DB and DBZ - How different are they?

[ABED]

The question came about because of a discussion in another thread. How different do you see DB and DBZ? No need to be pedantic, I'm well aware that it's all DB, I'm just breaking it out because many fans do. They think the shows are radically different in tone, action, genre, etc. Some say they're so different that it requires a different score. While making this about the score would put this in a different section, that's not my main focus with this question. I see DBZ as a show that definitely different from where it started out, but it's still feel that it's grounded in the roots of the series.

[DBZAOTA482]

As different as Naruto Shippuden (Naruto Part II) is to Naruto (Naruto Part I).

[Gyt Kaliba]

There's definitely differences, but not so much that I'd ever think they should be treated as completely different franchises. How someone could be a fan of one without at least having a healthy respect for the other, I've never completely understood, especially coming from DBZ fans towards DB. Without DB, there would be no Z.

[VegettoEX]

I like to think of an imaginary world where the Buu arc got an extra subtitle to its name, because it's exactly the same situation in everything BUT name as the DB/DBZ break: new opening/ending theme, new general slew of musical cues from Kikuchi while still working in older pieces and movie pieces, yet all still exactly the same manga week-to-week.

By that logical extension, if you're going to be self-consistent and acknowledge what happened there, you'd have to say the same thing about the Buu arc in the TV series.

The difference between the "two" series (DB vs. DBZ) is basically non-existent and propped up by fans of the Faulconer Productions replacement score as a retroactive reason* to support their musical tastes (and since your question stemmed out of that thread, that's why I'm answering it this way). I don't buy the "but it's suddenly sci-fi so CHANGE EVERYTHING!" explanation, because: see Majin Buu arc example above. All of that space/aliens/etc. introduction with Raditz was just as simultaneously gradual and abrupt as every single other story arc division that came before it, complete with a time skip just like every other one before it. Nothing was different. Par for the course.

Yes, the tone changes a little bit. Just like it did in every story arc before it.

Yes, new musical cues are added to the mix while still working in other ones. Just like it did in every story arc before it.

If you can't tell, I feel somewhat strongly on this matter. It comes off waaaaaaaaaaaaaay defensively. I'll admit that.

(*If you like the score, great. Don't co-opt some other reason to justify it. Own it.)

[irreality]

Any differences are gradual and started at like the end of the Pilaf saga. I don't see Piccolo's saga as drastically different from Radditz/Saiyans, or that saga to the next, etc. One flows into each other with slight changes. If you compare the first saga to the last, the differences are more pronounced, sure, but that is because you ignored the organic change in between.

[FortuneSSJ]

DB has the sense of adventure (until Piccolo Daimao comes) and more comedy than DBZ. The fights are also more about martial arts.
DBZ is more serious. Focus more in fighting and protecting the earth/universe from bad guys. The fights are more brutal and full of lasers.

100% recommended. Perfect for kids growing up.

They still belong to the same series though. Start wacthing the series with DBZ, is like start reading a book by the middle. DBZ is the second part of this beautiful story.
While the plot is easy to follow, you miss a lot of things. Mainly the growth of the first cast.

[successoroffate]

I think the transition between the 2 began with the Piccolo Daimaoh Saga. As soon as main characters started to die. The air was different, you could feel Goku's struggle to avenge his dead friends till the very end when he kills Piccolo. In the end, if you watch the show since the beginning, then you can easily relate all versions of Goku as a one true journey. If someone started watching the show but didn't see DB but rather started from DBZ, then the journey for them is different.

I think DB plays a major role in the journey of watching the show as a whole. Both shows feel very different yet, they are attached together.

[90sDBZ]

Having re-watched the entirety of Z in Japanese not that long ago, I will say that Kikuchi's Z work has grown on me slightly. While I instantly loved his music in DB, it's taken me much longer to warm up to his Z stuff. And I don't think it's because I saw English Z first, because I actually first saw the movies with Kikuchi first, and initially didn't like it at all.

Funnily enough, I actually feel like the kikuchi score began to improve again in the Buu saga, making something of a return to form. I feel the score made a return to the more lively-sounding music from DB. An example is that piece that first plays when Goten and Trunks fight, which feels more in line with the exciting music you'd hear in DB during the Tournament fights. Early Z lacked that fast-paced excitement building type of music.

I think one of the problems is that much of the Japanese Z score is recycled from the movies. Sometimes it fits, and other times it doesn't. I think some of the pieces from Movie 5 used in the Cell saga work pretty well, as does the piece from Movie 9 which gets used frequently in the Buu saga, initially as Dabura's theme. I don't know the name of it, but that theme which always goes "Dun dun dun!" throughout Z, gets overused. I know it had a few variations, but it still gets played too often in general to generate much suspense or excitement. The Movie 7 Spirit Bomb theme is always good to hear.

