History

The Dragon Ball Z anime first aired in Japan from April 26, 1989 to January 31, 1996,and was dubbed in several countries around the world, including Latin America and in the United States. The American themes and soundtracks were composed and produced in part by Bruce Faulconer.
The series continues the adventures of Son Goku as an adult who, along with his companions, defend the Earth and other fictional planets against various supervillains. While the original Dragon Ball anime followed Goku through childhood into adulthood, Dragon Ball Z parallels his adult life with the maturation of his first child, Son Gohan. The series also gives focus to the evolution of his rivals, Piccolo and Vegeta, from evil to good. The separation between the series is also significant as the later series takes on a more dramatic and serious tone, with a number of villains either threatening or committing acts of mass murder or outright genocide.
Akira Toriyama's self-parody manga series Neko Majin satires many concepts introduced in Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z.
The first run of the English Version of the show began airing in September 1996 on the WB. Beginning with the Saiyan Saga, severe restrictions were put in place for a syndicated TV program, thus resulting in extensive editing of the series (cutting out the equivalent of 14 of the first 67 episodes-- almost 21%), including the complete removal of references to character death ("sent to another dimension"), blood, and language. To many fans of the series, these edits actually made the series worse as violence was always shown without consequence. Eventually it was canceled in May 1998, due to low ratings. In August 1998 however, the Ocean Group dub was brought to Cartoon Network's new action-animated block, Toonami and it found new life through a wider audience.
In 1999, FUNimation decided to cut their partnership with Saban and from the Ginyu Saga onwards, dubbed the show themselves with their own in-house voice actors and a newly commissioned musical score. They also cut some of their previous restrictions, such as the inclusion of blood (to a certain degree), though still edited some of the violence, in order to continue to make it appealing to viewers of all ages, thus leading to the show receiving a TV-Y7-FV rating for fantasy violence. The series ended its first run in April 2003. The new FUNimation dub became very popular and it also greatly helped expand the anime market in the US.
In September 2002, Dragon Ball Z was Number One on all cable TV (#1 program of the week on all cable television with boys 9-14). Currently the show still airs on Cartoon Network's Toonami Saturday night block at 10:30 PM ET/PT.