Hey, it's a pretty big day for Dragon Ball! First the Fortnite and Dragon Ball crossover is confirmed, and now Dragon Ball Z is available on Crunchyroll! Ever since the Funimation and Crunchyroll merger fans have been waiting for Dragon Ball Z to arrive on Crunchyroll and that day is finally here! Fitting since the new movie launches in North America any day now!
But wait, you're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Dragon Ball Z was already on Crunchyroll, right? Well, yes. The English Dub was available on the streaming service, and unless I'm mistaken it has been for a while. The same day they transferred most of the Funmiation library over. This is different, though!
They added a new version, well... old version of Dragon ball Z sometime on Wednesday. The subbed version of Dragon Ball Z was added to the service, and these aren't just your average subs, no sir. The footage used for these releases is the mythical Dragon Box footage, widely considered to be the best DBZ release of all time. The only drawback is not every episode is using the Dragon Box footage. About 250 episodes use the Dragon Box footage after that the show switches.
Here's what Crunchyroll had to say in a statement.
"In addition to the dubbed version of Dragon Ball Z that was previously made available, fans can now watch all of the classic anime-adapting the action-packed manga by Akira Toriyama-in its original Japanese thanks to the launch of the subtitled version."
What makes the Dragon Box footage so special? It was painstakingly remastered, but in the good way... not the orange bricks way. In addition to having the best quality of any DBZ release, leaving all the little details intact, it also streams in its original aspect ration. Having just checked the footage for myself, I can confirm it's freaking awesome.
I will say it's strange that the final handful of episodes are missing like this, but I'm assuming they'll show up at some point. At least, I hope so, otherwise it will definitely be a bummer. Many fans have never gotten to see the series like this, so I'm actually really impressed with Crunchyroll for releasing them like this.
Check out Dragon Ball Z on Crunchyroll right now! The Dragon Box quality is worth it!
