At first glance, Dragon Ball Z looks kinda corny. The show is full of huge yellow hair, ridiculously over-muscled bodies, the weirdest names and infinite power-up sequences that are essentially two cartoon guys flexing and screaming at each other for an entire episode. If you're watching it for the first time, it's easy to write it off as a messy collection of bad English dubbing, nonsensical translation, and dodgy animation.
Not giving it the chance to properly wow you is the first mistake most people make. Despite its flaws, and yes we’re happy to admit it has a few, DBZ is a fantastic story of heroic characters, evil villains, crazy martial arts, time travel, space travel, anti-heroes and occasionally blowing up a planet. I mean what kid doesn’t want to hear about a quest to gather all seven, magical orange orbs that will call forth the Eternal Dragon to grant you wishes.
This simple fact is the Dragon Ball Z changed how we think about cartoons. Before its introduction in the USA in 1996, anime hadn’t made it into the mainstream. Then DBZ burst onto the scene, and an entire generation went mad for brightly uniformed aliens beating the hell out of each other. And then there was that theme tune! Love it or hate it everyone one know what you're talking about when you start singing “Dragon Dragon, rock the Dragon”.
Despite its huge popularity, there is still a lot about the show that people don’t know. I thought I knew everything about the show, but number 13 still made my jaw drop.
15 Krillin Doesn’t Actually Have Acne
A lot of people assume that those little yellow spots on Krillin’s head are the result of a bad skincare ritual or a holdover from Saiyan puberty. But they are actually the result of a traditional Chinese ritual called moxibustion, in which incense is burned on particular parts of the body.
The burn marks on Krillin’s head are a symbol of his training to be a monk at Orin Temple. That’s also the reason he shaves his head bald. The marks were once a common sight among Shaolin monks, but these days they have been mostly replaced by tattoos. If you are looking for something physically weird about Krillin then how about the fact that he doesn’t have a nose? Akira Toriyama actually went on record to say that "Krillin has a physical idiosyncrasy that allows him to breathe through his skin." How weird is that!
14 Piccolo Is A Guy, Isn’t He?
I mean he fits the bill. He is large, muscular, aggressive and has a deep, gravelly voice. When you’re looking at his imposing green form and listening to him shouting at Krillin and Gohan, it's easy to see why so many people get it so wrong. Much like with his age what people aren’t taking into account is his Namekian biology.
In addition to having four fingers and super hearing, Namekians don't actually have a gender. They reproduce by pushing their eggs out of their mouths, which sounds really unpleasant. This means there aren’t technically any Namekian women or men; they are all the same gender. So if you’ve been wondering what Piccolo was hiding under his robes, the answer is probably just his bento lunchbox.
13 It’s Not Over 9000.
One of the most memed moments in the entire Dragon Ball Z series is the statement by Vegeta that Goku’s power level is “Over 9000” when he returns to face off against him and Nappa. It’s now a famous part of internet culture and pops up on nearly every anime message there is.
But not many people know that it’s a mistake. In the manga, Vegeta says Goku’s power level is only 8000. The change was made when DBZ was translated into English. Saying “It's over 9000” better suited the lip and face animations of Vegeta, so the decision was made to up Goku’s power level by 1000. It might seem a little unfair that Goku got a power boost because of some bad lip-sync, but at least he’s the hero.
12 Being A Super Saiyan Doesn't Turn You Blonde.
Overworked animators do. Manga artists are famously busy people, working on little sleep, too much coffee and virtually no days off. With a runaway hit like Dragon Ball on their hands, the Toei Animation artists were desperately laying the tracks in front of the train.
When the creator of Dragon Ball Z, Akira Toriyama, first depicted Goku unlocking his Super Saiyan powers, he chose to change his hair to blonde to make it easier to animate and to lighten the load on his assistants. Traditionally, filling in large sections of black is one of the more time-consuming jobs an animator can do. So it wasn’t the desperate battle with Frieza or the achieving of his Super Saiyan powers that turned Goku blonde. It was the sore fingers of tired animators.
11 Launch Wasn’t Deliberately Left Out Of DBZ
Does anyone remember Launch from Dragon Ball? She was the woman with the strange disorder that made her switch personalities when she sneezed. One moment she was a sweet, kindhearted and helpful girl with blue hair and the next she was a blond manic with a machine gun and a real issue with pig-headed boys.
She actually had a fairly large part in Dragon Ball, cooking and cleaning for the crew on Training Island, and occasionally shooting at them with her machine gun. When she didn't make it to DBZ people assumed that her character didn’t fit the new storyline. The real answer is a lot simpler, Akira Toriyama just completely forgot about her. It makes you wonder what other characters he has forgotten, and where she kept that machine gun?
10 Goku Wasn't The Most Powerful Saiyan
During the Android Saga, Piccolo fused with Kami. This fusion turned him into a Super Namekian. Super Namekians have nearly unlimited power and a higher level of consciousness, but are susceptible to corruption and can be highly aggressive. In his Super Namekian form, Piccolo was even more powerful than all the Super Saiyans at their current levels.
Super Piccolo was also only one of two Super Namekians who didn’t use the power of their new form for evil purposes. The only other one known to exist was the Nameless Namekian, before his fission. The Super Namekian form was so powerful that not only was Piccolo stronger than the Saiyan, he was able to hold his own against an enemy as powerful as final form Frost.
9 Cell Wasn’t The Most Evil Villain
If you asked most DBZ fans who the worst villain of the franchise was, you would probably end up with a three-way split between Cell, Frieza, Majin Vegeta. This is totally understandable, each of them murdered innocents, killed the heroes and tried to enslave or destroy the earth. If you choose one of them, it would be a sensible choice, and you’d be totally wrong.
