Goku was extremely naive as a kid, so it fell upon Bulma to serve as a surrogate big sister and teach him about how the world worked. She not only taught him about the purpose of the Dragon Balls, but was right there with him in his journey to retrieve them. Back in the first series, Bulma was equally as important to the show as young Goku was. It might come as a shock, but Goku wasn't always hogging the spotlight the way he is today. Now, unless you can destroy a planet, you're nothing. Sure, DBZ's power ups are cool, but it effectively eliminated the potential for a new challenge to come forward at any time.

It made battles more of a learning process than an exercise in brute strength, and it was honestly a more interesting way for fights to happen. In Dragon Ball, fights were about pitting techniques against each other, and one character having to get innovative to find a counter to a seemingly unstoppable attack. It doesn't matter how effective an attack looks unless it's coming from a Super Saiyan or a fusion of two gods, or some similarly overpowered person. And anyone who got into the franchise through DBZ knows that power levels are everything. Thanks to things like the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, the ability to fuse, senzu beans, and the Dragon Balls, a major boost in power is something that's easily attainable. In Dragon Ball Z, everyone knows that losing a fight is but a temporary setback. 14 FIGHTS WEREN’T ABOUT POWER LEVELS IN DRAGON BALL The message was made loud and clear early on: this was a series that would explore some darker territory. And the death toll was amped up significantly, with Goku, Yamcha, Chiaotzu, Tien, and Piccolo all dying very early on into the new series. Characters like Tien sustained gruesome injuries, like when he lost his arm in a fight against Nappa.

Characters were beaten bloody with a lot more frequency and were suddenly prone to cursing. With Goku now an adult in Dragon Ball Z, it only made sense his playful days would be behind him in many ways, and he'd have to face even more of the serious situations that Piccolo was the harbinger of.ĭBZ definitely demonstrated that change of tone, even early on. The first series had strayed from its lighthearted humor by the time King Piccolo showed up, and had had started diving into darker plotlines like the death of Krillin.

Just as Goku had grown up by the end of Dragon Ball, so too had its original viewers.

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