Hello and welcome to the Cyber Dragon Ball. I'm
your host, Steve Kamehameha, and I am excited
to return to the world of Dragon Ball. So I've
been going on a deep dive in all things Dragon
Ball. I've been watching actually for the first
time Dragon Ball itself, which I'll probably
review later on. But for now, I'm going to go
through Dragon Ball Z and Daima. And then Dragon
Ball Super. I may cover GT at some point. I don't
know. I'll probably do the movies as well. I
realize there's a lot of continuity issues throughout
the entirety of Dragon Ball and the entire saga
of it. So without further ado, let's dive back
into the electrifying world of Dragon Ball Z.
Whether you're a seasoned Saiyan or a newbie
just discovering the power of the Dragon Balls,
this podcast is your one -stop shop for everything
Dragon Ball. From iconic battles and character
arcs to the latest news and fan theories, I've
got you covered. So without further ado, let's
get into the Raditz Saga. There's something bad
heading straight for us. What? Are you sure,
Goku? I'm positive. I've never felt a power like
this before. Yeah, I feel it now, too. There's
nothing there, you guys. What is it? I've never
sensed anything like this before. Such an awful
power. Who is that? It's not Piccolo, is it?
This isn't good. I smell death in the air. We
meet again at last. You've grown up. I recognize
you, though, Kakarot. Kakarot? So the Raditz
saga of Dragon Ball Z takes place five years
after the end of the original Dragon Ball series.
So we start with the arrival of Raditz. And of
course, Goku is now an adult, lives. Pretty peaceful
life with his wife, Chi Chi, and their son, Gohan,
who's basically like Goku was at the beginning
of Dragon Ball. Albeit a little bit more wise
on living. And of course, that peace is disrupted
by the arrival of a powerful Saiyan named Raditz.
who later on after his scuffle with Piccolo reveals
that he is Goku's older brother. Dun, dun, dun.
Reddit kind of discloses that, you know, Goku
was originally sent to Earth to conquer it, not
to become its protector. But he lost his memory
after, you know, bumping his head and forgetting
everything. So Raditz, in an effort to get Kakarot
or Goku to join his side, kidnaps Gohan to more
or less force Goku into joining him in destroying
the world. So... We kind of kick the episode
off doing that. And, you know, Raditz is kind
of wreaking havoc and and reveals Goku's, you
know, true Saiyan origins. And, you know, of
course, they discover why the tail was there
in the first place. And Raditz, you know, informs
him of his mission and. It's forced Goku to have
to team up with his old enemy, Piccolo. Which
we get, you know, more or less Piccolo starting
to have this common enemy, common goal with Goku
where they're fighting as a team instead of against
each other, which it just is a further testament
to Goku and his ability to turn his enemies into
friends. So we get to the showdown, of course,
of. Every weird thing, we get the reunion of
of Goku teaming up with with Piccolo to rescue
Gohan and defeat Raditz. And, you know, they're
both terrified of the the Saiyan battle. And.
We get to see Gohan's hidden potential unleashed,
and it's that hybrid of human and insane blood
and. This is a lot of foreshadowing here with
Gohan, which coming into the beginning of Dragon
Ball Z, you have no idea what he's capable of,
which it just continues to expand exponentially
as Dragon Ball Z and Super progress of what Gohan's
capable of when he's upset. So he injures Raditz
by a headshot, pun intended. and gives Goku and
Piccolo a fighting chance to attack. And sadly,
in a desperate move, Goku sacrifices himself
by holding Raditz in place so Piccolo can deliver
the fatal attack of the special beam cannon that
kills both brothers together. And of course,
before dying, Raditz reveals that... There are
two more Saiyans coming, much more powerful than
he. And we don't find out who they are until
later, but they're listening through the scouter
and have all of the data that's been recorded
by Raditz. And of course, they they mentioned
that they'll arrive in one Earth year to avenge
him. And it sets the stage for. the Saiyan saga
or the Vegeta saga or whatever you want to call
it. Um, I, I know that technically Raditz is
the start of the Saiyan saga, but I kind of like
to break it up because you get that, that whole
training, you get King Kai, you get things like
that. So Raditz dies. Goku dies. Piccolo, of
course, kidnaps Gohan. To train him. Seeing that
he has this latent. Hidden potential inside of
him. Which. It pretty much becomes. A year of
training for everyone. And in a lot of ways.
