Should the "Z" in Dragon Ball be dropped for international?

[Piccolo Daimao]

This kind of weirdness extends even further back. Dragon Ball: Final Bout was released in North America as Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout despite GT being just about entirely unknown at the time outside of the die hards.

And the fact that the game didn't only include GT characters; it had Z characters, many of whom from UB22.

Whenever I now mention the series as Dragon Ball around the friends, they get what I mean. Even my casual dub fan friend doesn't bat an eyelid when I use the correct pronunciations of "Saiyan" and "Kaiouken". So I agree that the "Z" is probably superfluous.

[Son Satan]

This kind of weirdness extends even further back. Dragon Ball: Final Bout was released in North America as Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout despite GT being just about entirely unknown at the time outside of the die hards.

And the fact that the game didn't only include GT characters; it had Z characters, many of whom from UB22.

And even then, the Raging Blast games were released in all territories as Dragon Ball: Raging Blast and Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2.

[Piccolo Daimao]

This kind of weirdness extends even further back. Dragon Ball: Final Bout was released in North America as Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout despite GT being just about entirely unknown at the time outside of the die hards.

And the fact that the game didn't only include GT characters; it had Z characters, many of whom from UB22.

And even then, the Raging Blast games were released in all territories as Dragon Ball: Raging Blast and Dragon Ball: Raging Blast 2.

Yeah, that was strange due to its inconsistency.

[Fizzer]

Personally, I despise the "Z".

I dislike it so much because it misleads people into thinking that Dragon Ball Z is some superior sequel to Dragon Ball, or Dragon Ball is a prequel to Dragon Ball Z. People don't realise they're starting a story more than one third of the way through, and they're missing the significance of lots of things. I make sure to tell anyone casual fan who will listen that the two series are actually just different parts of the same manga and form one single story that's meant to be experienced in order.

I probably wouldn't mind that much if the English translation of the manga wasn't split in two to match the anime. They actually took the first chapters of volume 17 and moved them into volume 16 just to keep the illusion alive, and have people buying "DragonBall Z volume 1" thinking that's the start of a story.

I often toy with the idea of organising a fan dub/edit that stays faithful to the Japanese, gets rid of a lot of (pointless or terrible) filler, and corrects any contradictions present, and one of my biggest motivations is that we could merge the two anime series back into one, how they should have been all along, and then there would be at least one consistent version without this problem. Before I started thinking about this, I still always used to with "they" would make an updated version of the anime and fix this issue, but then I gave up hope on that.

[LiamKav]

Well, they did some of those things with Kai. I do sorta wish they'd started sooner, but I find DragonBall filler to be so much more tolerable than DBZ filler.

Toei Animation & Namco Bandai have to let go Dragon Ball Z if they want Dragon Ball to move forward.

Is it really that big a deal? Is it that important for the continued survival of the brand that they drop the part that is most well known internationally?

Sure, some people don't like DragonBall, and prefer the punching/kicking/grunting of DBZ. Is that a problem, really?

[SilverPlaqueVII]

Well, they did some of those things with Kai. I do sorta wish they'd started sooner, but I find DragonBall filler to be so much more tolerable than DBZ filler.

Toei Animation & Namco Bandai have to let go Dragon Ball Z if they want Dragon Ball to move forward.

Is it really that big a deal? Is it that important for the continued survival of the brand that they drop the part that is most well known internationally?

Sure, some people don't like DragonBall, and prefer the punching/kicking/grunting of DBZ. Is that a problem, really?

Really?

I'm preferring all Dragon Ball / Z / GT products as Dragon Ball Kai or Dragon Ball. The Z is so disgusting!

[LiamKav]

I'm preferring all Dragon Ball / Z / GT products as Dragon Ball Kai or Dragon Ball. The Z is so disgusting!

If they are focussed on the Z era, or GT era, then use that suffix. If it's the DB-era, or the whole show(s), then just DragonBall would work. But Z being "disgusting"? I just... don't get the passion on display here.

I mean, saying you prefer using "Kai" to "Z" doesn't make sense, since "Kai" refers to a specific era just as much as Z does. If anything, it's even more specific.