The piece from Movie 1 which gets played when Goku goes Super Saiyan is good. But I still feel like that moment needed a unique piece which hadn't been heard up to that point, in order to shock the viewer and give off the feeling that something majorly different was about to go down. The piece Faulconer Productions played hadn't been heard before that point, which added to the curiosity and mystery of the scene instead of just labelling it as another dramatic moment. While repetition of themes can be effective, it largely depends on the specific choices of moments.

To address the question of how different are DB and DBZ, you could also ask how different are GT, BoG, RoF and Super, all of which were given drastically different scores to DB/Z despite continuing the same story and expanding on that same world. For whatever reason Toei haven't used anything like Kikuchi for recent DB media, and even made the decision to initially replace Kikuchi for Kai, which has to say something.

What I'm trying to say is that while Kikuchi had his moments in Z and is still generally decent, I've always felt that there was room for improvement, and if a replacement score can do that then so be it. People here often ask "Why should a show suddenly change its score?". I ask the opposite question of "Does a show need to sound the same throughout?". An example I often think of is Batman TAS and Batman Beyond having scores as different as night and day, despite the latter being a continuation of the former and exploring the same story themes.

Another thing that I've noticed is how the Kenji Yamamoto Budokai music is universally loved by fans of the English and Japanese version alike, despite it using rock music as its "inspiration", and sounding much more in line with the dub score than the Japanese one. I feel like it gets a free pass simply for being the original score for those games, even though it sounds nothing like the original music for the show the games are based on. If that's the case, then the whole "Heavy metal music simply doesn't fit Dragonball" argument loses its credibility.

[JulieYBM]

A certain someone else brought this up on Twitter, but Gokuu is off fighting an entire military by himself in Dragon Ball. Outside of the Tao Pai Pai stuff there is almost none of the supposed fantasy and mysticism that exists, supposedly, only in Dragon Ball. If you watch all 153 episodes of Dragon Ball and then watch a good three or four cours of Dragon Ball Z it's hard to tell a difference. Nishio Daisuke was still series director and all of the regular staff were still the same. The rhythm of the episodes still feel the same, too. Gohan chasing that saber tooth tiger around set to Son Gohan & Piccolo Daimaou for God knows how long is still pure, unadulterated Dragon Ball, just like how the intense battles of the Twenty-Second Tenka'ichi Budoukai are right up there with the intense battles of the Saiyan Invasion. Any sort of change in tone is so slight and spread over such a short period of time that it's really not possible to just cut the story in half and say "This is it! Acknowledge me, 'cause this is it!"

[VegettoEX]

I feel like it gets a free pass simply for being the original score for those games, even though it sounds nothing like the original music for the show the games are based on. If that's the case, then the whole "Heavy metal music simply doesn't fit Dragonball" argument loses its credibility.

I can't speak for everyone, but that's not the case for me at all. It doesn't get a free pass because of what it is just because it is what it is.

I like that score because it DOES evoke what I liked about the original Kikuchi score, while still setting itself apart. Also note that I was playing games with Yamamoto scores before Yamamoto got his first revival with Budokai and his second revival with Kai. His 2002-onward scores not only evoked feelings and emotions from the Kikuchi score, but also HIMSELF from the prior generation, which I *also* liked.

[Faustus]

To me the division is like taking a sequence of shades running from green to blue and drawing a bisecting line at a random point in the middle to divide the sequence into two unequal halves. Does the second half end up being "bluer" than the first overall, the first "greener"? Sure. Does this make the split-point any less arbitrary? Nope.

The Dragon Ball/Z anime are a bit like that, except we get a fiery purple-pink out of the blue (pardon the pun) -- the Boo arc -- to cap off the latter half.

EDIT: edited for clarity.

[LuckyCat]

I'm more or less in the same camp as VegettoEX on this, but if forced to divide these two sets of episodes thematically, I'd say DBZ focuses more on Goku's children. Z seems to introduce these huge periods of the material where Goku is offscreen for a long time and his children (Gohan, then Goten) take the center stage.

In the end, Goku was reemphasized as the main character, so Z as a depiction of a "new generation" of kid heroes isn't a completely accurate description, despite some of Toriyama's intentions.

[precita]

DBZ is extremely different. There's a sense of dread and hopelessness from the moment Radditz lands on Earth. Watching all the human fighters get completely destroyed by Nappa like they were nothing when they were all shown as competent fighters in Dragonball really puts in perspective how humans never had a chance of competing with aliens.

Also outside of the filler, most of the humor is gone. DBZ's funniest moments happen in filler episodes, not in the important episodes, so that might have to do with it.

[ABED]

DBZ is extremely different. There's a sense of dread and hopelessness from the moment Radditz lands on Earth. Watching all the human fighters get completely destroyed by Nappa like they were nothing when they were all shown as competent fighters in Dragonball really puts in perspective how humans never had a chance of competing with aliens.<br abp="685"><br abp="686">Also outside of the filler, most of the humor is gone. DBZ's funniest moments happen in filler episodes, not in the important episodes, so that might have to do with it.

