Dragon Ball Z was an animation series produced by Toei Animation. Based on the Dragon Ball manga series written by Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball Z corresponds to volumes 17 to 42 of the manga that was published in the magazine, Weekly Shonen Jump, from 1988 to 1995, and premiered in Japan on Fuji TV on April 26, 1989, and ended on January 31, 1996 with a total of 291 episodes, before being dubbed in various territories around the globe, including the United States, Australia, Europe, India and Latin America. The series has aired in over 80 countries around the world.
The success of the Dragon Ball series led to the creation of the sequel, Dragon Ball Z, being one of the best known animes of all time. This series appears filled with long combats with lots of action. In Dragon Ball Z, the stories have a more serious atmosphere than those of its predecessor. They replaced comedy, but humor still exists in many parts of the series. It has several episodes in which the suspense is intertwined with events that at first do not seem to have great relevance, or with facts unnoticed and revealed in greater detail at the height of such an event.