English dub

The first English dub of the episodes was produced by Filipino company Creative Products Corporation, airing on RPN 9 in the Philippines during 1993.^[4] In 1996, Dallas-based company Funimation began working on their first season of a North American dub for Dragon Ball Z. The company had previously produced a dub of Dragon Ball's first 13 episodes and first movie, which aired in first-run syndication during 1995. Plans for a second syndicated Dragon Ball dub season were cancelled due to lower than expected ratings,^[5] and Funimation partnered with Los Angeles-based Saban Entertainment (known at the time for shows such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and X-Men: The Animated Series) to syndicate their Dragon Ball Z adaptation to Fox, UPN and The WB affiliate stations.^[6][7][8][5] While Saban had a history of acquiring the rights to various anime series to be dubbed, Funimation still controlled the American license to the property during this period.^[9] Like with the prior Dragon Ball dub from 1995, Canadian voice actors from Vancouver, British Columbia were used. However, this time ADR work was handled by The Ocean Group (now known as Ocean Productions), leading to some fans referring to this dub as "the Ocean dub".^[5][10] Funimation producer Barry Watson would regularly fly out from Dallas to Vancouver to coordinate the voice actors at Ocean.^[5]

The program aired during early morning time slots in most markets. It was part of the "Saban Network for Kids", a 1996–97 syndicated programming block^[11] which included other Saban anime dubs, such as Eagle Riders and Samurai Pizza Cats,^[8][12][13] as well as Masked Rider, Saban's Adventures of Oliver Twist and The Why Why Family.^[1][8] Heightened exposure from Saban helped ensure a larger audience for the series, which led to Funimation creating a second syndicated dub season in 1997, intended to air in its own hour long block.^[5]

This dub edited down the first season to 26 episodes in order to make it fit within a standard American television season. Due to broadcasting regulations of the time, Saban forced Funimation to remove all references to death, often replacing it with a euphemism for death known as "the Next Dimension", and digital paint was utilized to alter content that was deemed unacceptable, such as blood. The word "Hell" was also digitally removed from two characters shirts in the eighth dub episode, and edited to say "HFIL", which in the dub stood for "Home for Infinite Losers." The tenth dub episode "Escape from Piccolo" never aired in syndication, due to concerns from Saban over its content. It was first released via Pioneer Entertainment's VHS release of the dub in late 1997. Regarding this episode and Saban's censoring of the dub, Funimation president Gen Fukunaga remarked in a 1999 interview, "we had a lot of arguments with them, saying they were going way too far with the censorship, but they would refuse to air it unless it was cut to their liking. In fact, I recall one show that we censored a little less than usual, and they just refused to air it. That was the only actual episode that didn't make it to the airwaves, but there were a lot of other instances in which we felt they crossed the line."^[14]

According to Fukunaga, Saban initially wanted Funimation to cut out a scene in episode 17 where Nappa blows up a helicopter with journalists in it. They only allowed the scene to be kept after Funimation wrote a line where Tien says "I can see their parachutes, they're okay", immediately after the helicopter explodes and the journalists are killed.^[14] In other scenes, lines were added which implied that buildings destroyed by Vegeta and Nappa were empty or evacuated. Vegeta actor Brian Drummond's reading of the line "It's Over 9000!" in the episode "The Return of Goku" later became a popular internet meme in 2006, nine years after the scene originally aired on American television.^[15] This line was a mistranslation in a scene where Vegeta reacts to Goku's power level, and did not appear in the Japanese version, with the original line being "It's Over 8000!".^[15]

Funimation decided to replace the original Japanese score by Shunsuke Kikuchi so they wouldn't have to pay him music royalties, and outsourced the role of music to Saban Entertainment. Saban in turn hired their former in-house composer Ron Wasserman, who went uncredited so Saban could collect the music royalties.^[16][17] In an uncredited capacity, Wasserman had also previously composed the music and theme songs for shows such as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and X-Men: The Animated Series, and had already left the company in 1995 due to being overworked.^[16] Saban let Wasserman compose for Dragon Ball Z from his home in Los Angeles, and he was allowed more creative freedom, giving it a darker sound than previous shows he had worked on.^[18] He later claimed that Saban didn't care about the show, and that the only instructions they gave him was to make sure that it had continuous background music playing, presumably so they could earn maximum music royalties.^[19] He said "I got to do whatever I wanted, so I went with this really heavy, weird stuff", remembering that he would never receive any creative notes after sending the music to Saban.^[20][21]

The theme song "Main Title" (known by fans as "Rock the Dragon") was created by Saban before they hired Wasserman to do background music for the show,^[19][5] with the vocals performed by Jeremy Sweet, another composer who had previously worked on the Power Rangers franchise.^[10][18] "Rock the Dragon" and Wasserman's background music for the first season were included on an album titled Dragon Ball Z: Original USA Television Soundtrack, which was released on December 9, 1997.^[22] On this album and the credits of the dub, the music is credited to Saban founders Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahehi (an alias for Haim Saban), instead of Wasserman and Sweet, who are only listed as "music producers" in the credits of the dub; the actual extent of Levy or Saban's involvement remains unknown.^[10] This soundtrack would continue to be used for the second season of the syndicated dub, before being replaced in 1999 by Dallas-based composer Bruce Faulconer and his team of musicians in the third season, which was the first produced without Ocean or Saban Entertainment's involvement, and the first to air on Cartoon Network's Toonami block instead of syndication.^[14] Wasserman has stated that he was interested in composing for the third season and beyond, but received no response from Funimation when he reached out to them.^[18] Fukunaga said in 1999 that "we had to change the composer. We were not very pleased with the music for the first two seasons. We're much happier with this new composer, we just feel that the newer music is much better." He added, "we wanted to have more control over the music. Previously, we had almost no control. Saban wouldn't deliver the music on time, and we couldn't have it adjusted the way we wanted. Now, with it being done locally, we've been given a lot more control."^[14]