Why Skipping Original Dragon Ball for Dragon Ball Z Is a Mistake, Not a Shortcut

February 26, 1986, exactly 40 years before this piece, is when Dragon Ball premiered on Fuji TV, following on from Akira Toriyama's previous series Dr. Slump. The show introduced the mysterious monkey boy Son Goku, and in 1989 it changed its name to Dragon Ball Z. For an entire generation of fans, Dragon Ball Z was their first exposure to the franchise.

Because of that, thousands of fans first met Goku as a strong, confident hero who had just discovered he was an alien rather than an Earthling, a twist that changed Dragon Ball forever. But that reveal is not the beginning of the story. Raditz arriving on Earth is the eighth story arc of Dragon Ball. There are seven entire arcs before it, and I feel like a lot of people have treated original Dragon Ball as optional, a comedic prequel that doesn't matter, because Z became the bigger success.

It genuinely irritates me when someone new to the fandom asks where to start and gets told to skip straight to Z. "It makes me want to pull my hair out," and I compare it to telling a new Harry Potter reader to start with Order of the Phoenix, or telling someone getting into Star Wars to start with The Empire Strikes Back, or telling a new Naruto fan to skip straight to Shippuden. Telling people to skip Dragon Ball misleads them, and I want to explain why it's essential to watch it in full to become a complete fan.

Dragon Ball Is Not a Prequel, It's Literally the First Half of the Story

A prequel is a story containing events that precede an existing work, the way the Bardock special came out after Dragon Ball Z was already established but takes place years earlier. Original Dragon Ball is not that. It's literally the first half of the same story. Dragon Ball Z is, in a real sense, just Dragon Ball renamed. As the series went on, showrunners Takao Koyama and Kozo Morishita chose to rename it because they thought Toriyama was almost finished, but he wasn't, since Z ended up running longer than Dragon Ball itself.

Early Toei Animation scripts actually listed what became Dragon Ball Z episode 1, The Arrival of Raditz, as Dragon Ball episode 154. At one point there was no planned Dragon Ball Z at all, just Dragon Ball from start to finish, and the original manga is exactly that. The Viz releases in the West split Dragon Ball and Z into separate books, but the original Japanese run in Weekly Shonen Jump, along with the Tankobon and Kanzenban collections, is simply Dragon Ball. The Z label only exists to describe part of the anime.

Goku's Arc From Jungle Boy to Grandfather Only Makes Sense If You Watch Dragon Ball

People skipping Dragon Ball miss a huge part of Goku's development. I love Vegeta's arc in Dragon Ball Z, but Goku had his own arc first, growing from a boy in the jungle into a man, a husband, a father, and eventually a grandfather by the end of the manga. That's the actual shape of the story, boy to grandfather, and a lot of the thematic elements Z is known for, discipline, self-improvement, forgiveness, facing challenges, were all established in Dragon Ball through Goku's training under multiple martial arts masters.

In original Dragon Ball, Goku fails multiple tournaments before he ever wins one. He trains for years away from his friends, growing stronger gradually rather than all at once. The Goku of Dragon Ball Z does have his own arc, coming to terms with being a member of a barbaric alien warrior race, something he doesn't fully process until the Frieza saga. But Dragon Ball is where the coming of age story lives, a boy raised entirely by his grandfather who has to learn how the outside world and other people work, gaining friends and learning through failure as much as victory.

Tenshin Han's Redemption Shows Why Goku Gives Enemies Second Chances

Original Dragon Ball is where you learn that just because someone starts out evil doesn't mean they have to stay that way, and the clearest example is Tenshin Han in the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai. Z-only fans tend to dismiss him as, in my words, "a jobber" who "doesn't matter," but in the manga he begins as an aspiring assassin trained in the rival crane style against Master Roshi's turtle style, and he brutally injures Yamcha in the tournament. Through contact with Roshi and Goku, he changes, and he becomes the number two hero of the Piccolo arc behind Goku, with Yajirobei rounding out the top three.

That change in Tenshin Han is the seed of Goku's later tendency to spare enemies and give them chances, including sparing Frieza and giving a later enemy a Senzu bean, a decision I call a boneheaded move but one rooted in Goku's naive belief that people can change. Piccolo changes later, and so does Vegeta, and all of those transformations trace back to contact with Goku that began in Dragon Ball, not Z.

