Ask a Japanese fan to hum Dragon Ball and you will hear Cha-La Head-Cha-La. Ask an American fan who grew up on Toonami and you may get "Rock the Dragon" instead. The franchise's theme songs tell two stories side by side: in Japan every series got its own original openings, many of them pop classics, while the English dubs swapped them for new music written for a Western audience. Here are both, with writers, years and a few stories behind the songs.
The original Japanese themes
The first series, Dragon Ball, opens with Makafushigi Adventure!, sung by Hiroki Takahashi and released as his debut single on March 1, 1986. Takeshi Ike wrote the music and Yuriko Mori the lyrics; the ending, Romantic Ageru yo, is sung by Ushio Hashimoto. Ike won the audition for the theme songs in late 1985 and wrote the closing song with Bulma in mind.
Dragon Ball Z brought in Hironobu Kageyama, former frontman of the rock band Lazy. His Cha-La Head-Cha-La, released on May 1, 1989, with lyrics by Yukinojo Mori, opens the first 199 episodes and the first nine films, and sold over a million copies in Japan. Kageyama had pictured American rock in the vein of Bon Jovi, and was so thrown by Kenji Yamamoto's final arrangement that at first he wasn't sure it was any good. From episode 200 to 291 it was replaced by We Gotta Power, again with Kageyama on vocals.
| Series | Opening theme | Performer | Episodes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dragon Ball | Makafushigi Adventure! | Hiroki Takahashi | 1–153 |
| Dragon Ball Z | Cha-La Head-Cha-La | Hironobu Kageyama | 1–199 |
| Dragon Ball Z | We Gotta Power | Hironobu Kageyama | 200–291 |
| Dragon Ball GT | Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku | Field of View | 1–64 |
| Dragon Ball Kai | Dragon Soul | Takayoshi Tanimoto | 1–98 |
| Dragon Ball Super | Chōzetsu☆Dynamic! | Kazuya Yoshii | 1–76 |
| Dragon Ball Super | Genkai Toppa × Survivor | Kiyoshi Hikawa | 77–131 |
| Dragon Ball Daima | Jaka Jaan | Zedd and C&K | 1–20 |
For Dragon Ball GT, Toei changed register completely. Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku, released on March 11, 1996, is a pop rock love song by Field of View, written by Izumi Sakai of Zard and Tetsurō Oda. It reached number four on the Oricon chart and was certified Platinum. GT's four ending themes come from Deen, Zard, Shizuka Kudō and Wands.
The newer series reached beyond the anime world. Dragon Ball Kai (2009) opens with Dragon Soul by Takayoshi Tanimoto. Dragon Ball Super (2015) hired Kazuya Yoshii, frontman of The Yellow Monkey, for Chōzetsu☆Dynamic!, and then, from episode 77, Kiyoshi Hikawa, a singer of enka, Japan's traditional ballad genre, belting out a rock song: Genkai Toppa × Survivor, better known in English as "Limit Break x Survivor". Both lyrics are by Yukinojo Mori, the writer who has put more words into Dragon Ball songs than anyone else.
Daima and the tribute to Toriyama
For Dragon Ball Daima (2024) the music came from much further afield: Jaka Jaan was written by German producer Zedd, an open fan of the series, and sung by the Japanese duo C&K, again with lyrics by Mori. The ending, Nakama, is another Zedd track, featuring the singer Ai. Released a few months after Akira Toriyama's death, the opening pays tribute to him: in the official romanized lyrics a few capitalized syllables spell out his name, and both animations feature a white bird, a nod to "tori", the Japanese word for bird.
"Rock the Dragon" and the Saban years
English-speaking audiences took a while to hear any of this. A short-lived 1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball used the original melody of Makafushigi Adventure! with new English lyrics, and Funimation's own early dub had Jimi Tunnell sing an English version called "Mystical Adventure!". In the Philippines, the youth group Age of Wonder recorded English renditions of Cha-La Head-Cha-La for a local dub of Z.
The song most Americans remember, though, has nothing to do with the Japanese original. When Dragon Ball Z premiered in syndication in September 1996, produced with Saban Entertainment, it opened with a hard-edged track officially titled "Main Title" but known to everyone as "Rock the Dragon", after its shouted chorus. It was credited to Shuki Levy, head of Saban's music department, and Kussa Mahehi, a pseudonym of Haim Saban himself. The vocals are generally attributed to Saban musician Jeremy Sweet, who was credited only as a music producer. Ron Wasserman, often assumed to be involved, wrote much of the background score for those episodes but has said he had no part in the theme. Funimation's Gen Fukunaga summed it up as "a very distinctive sound".
Bruce Faulconer and the Toonami era
"Rock the Dragon" survived the end of the Saban partnership and stayed on Funimation's first in-house episodes, until it was replaced by a theme written by Bruce Faulconer from the Garlic Jr. Saga onward. Faulconer, a Dallas composer with a doctorate in composition, scored 243 episodes that aired on Cartoon Network's Toonami from 1999 to 2003, building the music around character leitmotifs.
Later releases kept rewriting the soundtrack. The 2005 uncut redub of episodes 1–67 used a new score by Nathan M. Johnson, and the remastered season box sets replaced the Japanese openings with an instrumental by Mark Menza because of licensing issues. For GT, Funimation went rap metal with "Step into the Grand Tour", performed by Marcus Hall, while Vic Mignogna recorded an English version of Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku.
Kai, Super and English versions of the originals
From Kai onward, the English dubs mostly translated the Japanese songs instead of replacing them. Variants of the English "Dragon Soul" were sung by Sean Schemmel, Justin Cook, Vic Mignogna, Greg Ayres, Sonny Strait and Brina Palencia. On Super, Kazuya Yoshii sang the English version of his own opening, "Cho-Zets☆Dynamic!", while Nathan Sharp took on "Limit Break x Survivor". Kageyama himself had already recorded an English Cha-La Head-Cha-La in 1996, and Flow released an official English version in 2013. The full story of the American broadcasts is told on our page about Dragon Ball around the world.
Did you know? After Cha-La Head-Cha-La, Hironobu Kageyama estimated that he had sung around 70 songs for the Dragon Ball franchise, between themes, film songs and video games. He still calls the first one his best work: wherever he sings it, he says, people are happy.
Why they still matter
The Japanese and English themes are not really rivals; they capture two different ways of growing up with the same show. Cha-La Head-Cha-La was rerecorded by Kageyama in 2005 and by Flow in 2013 for Battle of Gods, while "Rock the Dragon" gave its name to a 2013 Ocean dub box set. The instrumental scores, from Kikuchi onward, deserve their own chapter, which you will find in music and composers.