerfull to beat the bad-guy, and nobody is ever really dead, you can solve that easy enough. Kinda weak.
Err… Okay, I’ll stop ranting now 