Dragon Ball

1986–1989 (anime)[]

Dragon Ball (ドラゴンボール, Doragon Bōru) is an adaptation of the first portion of Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball manga. It is composed of 153 episodes around 20-minutes long and ran on Fuji TV from February 26, 1986, to April 19, 1989. The series average rating was 21.2%, with its maximum being 29.5% (Episode 47) and its minimum being 13.7% (Episode 110). Despite its success, Dragon Ball was overshadowed by its more action-oriented sequel series, Dragon Ball Z. Dragon Ball depicted Goku's childhood, while Dragon Ball Z depicted his adulthood. Both are adapted from the same manga.

1995 (BLT version)[]

Two initial attempts at releasing Dragon Ball to American audiences failed. The first attempt was in 1989 from Harmony Gold USA (the company that previously dubbed Robotech). It featured strange name changes for nearly all the characters, such as changing Goku to "Zero" and Korin to "Whiskers the Wonder Cat". It was test-marketed in several cities but was never broadcast to the general public and has since been referred to as "The Lost Dub" by fans.

The second and more well-known attempt was in 1995, with only the first 13 episodes dubbed and aired in first-run syndication. This release was a joint production between Funimation, Seagull Entertainment, and BLT Productions, with a dubbing voice cast similar to Funimation's initial dub of Dragon Ball Z. These original 13 dubbed episodes were later released to home video by KidMark as "Dragon Ball: The Saga of Goku."

1996–1998 (Blue Water version)[]

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The Blue Water dub was an English dub of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT produced by AB Groupe and Westwood Media. The voices were recorded at Blue Water Studios in Calgary, Alberta (Ocean Group's budget sister studio). It was shown in Canada, UK, Ireland and the Netherlands instead of the Funimation dub.

2001–2003 (Funimation version)[]

After Dragon Ball Z became immensely popular on Cartoon Network's Toonami block, Dragon Ball was re-dubbed in English by Funimation's in-house ADR studio for redistribution in the U.S. The original series aired in its entirety on Toonami from August 20, 2001, to December 1, 2003. Unlike the theme songs for Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT, Funimation made English versions of the original Japanese opening (OP) and ending (ED) themes for these episodes and left in the original background music (which they would later also do with their dubs of Dragon Ball Z Kai and Dragon Ball Super and similar to the Blue Water Dub of Dragon Ball GT and the Orange Bricks and Lime Green Bricks of Z and GT). Some insert (IN) songs were taken out or have talking over them.