The "Silly Comedy" Reputation Only Tells Half the Story

The biggest misconception about Dragon Ball is that it's just a silly comedy, and there's truth to that early on. The Pilaf arc, the very first arc, is episodic and heavily inspired by Jackie Chan films Toriyama grew up on, since he was still writing gag manga fresh off Dr. Slump. But the tone shifts organically from there, starting with the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai and Goku's training under Roshi, when the series starts becoming a martial arts story and the stakes and violence begin escalating.

By the Demon King Piccolo arc, the tone has turned genuinely dark, with a demonic, unstoppable force killing several of Goku's friends and innocent people, and destroying the actual dragon, something nobody else does afterward. I enjoy the Pilaf arc's comedy, but I tend to prefer the second half of Dragon Ball because it's a more balanced, beautiful story. Once you hit the Red Ribbon arc, it becomes more adventurous and starts resembling what Dragon Ball Z would become.

The Tournament Fights in Original Dragon Ball Are Better Than People Remember

This is a bit of a controversial take, but I think the fights in original Dragon Ball are, in their own way, better than what came later. Dragon Ball Z and Super are far more spectacular, with planet and universe level stakes, but the strategic nature of the fighting in Dragon Ball, one fighter trying a technique and the other countering it, gradually escalating into a war of attrition, is something I miss. Goku versus Jackie Chun, who is secretly Master Roshi, at the end of the 21st tournament is a phenomenal example of that.

My favorite story arc across the entire franchise, including Z, Super, GT and Dragon Ball Daima, is the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai and Goku versus Piccolo. It plays like a Dragon Ball Z fight but keeps that emphasis on skill, experience, and outthinking your opponent over raw power. Even Z retains shades of that in the Cell Games or the Otherworld Tournament, but I don't think anything fully recaptures the magic of the 22nd and 23rd tournaments, where characters have arcs that pay off within the tournament itself.

The most important thing about these tournaments is that Goku doesn't win all of them. There was a debate between Torishima and Toriyama over whether Goku should win the first tournament, and Toriyama chose to have Goku fail instead. That failure is why it feels earned when Goku finally becomes champion by defeating Ma Junior. Skipping Dragon Ball removes that contrast, and without it Dragon Ball Z feels emptier, because the story is not just a superhero show with cool fights, it's the second half of a story about a man learning to be great through failure.

Meeting Bulma, Krillin, and Kami Is Why Dragon Ball Z Hits Harder

Skipping original Dragon Ball means missing how Goku first meets Bulma, Krillin, Yamcha, and Master Roshi, the people who become his support system and who challenge and teach him. You miss Goku seeing a city with buildings and cars for the first time and mistaking vehicles for animals, and you miss him eventually meeting Kami himself and training with him to face the reincarnation of Demon King Piccolo, the biggest threat the world had faced up to that point. All of the gods and mystical elements running through Z, Super, and Daima are rooted in this stretch of Dragon Ball.

Goku's fury when Frieza kills Krillin lands harder once you know it's the second time Krillin has died and that these two grew up training and failing and succeeding together since childhood. The reveal that Goku is an alien is also far more powerful watched as the eighth arc of one continuous story rather than the first thing you see, because it hits a Goku you've already watched grow from boy to husband to father, flipping his sense of identity in a way that means more once you've seen what came before it.

I'm still irritated that Dragon Ball Z Kakarot started with the Raditz arc instead of covering the whole series, because that kind of choice reinforces the idea that original Dragon Ball isn't important when it actually is. Watching it makes Z hit harder, makes Super make more sense, and makes character decisions logical to the characters even when they don't seem logical to us. Starting partway through is, as I put it, like telling someone to start watching The Walking Dead at season four. If you've never seen original Dragon Ball, it's not too late to start with episode one.

Dragon Ball could have ended with Goku and Chi-Chi flying off together and it would still be considered an amazing series even if Z had never existed. Would it be as popular? Probably not, but it would still be seen as a tremendous series with those first seven arcs, and Z just adds to it.