Dragon Ball Z (1989)
The Saiyans have returned...
Now happily married and with a son, martial arts champion Goku must defend Earth from a series of extraterrestrial invaders bent on destruction.
| Type | TV series |
|---|---|
| First aired | 26 April 1989 |
| Status | Ended, last episode 31 January 1996 |
| Genre | Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Action & Adventure |
| Starring | Masako Nozawa, Ryo Horikawa and Toshio Furukawa |
| Seasons | 9 seasons, 291 episodes |
| Episode length | about 26 min |
| Time to watch it all | about 126 hours |
| Rated | TV-14 |
| Scores | TMDB users 8.4/10 |
Where to watch Dragon Ball Z
Dragon Ball Z is streaming on Crunchyroll ($9.99 a month) in the US. At ten hours a week, all of the series takes about 3 months of Crunchyroll, or $29.97 at list price.
We check availability daily. Page last updated 1 October 2026. Prices are standard monthly plans and change often, so check with the service before you sign up.
What kind of watch this is
Dragon Ball Z is an animated action series that takes the tone of a Saturday morning cartoon and ratchets the stakes up to planetary annihilation. It runs 291 episodes across 9 seasons, totaling roughly 126 hours of viewing. That is a specific amount of time to dedicate to watching a man punch holes in the fabric of reality. The hook is simple: Goku is married, has a son, and is still expected to save the world. It is a loud, kinetic watch where the volume never drops, even when the plot does.
What the critics said
Critics treated the series as a cultural event rather than a standard cartoon. IGN ranked it 78th on its list of the top 100 animated series. Wizard magazine placed it 50th on its greatest animated shows list.
Hal Erickson, a media historian, compared it to an animated soap opera, a comparison that holds up given the serialized format. Christopher J. Olson and CarrieLynn D. Reinhard noted that Western fans flocked to it because it offered exciting action not found elsewhere at the time.
The English dub, however, drew mixed reviews. IGN criticized the acting as over-the-top and annoying. The decision to give Frieza a female voice left many viewers confused about the character’s gender.
How it did with audiences
On TMDB, users rate it 8.4 out of 10. In Japan, it held a steady 20.5% average viewer rating. Stateside, it beat out Friends and The X-Files in some sweeps during its first run. The 1999 season three premiere became the highest-rated program ever on Cartoon Network at the time. By 2001, it topped the Toonami block. Both edited and unedited home video releases cracked the Billboard top 10. For a week in 2002, it was the #1 program in all of television for tweens and young men.
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Sources
- Dragon Ball Z on TMDB — synopsis, cast, ratings and recommendations
- Wikidata Q477916 — review scores, box office and awards (CC0)
- “Dragon Ball Z” on Wikipedia, by its contributors (history) — reception, audience figures and legacy, summarised and adapted here under CC BY-SA 4.0
- Where to watch and prices: Binge Boss, from TMDB watch-provider data (powered by JustWatch) and our own provider list
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