Why Dragon Ball Z blew up in America

[GhostEmperorX]

Not being from the US (or Europe), all it took to get me hooked before seeing even a single clip was a copy of a Super Butoden game that people downloaded on their Windows XP systems in school back in 2007 or so, then a copy of the manga that corresponded to where "Z" began in the anime with Raditz when someone brought that to school in 2009.
I also randomly saw an Arabic dub version of a Saiyan Saga episode (where the team faced off against the Saibaimen) on a TV channel, didn't understand a word but still watched anyway.

[kemuri07]

Dragon Ball Z might have been successful on another channel--I don't know if it would have found the level of success it did on CN/Toonami. Because it wasn't just they had it airing, they went out of their way to pretty much make an audience for DBZ. DBZ was "cool" and CN/Toonami did a bang up job convincing a bunch of pre-teenagers that "this ain't your daddy's cartoons!"

DBZ Struggle promo
https://youtu.be/liVaeRjJTXQ

And the promo CN ran that showed a bunch of critics calling it the best anime ever made
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kPAE3kahVA

It just gave the show an adult feel that not other shows had, even other anime at the time. Felt..prestige even.

[ABED]

It was different. Fun quirky characters, colorful, great action that's simple to follow, and simple stories. Serialization is absolutely one of the appeals. it wasn't the first to do it, but it was the maybe to that point the most serialized show kids had seen. Even something like X-Men had a stand alone elements, especially as the show went on. DBZ by contrast had very few and far between standalones.

[Yuli Ban]

It was different. Fun quirky characters, colorful, great action that's simple to follow, and simple stories. Serialization is absolutely one of the appeals. it wasn't the first to do it, but it was the maybe to that point the most serialized show kids had seen. Even something like X-Men had a stand alone elements, especially as the show went on. DBZ by contrast had very few and far between standalones.

Indeed.
People talk about why Majin Vegeta was so powerful to them (even if it comes off to me more as petulant whining nowadays), and I think it's clear you couldn't possibly pull off Vegeta's arc in an episodic show with a very loose ongoing continuity in the background. Him raging at Son Goku about the humiliation he's felt ever since their first match only feels real because you see that seething ongoing, developing, without any reset, which is more true to life than "in this bad guy of the week show, we're reminded of Vegeta's seething one-sided rivalry with Goku whenever the episode's plot is about him
Similar with Gohan's transformation into Super Saiyan 2. It was built up extraordinarily poorly (as in not at all) in the actual Artificial Humans arc, but because the story of Z was ongoing since we first met him, it still FELT like the culmination of a proper character arc. You couldn't easily do that in a show that had only episodic plots or seasonal story arcs. At least, it wouldn't feel the same.
I imagined not long ago "What if Dragon Ball Evolution got spun-off into some American animesque cartoon circa 2010-2012 or so, trying to capitalize on Avatar: The Last Airbender and it used the story structure of 2003 Teen Titans (series-long continuity, seasonal story arcs that only carry across at most 5-6 episodes, rest of the season is episodic)? Would it have ever become anything worthwhile, with the Maximum Overdevil's advocate's benefit of every possible doubt that absolutely everything went right for it to not automatically be terrible?"
And I just can't see it. Something worthwhile might come out of it on its own merits, but nothing as unhinged as Dragon Ball. Even today, Western cartoons are still hesitant to have series-long storylines because animation is still so dominated by children's (or adult's) comedies, since it's already assumed anime fills the "dramatic/action" animation role. The ones that do commit, unsurprisingly, tend to be pretty popular (e.g. Invincible, Infinity Train).

The fact Dragon Ball Z was doing that as an animated show in the 90s, when other programs were starting to dip their toes in that but never went nearly as far, was itself part of the appeal, and it's clear a lot of Americans didn't know what to make of it


(lol, Gen Fukunaga was literally told "kids can't follow long, complex stories", likely by network executives who ever since have been seething about anime taking over cultural dominance from Western cartoons, or tried jumping onto that money train)

Yeah, you had Gargoyles and Reboot and Æon Flux; they just never hit anywhere near the same impact

(Same time, starting with Z deep in the middle on the larger storyline and at the very start of a new story arc helped its chances; watching Dragon Ball from the very beginning, it ironically feels a lot like those "lore show" cartoons some complain about, that starts comedic and episodic and then develops deeper lore and storytelling as it goes on)

[ABED]

cool find with those clippings. While it's a much smaller example, kids love ongoing stories. Even in the original run of Power Rangers, kid my age (8 at the time) couldn't wait for the next episode of the Green Ranger 5 parter.

Ironically, I crave stand alone elements and filler now, but back then it was far from the norm, especially in the US.

[Yellow Flower King]

Episodic shows are a lost art now.