What's the difference between an Arc and a Saga

[Tundra]

I've been wondering this for quite a while now, but what is the difference between an Arc and a Saga. I ask this because Funimation and Viz seem to use saga when referring to a storyline within Dragon Ball/Z/GT although other sites refer to them as arcs instead of sagas.

[VegettoEX]

There are various "official" break-downs of what separates out different "parts" of the overall story, and even more when you turn it over to fans. Some people break DBZ down into, for example, just the Saiyan / Freeza / Cell / Majin Buu "sections". Others, like FUNimation, break them down with more granularity.

This is done for a variety of reasons. When it's done by companies, it's usually for marketing purposes.

Then you get to the actual phrasing. By its very definition, a "saga" is a long, drawn-out account or story. With that in mind, I'd call something like Dragon Ball in its entirety a "saga" -- it's the saga of Goku, or the saga of Dragon Ball. Some folks -- myself included -- would take issue with calling something the "Ginyu Saga", when you're talking about just a handful of chapters or episodes. It's just this tiny little portion of an overall larger story, and it's not truly independent in and of itself.

In Japanese, the word generally used is 編 hen, which is something like "chapter" or, if you will, "arc". For example, Dragon Ball Kai had a distinction made in its home release in Japan after episode 52 as the "Jinzoningen & Cell Hen" -- the "Artificial Humans & Cell Arc".

[Tundra]

Thanks for the explanation. With the pacing in Dragon Ball Z with some of it's arc's it feels more like a saga. Kai however did make it feel more like an arc than a saga.