I was just watching some anime on TV, and got to thinking: whatever happened on Dragon Ball Z? Did it ever end?
I remember the heroes being Saiyans, then becoming super Saiyans, then super-dooper-pooper-Saiyans, destroying planets at will.
How did the story end?
Not sure exactly where you left off, but here’s a brief summary from about halfway through:
After the android Cell was defeated, everything was cool for about five minutes until this wizard showed up with a creation called Buu, designed to be the ultimate destroyer. After Buu was defeated, Dragon Ball Z ended …
… and Dragon Ball GT began. One of the minor villains from way back in the original Dragon Ball show, when Goku was a child, shows up again and finds these really old uber-dragonballs called the black star balls. He inadvertently wishes Goku was a child again, and that’s what happens. But these black star balls then disperse all over the Universe, and if they aren’t recollected within a year, the Earth will blow up. So kid-Goku, Trunks, and Pan go out and take care of that. They run into a new supervillain, Bebi, who does some mind control stuff, makes a second wish on the black star balls, forcing everyone on Earth to move to a new planet called Tuffle. Bebi is defeated, the Namek dragon balls are used to restore normalcy.
Then a new android shows up, Super Android 17. He is eventually defeated, but when the gang tries to use the ordinary dragon balls to fix the collateral damage, there appears seven evil Shadow Dragons - it seems overuse of the dragon balls over the years caused a buildup of negative energy. In the final battle in the story of Goku and friends, the Shadow Dragons are defeated and life returns to normal.
You make it sound better than it actually was, Spatial.
I’m just picturing some doper in front of a computer charging up in preparation for a big reply. The hair turns white, shit is flying everywhere, and some other guy passing by says “I’VE NEVER SEEN SUCH POWER!!!”
Doper - “AAAAAAAAARARARRARARARARARRARARARARA”
He’ll make his reply tomorrow.
Just as they think they’ve beaten the current uber-boss an even bigger uber-boss appeared. They beat up all of his minions one by one until they reached the new uber-boss, and just as they think they’ve beaten him, an even bigger uber-boss appeared. They beat up all his minions one by one until they reached the new uber-boss, and just as they think they’ve beaten him, and EVEN bigger uber-boss appeared. repeat
[ Official Plot summary for all Jump Comics ]
Pretty good, except it was more like five years than five minutes. And Goku was dead for most of the Buu saga.
Yeah, I’m a geek. Piss off.
So? He was dead for most of the first arc as well. At least it’s symmetrical.
Dying never meant much in DBZ. At most, a temporary setback.
Thanks for the recap. I don’t remember where I left off either, except Goku was dead and things were mostly about Gohan his son (?) but Goku kept coming back from the afterlife or whatever it was called.
Is this stuff available on DVD? I’ll have to check Netflix. It’d be fun being able to fast forward through all the extraneous and irritating exposition. I used to love the amazing battles they’d get into, once they finally got around to getting into them.
pff, try a mere change of scenery…
Does anyone realize how must quicker this series would have gone if they would have cut out those long, tenuous monologues? I swear it would have been a 3 year long, super wonderful series. Instead, it was a decade long moment of anticipation.
GT also had no involvment from Akira Toriyama. Which made a sometimes amusing and often infuriating series, but with heart, into one of the most horrific abominations upon the earth.
I dunno; DBZ just wouldn’t be the same if you didn’t spend 30 minutes watching Goku or whoever power up while while everyone else is marveling at his power level being OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAND!!!
The more annoying thing about DBZ, I find, is that one you figure out the formula of the show, you realize that 99% of what you’re watching is completely pointless. Absolutely nothing is going to get solved until Goku shows up, so the only point in watching anyone else fight is to see how badly they get their ass kicked.
I know for a fact that japanese animation studios consume 88% of the world´s crack cocaine production.
You can look it up.
I’m afraid so. (Not that I can’t understand why, I can. I just can’t understand why anyone would want to watch it more than once. Except for the Saiyaman stuff. If there’d been a whole series just about that, I would’ve been happy.)
Well, I’m not planning on re-watching the whole series; I’d like to figure out where I left off and watch the end, now that I know there was an end.
There would still be all that grimacing and grunting. My kids used to watch this, and I would say, “Don’t they have fiber in Japan?”
Oh God, I’m almost crying. Almost a year ago Auto had to explain the joke to me, one of those things I just didn’t get. It’s grown on me though.
So is anybody going to watch the movie? And if so, am I the only one deeply disappointed that James Marsters is playing Piccolo and not Vegeta? (Yeah, I know Vegeta didn’t show up until Dragon Ball Z, but they should have just done a movie about Vegeta, since he was the most interesting character in the bunch).
No, I won’t pay to see it in the theater, but I’ll Netflix it.
Is this movie just a retread or something? Piccolo’s not a bad guy. Moody, but I thought pretty thoroughly on the good side, eventually.
I agree, Vegeta had a depth to him more complex than most.
I thought Piccolo started on the series as an enemy of Goku’s in Dragon Ball, and then became an ally by the time Dragon Ball Z started?