Dragon Ball is one of the few Japanese comics to become truly global: the manga has been translated in more than forty countries, and Dragon Ball Z was dubbed for broadcast in at least 81. Yet every country experienced the saga differently, with its own channels, dubs and censorship battles. In the United States the story starts with a false start and a heavily edited syndicated show, and ends with an after-school block that turned a generation into fans.
United States: a slow start
Dragon Ball took several attempts to land in America. Funimation's first try, an English dub of the original Dragon Ball, was cancelled halfway through its planned 26-episode season. The company then licensed Dragon Ball Z, and on September 13, 1996, it premiered in first-run syndication on local Fox, WB and UPN stations, distributed with Saban and voiced by a Vancouver cast recorded at Ocean Studios. It was heavily edited: deaths were dodged with phrases like "sent to the next dimension", scenes were trimmed, and the first 67 episodes were squeezed into 53. Despite solid ratings, production stopped after two seasons when Saban scaled back its syndication business.
Toonami and the DBZ boom
The rescue came from cable. On August 31, 1998, reruns of that cancelled dub began airing on Cartoon Network's weekday afternoon Toonami block. The audience grew so quickly that the network ordered more episodes, and Funimation resumed the dub with a new Texas-based cast, a new score by Bruce Faulconer and noticeably less censorship. New episodes ran on Toonami from September 13, 1999, to April 7, 2003, and in September 1999 an episode set a ratings record for the channel at the time, with 1.7 million viewers. Sean Schemmel has voiced Goku in English ever since.
That era left lasting quirks. Mr. Satan became "Hercule" to avoid any reference to Satan, a name that stuck in Viz's manga and the video games until the Kai and Super dubs restored the original. In 2005 Funimation went back and redubbed episodes 1–67 uncut, finally giving American fans the full opening of the series.
The manga in English
Viz Media began publishing the Dragon Ball manga in 1998, first as monthly comic books and from 2000 as collected volumes. To match the anime, Viz split the series: chapters 1–194 kept the title Dragon Ball, and everything from chapter 195 on was sold as Dragon Ball Z. The release was not without controversy. In November 1999 Toys "R" Us pulled the books from its stores after a parent complained about the content, and Viz briefly censored some pages. After a fan petition with more than 10,000 signatures, it stopped in 2001 and raised the age rating instead. The English edition was completed in 2006.
The modern era
Home video eventually caught up with the purists: between November 2009 and October 2011 Funimation released the Japanese "Dragon Box" restoration of Z in seven uncut, unedited sets, in the original 4:3 format. The new generation of series also reached English-speaking fans much faster. Dragon Ball Z Kai aired on Nicktoons from May 24, 2010. Dragon Ball Super was simulcast with subtitles on Crunchyroll and Daisuki, and the US premiere of its English dub on Adult Swim drew 1,063,000 viewers. In theaters, Dragon Ball Super: Broly grossed more than $124 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing Dragon Ball film ever. And Daima skipped the wait entirely: in October 2024 it streamed worldwide within days of its Japanese premiere, on Crunchyroll and Netflix.
United Kingdom
In the UK, Dragon Ball Z aired on Cartoon Network and later on its spin-off channels CNX and Toonami. From episode 108 of the edited version (123 uncut), British viewers actually heard a different English dub, produced by Westwood Media with Ocean Studios and distributed in Europe by AB Groupe, while Funimation's in-house dub continued in the US. On the manga side, Gollancz Manga published all 16 volumes of Dragon Ball and the first four of Dragon Ball Z between August 2005 and November 2007, before Viz took over the UK license.
France
France was one of Europe's earliest strongholds. From 1988 Dragon Ball aired on TF1 within the hugely popular Club Dorothée, followed by Dragon Ball Z from 1990. It was also the scene of fierce debates: as early as 1989 politician Ségolène Royal cited Dragon Ball in a book criticizing children's television, and the broadcasting regulator later sanctioned TF1 over violent scenes in Z. Glénat published the manga from 1993.
Spain and Latin America
In Spain the series spread through the regional channels, each with its own dub. Which aired it first is still debated, but on February 15, 1990, Bola de Drac premiered on TV3 in Catalan and became a phenomenon, before Antena 3 took it nationwide in 1997. In May 1992 Planeta DeAgostini published the first European edition of the manga, in Catalan and Spanish. In Latin America the first version was a curiosity called Zero y el dragón mágico, in which Goku was renamed "Zero". The dub that stuck was the later Mexican one produced for Cloverway, with Mario Castañeda as adult Goku. In 2018 the final two episodes of Super were screened for free in public squares and stadiums across Mexico, El Salvador, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.
Italy
Italy met Goku on October 4, 1989, on the local network Junior TV, in a rough first dub with only four actors. The version Italians remember came later: a new dub by Merak Film in Milan, directed by Paolo Torrisi (also the voice of adult Goku), which reached national channel Italia 1 on June 7, 1999. Dragon Ball Z followed on Italia 1 from April 26, 2000, under the title What's My Destiny Dragon Ball. The manga, published by Star Comics since 1995, was the first in Italy to keep the original right-to-left reading order. Its 1998–2001 Deluxe edition remains the best-selling manga in Italian publishing history, with around 150,000 copies per volume. In Japan, of course, all of these Gokus share one original voice: Masako Nozawa.