Anime: Subbed or Dubbed?

Remember Doogal? There are two versions of the film. The US version was rewritten and redubbed. They are different movies using the same animation. This is pretty much true of Dragon Ball Z. There is almost nothing the same as far as the script and what the characters say. The classic "Over 9000!" meme is false, as it was really over 8,000. Some may say that the dialogue cannot be exactly the same because of the matching of lip flaps, but the dubbing of DBZ went so far as to change the nature of characters. Yamucha went from standing up Bulma because he was ashamed of not having money from lack of a job, to cheating on her with another woman. Entire characters that continued from Dragon Ball were removed, characters that had major significance.

While the animation is the same, so the events will roughly be the same, everything about the show is different in the original version. Characters, and sections of episodes have been removed and episodes bloated with looped footage and endless power-ups. The entire context of the show is changed by artificially changing the focus from one character to another.

As far as the beginning of the Namek Saga, the show is largely about Gohan. Goku trained under Kaio in the Next World, but even the fight with Vegeta was ended by Gohan. The fight against the Saiyans was not even about waiting for Goku to show up; it was about Gohan's character development in gaining the courage to stand up to them.

A lot of the episode names are changed, mostly to remove any reference to Gohan. The episode names are essentially what the episodes are about. The US version tried to make the series about Goku, but that is not even the case. It would be like watching Lord of the Rings in another language, rewritten to make the entire trilogy about Gandalf because he's the "most powerful." Everyone who watched it in English would know it was about Frodo (general analogy).

It has been about 15 years since I first saw DBZ on Toonami, so my memory may not be as accurate of the time spent on power-ups, yelling, and the like. I remember a lot of time spent on Goku running the Serpent Trail, but in the original, there is only two episodes about Goku having difficulty. Any other mention are short clips of him running, typically at the end, and only showing him running for 10-15 seconds.

There is a lot of division online about watching dubbed vs. subbed anime, but when the entire context of a series is changed because of edits in episodes, the script, and the characters, it is not the same show. I started watching anime dubbed, but once I was able to watch the original, I never looked back. From episode 1, I watched Naruto in its original form. I can't imagine what they have done to that show.