Most of them are not strong enough. To fight
Vegeta and Nappa. But. It doesn't prevent them
from trying. Which is good. So we get. We get
that where Piccolo is training Gohan and then
learns about the moon. And I know that in Dragon
Ball Master Roshi destroys it because of Goku.
And then at some point they wish it back because
Piccolo destroys it again because of Gohan. He
also like rips Gohan's tail off at one point,
I think, too. I'm still going through and rewatching
because I rewatched with Dragon Ball Z Kai recently,
but I'm actually going back fresh into Dragon
Ball Z because it's the first time I've watched
actual like proper Dragon Ball Z since I saw
it in the 90s and early 2000s. So. I'm kind of
going in with a fresh eye looking at all of this
once more and. I also watched it when they had
a lot of the old voice cast before they switched
it up during the freezes saga. So and the cell
saga. So I kind of was used to pre Sean Schemmel
before everyone kind of got unified across the
brand. So so anyways, we have Goku going through
Snake Mountain. Heading to King Kai to train
to prepare for the the same arrival and of course,
you know, it's 10x gravity on his world and King
Kai and his planet kind of become this staple
of all the way through super because they continually
have Goku visit and go to King Kai's world to
train into prep and whatnot. So it's very much
an important stage, you could say, for a lot
of things that come down the pipe later. So as
for the remaining Z fighters, Krillin, Tien,
Yamcha, and Chiaotzu, they're undergoing a rigorous
training to prepare for the same invasion with
Kami and... It's it's funny because there's like
the hyperbolic time chamber. It could have been
highly helpful for them to have used that at
this point, but I realize. It wasn't. Thought
of until the Android and cell saga, but that
would have been highly beneficial for everyone
involved to have trained there because, you know.
uh like a week is a year in there and so they
could have gotten a lot of training in but yeah
it and then you know of course the year later
and i'll get into that in a following episode
but we get we get vegeta and napa arriving on
earth and causing chaos and you know the z fighters
have to of course confront them and Kind of go
from there. So. Again, going into this fresh.
I realize the difference between Dragon Ball
Z and Dragon Ball Z Kai. Dragon Ball Z Kai cuts
out a lot of the filler of like Gohan out scavenging
and his little misadventure where Goku has to
save him and with the Nimbus and Goku. Out in
the wilderness and. Not to mention that Dragon
Ball Z Kai is roughly half the episodes that
Dragon Ball Z proper is Dragon Ball Z proper
is like 200. 291 episodes. And. Dragon Ball Z
Kai has 159 or. At least for the Japanese version,
167 for the international version, so it's still.
Like 130 episodes shorter. Then then Dragon Ball
Z Kai or then Dragon Ball Z proper. So like episodes
one through three of Dragon Ball Z is like episode
one of like Kai more or less like they kind of.
Condensed a lot of the episodes. So like I think
even Z Kai has less episodes than even that.
But yeah, it's it's kind of mind boggling. That
they they did this, plus they they kind of redubbed
it and kind of redid all of it in like two to
three years. And. While I like being able to
blitz through Dragon Ball Z faster. Using Dragon
Ball Z Kai, Dragon Ball Z proper has a lot more
of the character development, a lot more of the
building. You also have a lot more of the like
powering up. And so it kind of it's a slow burn
in some aspects. I remember watching it on Toonami
and it was it was insane how long it would take
to get through episodes and. Yeah, I mean, it.
It was it was fun. But. I also had limited time.
I kind of wanted to get to the point. And, you
know. It is just. Yeah. So anyways, with with
Dragon Ball Z Kai and Dragon Ball Z proper. I'm
going by Dragon Ball Z proper so we can kind
of get the full feel for it. There were, of course,
some some recasts with characters when they did
it. Different different openings, different music.
We had even redubs from. Dragon Ball Z to Dragon
Ball Z Kai. Different actors portraying different.
Some of the same characters or different characters
that we had more more actors kind of portraying.
