Dragon Ball Z was brought to America by a company called Funimation. They were able to put it on Cartoon Network and that took anime from mostly import VHS and DVD sales to a mainstream audience of young adults who still like cartoons, but are looking for a more mature story. Dragon Ball Z fit the mold perfectly with lots of action, great fight scenes, and a series of world at stake plots that made for a very engaging show.
Over the years the Dragon Ball Z series, which was actually the second series of the Dragon Ball saga, released the entire series on DVD as well as released many movies that fit to varying degrees into the DBZ storyline.
Dragon Ball Z Season 1 – Vegeta Saga
Season one of Dragon Ball Z focused on Goku (the hero) and his fight to stop the Saiyans’ attempt to destroy the world. Goku and his friends fight a Saiyan named Raditz and defeat him, only to find that two other Saiyans that were much more powerful were also coming to destroy Earth. In season one we meet most of the main characters that last the rest of the series: Goku, Piccolo, Gohan, Vegetta, Krillin and the rest of the gang.
The whole first season is available on a 6 disc DVD set for under $30 on Buy.com. It’s a pretty great deal actually. You can also rent the entire first season of DBZ on Netflix for less than $10 a month.
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Who and what is Vash the Stampede? Most know him as “The Humanoid Typhoon”. To bounty hunters, he’s an outlaw with 60,000,000,000 Double Dollars on his head. To insurance adjusters Meryl Stryfe and Millie Thompson, he’s a walking disaster area who’s cost the company a fortune. To anime fans, he’s a true hero.
Based on Yasuhiro Nightow’s manga series, this sometimes dramatic, sometimes comedic adventure takes place in the distant future on a desert planet that looks like the American Old West. Vash the Stampede wanders from town to town. Meryl and Millie follow him, trying to minimize the destruction, but Vash’s only real friend is the gun-toting preacher Nicholas D. Wolfwood.
The Trigun series is an absolute classic of anime cinema. It has everything you could like in an anime series. It has gunfights, action, philosophy, comedy, great design, and some of the most awesome music of any anime series I’ve seen. It’s top notch all the way round.
The complete boxed set of Trigun on DVD retailed for $130-150 when it was still in stores. It contained all 26 episodes of the TV series on 8 DVD’s. It didn’t really contain any extras, but I’m not sure what extras were needed. The series is phenomenal.
You can still buy the series on DVD a handful of places. First, you can buy it on Amazon for around $170 shipped new or about $140 used. You can usually find it a bit cheaper on eBay, but prices and quality can vary wildly. Either way you buy it, Trigun is a fantastic anime series that should be watched and enjoyed by all true Anime fans.
The cheapest way to get the whole Trigun series is to rent it from Netflix. The $140-170 you would spend on Amazon to buy Trigun could get you like 10 months of dvd rental on Netflix. Seriously, if you are thinking about rocking some Trigun, you really should consider signing up for Netflix if you haven’t already. If you’re into watching anime and lots of it, Netflix pays for itself.
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