Started watching it about a week or so ago. To be honest, though I love DB/Z, you can really tell Akira had run out of ideas by the time he had to come up with Buu. Cell was a really nice finisher, it should have ended there in my books. Instead of doing Buu, they should have gone back and re-do all of Dragon Ball instead. It deserves it, way, way more.

Still though, totally amped to watch the unedited, screaming free, cut to perfection fight between Majinn Vegeta and Goku. That shit will be sweet

I haven't seen a single episode of Kai and I'm really itching to do so, now. I agree with your feelings on the fact that it should have ended with Cell. He was a fantastic villain, and though Buu had his good parts you can't beat the original "have to destroy every little part of him or he'll come back to bite you in the tail" villain.

But speaking of screaming fights, I've been meaning to go back to a few of the old, old movies. My personal favourite was the Broly: the Legendary Super Saiyan.

Man you have to watch Kai. It's so much better than Z. Watching Z is just painful now. (Apart from perhaps the garli jr saga, which was filler and thus didn't need as much of the whole drawn out screaming process)

Broly is pretty good, I always liked some of the earlier ones like the Tree of Might, Lord Slug, and The World's Strongest. Curse of the blood apples was pretty decent too. The newest movie, Battle of Gods, was fucking awesome. One of the best for sure, if you haven't seen it you really need to.

Oooh, shit, that reminds me. Never seen World's Strongest, either. Yet I call myself a fan, I know ... I know ... I should totally watch all the movies in order so I can get to this newest one. I literally don't know a thing about it.

And I barely remember the Garlic Jr bit ... Was one of those sagas I only ever saw once years and years ago. (The rest I obsessively watched and rewatched.)

That's definitely the final straw. We've been meaning to do it for ages, but I'm finally roping Jeremor in for an actual DBZ marathon. Movie, Kai, I don't care what, as long as there are dragon-ey balls in it. Hurrrr.

I'd suggest Kai. Kai is the fucking one. Nothing beats it, movie or otherwise.

We sooooort of had a Samurai 7 marathon instead. XD Kai tomorrow!

never seen that, I'm guessing it must have some merit if you'd marathon it

It's pretty great, in a nicely digestible sort of way both in content and length. Definitely gets a lot of bonus points if you're a fan of Akira Kurosawa. Seeing the different takes on the original Seven Samurai movie is really fun. I will say, it's one of those series that takes a little while to really hit it's stride. You can even see the art production values improve about 5 or 6 episodes in.

I'm definitely up for some Kai and I've been interested in the new movie for a while. I think the only DBZ movie I really remember at all is the Bardock special... and one other one, involving kid gohan and Goku battling some weird demon guy. All very fuzzy, though.

I don't rate a lot of the movies. A lot of them are quite formulaic and don't really provide much in terms of an engaging plotline. But the earlier ones were kinda set within the timeframe of Z, so they're almost canon, which makes them a lot better and easier to get into because you know where they're coming from (and what timeframe they're in) I thought the GT specials were some of the best actually, history of trunk, bardock, and the one about goku's ancestor waaaayyy into the future. In fact that one about goku's ancestor (who funnily enough looks the spitting image of goku) is probably the best one. It adds a character depth that a lot of others don't really have.

Wow, is that right? I'm sort of excited to get back into GT then, because it'll all be totally new to me. The only thing I remember is Gohan dressing up like a weird superhero guy. I rather like that aspect of DB, the sort of... lineage from Bardock to Goku to Gohan and so on, so that special about the ancestor sounds fun. I'll have to look that up sometime.

GT the series itself is nothing to shout about. It was the GT TV specials that were the only good thing about that run really. Akira did give the go ahead on GT, and I think he did supervise a lot of the animation and writing, but it's not really considered canon. (I think because there was no manga of it) A lot of people hated it pretty hard. Come to think of it though my memory of it is quite hazy, so I might try out a few episodes and see how I feel about it. It could be case of people hating it because it wasn't canon, not because it wasn't actually good.