In May 1998, the broadcast was canceled and Funimation stopped production of the dubbed episodes. The dubbed episodes premiered in the United States on WB in September 1996. For Dragon Ball Z, Ocean Group was contracted to produce an English dub track. Following its licensing of Dragon Ball, Funimation Entertainment licensed Dragon Ball Z for an English language release in North America. It premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on April 26, 1989, taking over its predecessor's time slot, and ran for 290 episodes until its conclusion on January 31, 1996. Picking up where the first left off, Dragon Ball Z is adapted from the final twenty-six volumes of the manga series. Dragon Ball Z With the ending of Dragon Ball, Toei Animation quickly released a sequel series, Dragon Ball Z (ドラゴンボールZ(ぜっと), Doragon Bōru Zetto, commonly abbreviated DBZ). It used different episode titles and voice actors versus the Funimation version. In 2003, a new dub, produced by Blue Water Studios, was created and began to air in the United Kingdom and Canada. The Emperor Pilaf Saga, however, has not been released to DVD, due to it still being licensed for distribution by Harmony Gold. Each box set, spanning an entire saga of the series, included the English dub track and the original Japanese audio track with optional English subtitles. Funimation began releasing the uncut episodes to Region 1 DVD box sets in March 18, 2003.
Funimation also broadcast the series on Colours TV and their own Funimation Channel starting in 2006. The redubbed episodes began airing on Cartoon Network (United States) on August 20, 2001. In March 2001, Funimation announced the return of Dragon Ball to American television, featuring a new English audio track produced in house and less editing. Twenty-six episodes aired in syndication before Funimation canceled it due to low ratings, switching to the sequel anime series Dragon Ball Z. Funimation initially had BLT Productions create the English voice track for the series and the series was edited for content.
In 1995, Funimation Entertainment acquired the full license for the series for both broadcast and distribution in North America. This dub version was ill-received and was quickly canceled. In the their voice dub of the series, Harmony renamed almost all of the characters, with some names appearing very odd, such as the central character Son Goku being renamed to "Zero" and the character Karin's name changed to "Whiskers the Wonder Cat". Harmony Gold USA licensed the series for an English language release in North America in the late 80s. Spanning 153 episodes, it covers the first 16 volumes of the 42 volume manga series.
The first, named simply Dragon Ball, premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on Februand ran until April 12, 1989. With the high popularity of the Dragon Ball manga, three lengthy anime television series were produced by Toei Animation to adapt the manga chapters.