You make DBZ sound like a really depressing show. There's still plenty of humor, have you forgotten the Ginyu Force? Buu? Kaio-sama?

And I wish I and others didn't have to keep harping on this but the Piccolo Daimao arcs were really where the biggest shift in tone began, not the Saiyan arc. Piccolo and his minions outclassed most of Goku's friends. Kuririn, Chaozu, and Muten Roshi were killed like they were nothing. Even Tenshinhan had the hell beaten out of him by Drum.

I can see where some would look at DB and DBZ and see how different they are, but I think most of them overlook later DB. It wasn't a light switch, the change happened gradually. Sure, if you look at the earliest arcs in DB and the Saiyan arc, they have different feels, but that's only after 150 plus episodes. Two of my favorite shows are Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. The character Wesley starts off as an uptight British booksmart, street dumb, ponce. By the end of Angel, he's a badass. Hell, even his accent changes a bit. If you saw him from his first appearance and in his last episode, it would feel like a radically different character (same with Cordelia, maybe even moreso), but what you would not see is all the little steps it took to get from A to Z.

[VegettoEX]

There's a sense of dread and hopelessness from the moment Radditz lands on Earth. Watching all the human fighters get completely destroyed by Nappa like they were nothing when they were all shown as competent fighters in Dragonball really puts in perspective how humans never had a chance of competing with aliens.

Martial artists are murdered one-by-one, including Kuririn. Goku is outright defeated. The turtle sage is killed. Chiaotzu is killed. Piccolo not only makes his wish, but kills the dragon. World leadership is overthrown. Tenshinhan is on death's door.

Been there, done that .

[Baggie_Saiyan]

I like to think of an imaginary world where the Buu arc got an extra subtitle to its name, because it's exactly the same situation in everything BUT name as the DB/DBZ break: new opening/ending theme, new general slew of musical cues from Kikuchi while still working in older pieces and movie pieces, yet all still exactly the same manga week-to-week.

Not only that but we had a timeskip too. Gohan was an adult, we were getting the new generations too, though maybe the Z brand was doing so well they didn't want to spoil it and keep the train going? Also, the international ver. of Buu Kai did, though I am not sure why it got a subtle and the Japanese version didn't but that is probably the closest we are going to get to your dream.

[Lord Beerus]

I don't really see that great of a difference between DB and DBZ. I mean, DB has Goku and his group of friends going on adventures, occasionally taking part in tournaments and beating the crap out of evil people. And Z gives us... a more older version of Goku and his group of friends going on adventures, taking part in tournaments and beating the crap out of evil people.

Go figure.

[Cipher]

Particularly in terms of the original broadcast, they're the same show. You can point out different general trends in the story arcs they happen to cover, but the bleed is so gradual it doesn't remotely signal a difference in mission statement.

It's an arbitrary rebranding that has since been used to identify a particularly popular portion of the series, and took advantage of one of the cleanest arc breaks in the manga outside Cell-to-Boo. But it really is arbitrary that cut-off comes at the Saiyan arc, that one doesn't happen in the Boo arc, etc. They're as different from each other as two seasons of any property might be.

I mean, yes, if you look at the opening arc of Dragon Ball and the Saiyan-Freeza arc, they're prioritizing very different things. But the same is true comparing it to the Piccolo arc, and comparing the Piccolo arc to the Saiyan arc doesn't yield a large difference at all.

Funnily enough, I actually feel like the kikuchi score began to improve again in the Buu saga, making something of a return to form. I feel the score made a return to the more lively-sounding music from DB. An example is that piece that first plays when Goten and Trunks fight, which feels more in line with the exciting music you'd hear in DB during the Tournament fights. Early Z lacked that fast-paced excitement building type of music.

This is off-topic, but I love Kikuchi's Boo arc score. The martial-arts-fantasy-film homages that makes up most of Dragon Ball's earlier scores have largely taken backseat to a more freewheeling jazzy style, which fits perfectly with that portion of the series. Just a great note to close out on.

His android arc material is quite good too, though. I find I like the Saiyan-Namek scores the least of any era of the original series because they tend to be more subdued and tend to be used repetitively over such a high number of episodes.

[fadeddreams5]

I know it's purely coincidental that Toei even divided the series at the point that it did, but that was a very good call because I feel DBZ is different in many ways.

Structure: Dragon Ball followed a adventure > tournament > adventure > tournament formula. DBZ diverted away from this in favor of stories the revolve around killing singular villains whose powers threaten the universe. The King Piccolo saga was technically the prelude to this, but that was a fraction of Dragon Ball.

