Dragon Ball Z, based on Akira Toriyama’s best-selling manga series, is arguably the most iconic anime series in the world and the gateway for many into the anime medium. The long-running series is divided into four distinct storylines, more popularly known as sagas.
Each anchored by a memorable antagonist, DBZ’s sagas revolve around escalating conflicts and major power boosts for protagonist Goku and his friends. And while home video releases have divided sagas into smaller, more digestible storylines, DBZ really does unfold like a massive, four-act story. Here are all four Dragon Ball Z sagas, ranked from worst to best.
4) Majin Buu Saga
The Majin Buu Saga closes out Dragon Ball Z, taking place seven years after the Cell Games, with Gohan now an adult and helping raise his younger brother Goten after Goku’s death. While Goku visits Earth from the afterlife, the evil wizard Babidi revives the monstrous Majin Buu, who quickly grows out of control and threatens to eradicate all life in the universe. With the situation rapidly growing more dire, Goku and the Z-Fighter unveil new techniques and transformations as they take on Majin Buu for the fate of the universe.
The Majin Buu goes on far longer than it should, and there’s a recurring sense that the story was being figured out as the storyline went along rather than having a clear path in mind from the start. Concepts like fusion and Super Saiyan 3, though franchise staples now, feel tacked on as the storyline progresses. There are some truly awesome moments in the Majin Buu Saga, including Goku and Majin Vegeta’s battle and the last stand on the Supreme Kai’s planet, but it is the weakest saga of the four by a considerable margin.
3) Saiyan Saga
Dragon Ball Z kicked things off with the Saiyan Saga, quickly subverting expectations by killing off Goku within a handful of episodes at the start of the series after revealing he was part of an extraterrestrial race of conquerors known as Saiyans. The surviving Z-Fighters began training for the arrival of the Saiyans on Earth while Goku trained in the afterlife, hoping to grow strong enough before his eventual resurrection through the Dragon Balls to withstand the Saiyans’ immense power. This sets up the recurring DBZ trope of Goku being absent just long enough to arrive at a pivotal battle in the nick of time to save the day, a trend that would continue throughout the series.
The problem with the Saiyan Saga is that, after a shocking start with its major plot twists, the subsequent episodes before the arrival of Vegeta and Nappa drag considerably. Additionally, Gohan is annoying and whiny for a significant portion of the saga as he trains under Piccolo and learns how to take care of himself, becoming the de facto protagonist for much of the story arc. The climactic battle between Goku and Vegeta became a defining one for the entire series and arguably the franchise as a whole, but it takes a long time to get there.
2) Frieza Saga
The Frieza Saga is really where Dragon Ball Z finds its voice and largely revolves around the main characters hiding and on the run as they are up against a number of enemies who were initially significantly more powerful than them. It presented an interesting side to Vegeta, not yet the hero he would become, who was forced to use his cunning and subterfuge to isolate and defeat his enemies. This distinction carried over to the storyline’s climactic fight between Goku and Frieza, with an outmatched Goku resorting to different strategies just to stay alive in the prolonged battle.
The Frieza Saga is a genuinely thrilling, relatively well-paced story arc, even before Goku finally arrives on Namek at the eleventh hour, as per usual. The seeds for Vegeta’s redemption, an increasingly confident Gohan, and, of course, Goku’s ascension into a Super Saiyan elevate the storyline to stratospheric heights. And even though the fight against Frieza goes on much longer than it should, it does give all the Z-Fighters present something to do, with even Krillin getting in a solid shot in rather than being relegated to a punchline.
1) Cell Saga
On a superficial level, the Cell Saga is just Dragon Ball Z riffing on The Terminator, with alternate future freedom fighter Trunks returning to the relative present to prevent killer androids from overwhelming humanity. Of course, the Cell Saga goes much deeper than that, providing its own memorable villains and pushing many of the Z-Fighters to their limits, particularly against the genetically engineered nightmare Cell. This culminates in the Cell Games, a high-stakes martial arts tournament for the fate of Earth as Cell challenges the Z-Fighters to an epic showdown.
One of the cool things about the Cell Saga is that, at multiple points of the storyline, Goku isn’t the strongest hero in it, with Piccolo, Vegeta, and Trunks surpassing him at different points. This sets up Gohan to ascend beyond his father and step up as the story arc’s true hero and the one to finally destroy Cell. With the most emotional moments in the entire series and some of the franchise’s best fights, the Cell Saga sets a high bar that Dragon Ball has been chasing ever since.