When Hitler himself turned up in the movie Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn, he pretty much took the title as the evilest villain in DBZ. The symbols might be different, but there is no mistaking the German accent, raised hand salute, and that moustache. You might have hated Cell, Frieza or Vegeta for what they did, but nothing says pure evil like a purple, tank commanding Hitler!
8 Goku Never Gets Killed
Oh sure, he dies. Three times to be exact. But he is one of the few characters in the series that isn’t killed by a primary villain. He always the one to run the sacrifice play and lay down his life so his friends can achieve victory.
The first time he dies, he sacrifices his life to hold Raditz in place while Piccolo kills Raditz with his Special Beam Cannon, killing Goku in the process. After being revived by the Dragon Balls, he again lays down his life by transporting Cell to King Kai’s planet just before he explodes. The third time he dies of a heart virus. This death by natural causes is so far from being killed by a supervillain that not even the Dragon Balls can bring him back.
7 Goku Isn’t Really Called Goku
One of the oddest parts of Dragon Ball Z is the naming of the characters. Did you know that all the Saiyan characters are named after food? Goku is the protagonist of the series, but not many people know that his real name is actually Kakarot, a play on the English word carrot.
In fact, all the Saiyan characters have names that reference vegetables. Vegeta is probably the most obvious one, it about as close to a vegetable as you can get. Broly is broccoli, and Raditz is a radish. Krillin and Gohan are Japanese words that translate to rice and chestnut. Akira Toriyama was famous for enjoying making his character names into puns, and Dragon Ball Z was no exception. It seemed like when he was coming up with the Saiyan names; he might have been thinking about lunch.
6 Piccolo And Gohan Are Basically The Same Age
People often make the mistake of thinking that because he is fully grown that Piccolo is a lot older than Gohan. What they are forgetting is that Namekians mature and age much faster than humans or Saiyans.The reason that they mature so fast is that Namekians are actually part slug. In fact, the work Namek is taken from the Japanese word namekuji, which means slug. This slug part of them is responsible for their green skin, antennae and purple blood.
As it turns out Piccolo is actually only four years older than Gohan. Yeah, it blew my mind too. It also means that when Piccolo fought Goku in the first tournament, he was only three years old. It really makes you see the whole fight in a totally different light, doesn't it?
5 Vegeta Isn’t Afraid Of Anything
Vegeta doesn’t seem like a guy that afraid of much. He is arrogant, bitter, proud and a cold-blooded killer. He doesn’t have a problem with killing innocents, destroying worlds or fighting his own brother to the death. Even after he turns into the series’ anti-hero, he is still aggressive and insulting, without much of a sense of humour.
Despite his hard outer shell, Vegeta is carrying around a secret phobia; he is actually deathly afraid of worms. In the episode Mind Trap, Goku and Vegeta are attacked by giant worms, when the father of the giant worms is about to appear Vegeta exclaims "I'm going to be sick!", Even going as far as to throw up in his hands a bit. It just goes to show, even the most hardened bad guys have their weaknesses.
4 The DBZ Anime Was Based On The Manga
It seems pretty sensible to assume the Dragon Ball Z Anime was a direct copy of the Dragon Ball Z manga. However, the simple fact is that there wasn’t enough material in the manga to fill out all the episodes of the anime. Eventually, the anime series started to catch up with the manga and Toriyama had to add in extra filler episodes to stop it overtaking the manga and the storylines diverging.
The entirety of the Garlic JR and Other World Tournament Arcs were designed as filler. They were not based on the original manga and only appeared in the DBZ tv series. The filler episodes are probably one of the least liked parts of DBZ, and their lighthearted and comedic nature wasn’t appreciated by everyone. But they were a necessary evil as they kept the story on track.
3 Goku Is A Man’s Man
Goku seems pretty manly, right? He is hugely muscular, one of the best fighters in the Universe and covered in rippling muscles. There’s no way they his power up shout could come from the mouth of an 80-year-old Japanese woman. Except it totally does.
The English dub of Goku was performed by Sean Schemmel, who is a large, semi-muscular man, but the original Japanese voices of Gohan, Goku and Goten were all done by Masako Nozawa. Krillin's Japanese voice is a woman too. Famously Schemmel passed out while recording the Super Saiyan 4 transformation in Dragon Ball GT. If Masako can do the same and not pass out, it's pretty clear which one is rocking the Dragon.
2 All The Characters Die At Least Once
It’s a widely held fact that all of the fighting characters in Dragon Ball Z die at least once, some of them as many as three times. Gohan, Goten, Trunks only have on death apiece. Goku, Yamcha, Tien, and Master Roshi all die twice, and Krillen and Chaozu are killed a whopping three times.
But when they are counting up the deaths people tend to overlook one of the series more unusually named characters. Mr. Satan is the only character that never actually dies. He gets beaten, slapped, punched, kicked, thrown into sharp rocks and punted into walls, but he just keeps getting back up. Maybe there is more to him than we first thought, or maybe he just has a really really good healthcare plan.
1 Dragon Ball Z Isn’t Just A TV Show
People assume that DBZ is just an anime aimed at kids, and they couldn't be more wrong. Little do they know that it is also a national holiday. That’s right, in Japan the 9th of may is officially named “Goku Day.” Why may the 9th you ask? Well it actually a bit of a pun, and we know how much Akira Toriyama loves those. In Japanese the numbers five and nine are pronounced “go” and “ku,” so May 9th is both officially and literally Goku day.
Toei Animation applied to the Japanese Anniversary Association to have the date recognized as part of a marketing campaign, and because of the shows immense popularity worldwide, they agreed. It’s not a holiday that's recognized anywhere else in the world, so you probably won't get a day off for it, but there’s nothing to stop you celebrating anyway.