Main character: Dragon Ball is Goku's story as a kid and his growth into the martial arts champion of the world, which he FINALLY becomes during his teen years at the very end of the series. As such, he is the strongest on his planet at the end of Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball Z skips forward to the future, where Goku has a son. This series focuses a lot on the growth of this new character, while Goku remains pretty stagnant, besides his obvious strength gains. Again, when I think Dragon Ball, I think Kid Goku. When I think Dragon Ball Z, I think adult Goku.

Action: As mentioned, Goku obtains strength gains, even after being considered the strongest in his planet. In fact, these gains are absolutely ridiculous and over-the-top. And that's what I think of when DBZ comes to mind: over-the-top. The action is fast-paced and absolutely crazy. Dragon Ball began with gag fights which gradually changed to serious and respectable matches, but DBZ simply takes it to another level. When I think Dragon Ball, adventure comes to mind (i.e. finding the dragon balls!). When I think Dragon Ball Z, action comes to mind.

Comedy: The series always possesses a spectrum of comedy and serious moments. By the start of the Piccolo saga, this spectrum shifts more towards the serious side and does so further in the Saiyan-Cell sagas. The Buu saga regresses a bit, but it also almost passes off as dark comedy at times.

Themes: DBZ emphasized more on sci-fi elements. Goku and Piccolo are now aliens, extraterrestrials invade the planet, the gang travels through space, a boy from the future time travels, cyborgs and biological androids threaten the universe, the world martial arts tournament is commercialized, etc. While both series are rooted on wuxia, Dragon Ball had more prominent eastern themes.

(Super) Saiyans: Self-explanatory, but it's an iconic part of DBZ that is missing in Dragon Ball.

There are many discrepancies. So many arguments against their differences involve the Tien arc and Piccolo saga, as though those are the only ones in the series.

[Doctor.]

Structure: Dragon Ball followed a adventure > tournament > adventure > tournament formula. DBZ diverted away from this in favor of stories the revolve around killing singular villains whose powers threaten the universe. The King Piccolo saga was technically the prelude to this, but that was a fraction of Dragon Ball.

Dragon Ball breaks away from this. The Piccolo Daimao arc isn't an adventure-oriented arc. If you choose to classify it as such, I can easily say DBZ follows the same formula as well with Freeza (adventure) -> Cell Games (tournament) -> Boo (adventure) -> Oob (tournament). Obviously, that doesn't make much sense, does it? The only time the series follows that formula is from the beginning arc to the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai. Not all of Dragon Ball.

Again, when I think Dragon Ball, I think Kid Goku. When I think Dragon Ball Z, I think adult Goku.

But that's wrong again. Goku was an adult in the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai. That's Dragon Ball. Don't ignore it just because it doesn't suit the DB/DBZ division.

As mentioned, Goku obtains strength gains, even after being considered the strongest in his planet. In fact, these gains are absolutely ridiculous and over-the-top. And that's what I think of when DBZ comes to mind: over-the-top. The action is fast-paced and absolutely crazy. Dragon Ball began with gag fights which gradually changed to serious and respectable matches, but DBZ simply takes it to another level. When I think Dragon Ball, adventure comes to mind (i.e. finding the dragon balls!). When I think Dragon Ball Z, action comes to mind.

And once again you keep ignoring the Daimao and 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai parts of the series. "Fast-paced" and "absolutely crazy" action are present in the main fights of these two arcs. I'd reckon they're the most brutal, bloodiest and easily the hardest victories for Goku yet. So what makes these fights any different from Z's?

By the start of the Piccolo saga, this spectrum shifts more towards the serious side and does so further in the Saiyan-Cell sagas. The Buu saga regresses a bit, but it also almost passes off as dark comedy at times.

Right, by the start of the Daimao arc.

Themes: DBZ emphasized more on sci-fi elements. Goku and Piccolo are now aliens, extraterrestrials invade the planet, the gang travels through space, a boy from the future time travels, cyborgs and biological androids threaten the universe, the world martial arts tournament is commercialized, etc. While both series are rooted on wuxia, Dragon Ball had more prominent eastern themes.

Besides the first arc of the series, Dragon Ball has almost as much sci-fi has Z has. Look at the Red Ribbon Army.

(Super) Saiyans: Self-explanatory, but it's an iconic part of DBZ that is missing in Dragon Ball.

Super Saiyans only started existing in the Freeza arc. And Saiyans by themselves aren't a convincing enough reason, because Dragon Ball had demons and aliens (Namekians), which became iconic parts of the series as well.

There are many discrepancies. So many arguments against their differences involve the Tenshinhan arc and Piccolo saga, as though those are the only ones in the series.

The only things you've named are differences that started BEFORE the split. There is absolutely nothing in the DB/Z split that makes them fundamentally different besides alien invasions, and even that isn't enough by itself because Dragon Ball always had sci-fi elements.