Yeah, so like Christopher Sabat or Chris Sabat,
who plays Vegeta and Piccolo. He played all kinds
of characters like. Zarbon and, you know, Berder
and Jace and. Kid Vegeta, like and then they
they switched to new voice actors for a lot of
those. You know, of course, you get. Like Sean
Schemmel played other characters as well, and
they recast and then. They're. Yeah, I do like
I do like Z Kai. I do like some of the enhancements
that were done. I do like some of the. Some of
the action sequences and some of the sound effects,
however. I preferred Dragon Ball Z proper because
I liked the music, plus I like when they were
on like Toonami and you had the that, you know,
the rock, the dragon, a lot of the hardcore music.
The teasers for the bumpers, like it's just I
felt like it was a superior product over Kai.
I don't quite understand why they went and did
Kai in general, but. I know that they they had
more consistent translations and. It removed
blood for like Nicktoons and. I know that Nicktoons
had like tighter restrictions and things like
that, and they renamed some of the stuff. Like
Gallic Gun, Gallic Blast, Spirit Bomb, Spirit
Blast, you know, stuff like that. So. What do
you guys think? Like, what are your. What are
your favorite parts of. This reintroduction to
the world of Dragon Ball Z or Dragon Ball, if
you're familiar with Dragon Ball, like what what
are some of the things that you kind of enjoyed
and kind of grab from this? I plan on going into
more detail when we get to the Goku versus Vegeta,
because I I know for one, it takes longer to
go through. But two, you get a lot more stuff
going on with with Nappa and Vegeta. And Nappa
and the Z fighters and a lot of the Z fighters
kind of biting the dust and Goku fighting his
way to come back and learning all these new skills.
It's it's when Dragon Ball Z really starts ramping
up before we get to the Frieza and the Namek
saga. Even the Namek saga is not quite my favorite
until we get to Frieza. So, yeah, it's. It's
going to be interesting to see how well it holds
up and how well I, for one, what my memory was
of it then and then going into it fresh now.
So, of course, let me know what you think about
this episode. Let me know what you want to see
improved or discussed or talked about as I go
through this as I'm I'm just kind of reentering
the world of Dragon Ball Z proper. I used to.
run an actual Dragon Ball Z website way back
when early 2000s when a lot of this was airing
on Toonami and I had you know the different Beckett
books where you have all the resources and things
like that so we can we can dive into some of
those things later but before I fully close it
out the again the highlights for this this part
of the saga You get to learn Goku's Saiyan heritage.
And mission to conquer Earth. You get to have
Goku and Piccolo team up. You get Gohan's hidden
power. Goku's sacrifice. And the Z fighters assembling.
And then of course the lowlights. Raditz's short
stay. And he's pretty much never mentioned again.
I mean Vegeta basically becomes the adoptive
brother. And despite. Raditz being Goku's brother,
he's relatively briefly in this episode or in
this chunk of Dragon Ball Z. Would be nice to
revisit him in the future, but who knows? A lot
of the episodes felt kind of drawn out in Dragon
Ball Z proper compared to Kai, which, again,
is another reason if you're not wanting to watch
a lot of the filler to watch Dragon Ball Z Kai
over Dragon Ball Z proper. And then there's a
lot of underdevelopment, certain characters such
as Raditz and Gohan, you know, could have had
more development and in -depth part of this arc.
And then the animation quality being that it's
a return, you know, from Dragon Ball to the Z.
It's not great compared to later sagas, but,
you know. It does improve gradually as it goes.
I mean, the guy is learning as he goes along.
Overall, the Reddit Sagan Dragon Ball Z Kai pivotal
moment in setting the tone direction of the series.
Despite a few areas that could have been, you
know, enhanced or or brought up with the storyline,
but. Yeah. So. Thank you, as always, for listening
to the Cyber Dragon Ball. I've been your host,
Steve Kamehameha. And you can, of course, interact
with this episode on geekcastradio .com. You
can listen on your favorite podcatcher. We're
going to come back next time with the Saiyan
Saga. Next time on the Cyber Dragon Ball, Steve
Kamehameha will discuss the Saiyan Saga. Will
Goku arrive in time? Find out next time on the
Geekcast Radio Network.