The sound is fine. If you're watching the show in English FUNimation has given the show a brand new 5.1 surround sound mix, which sounds excellent on a surround sound system. If you're like me though, and prefer to watch the show in it's original Japanese language track, you'll find the same mono track that was presented on all the other single disk releases of the show. With (what surely sounds like) a fatal flaw when it comes to the viewing of the show, many of you may be wondering why you'd want to bother with the show at all. Well, two things: Picture and price. Yes, the display of the show may be the biggest problem for this show, but the restoration is also one of the brightest things about the DVD. While not perfect, "Dragon Ball Z" has never looked this good before on DVD. The colors are mostly perfect, and the tone is very consistent, with only some grain to be found in certain spots. Regardless what you think of the widescreen presentation, the look of the picture is excellent.

Then there's the fact that this DVD set retails for $50 and contains the first 39 episodes. I remember spending $20 on a "Dragon Ball Z" DVD with three episodes on it. If you bought the single disk releases on sale for $16 each (and this is being generous, as most single disk "Dragon Ball Z" DVD's will cost you $20 easily), then you'd spend around $250 by the time you got up to episode 39. Considering you can get "Dragon Ball Z: Season One" on sale for $30-$35 at most places, this is the cheapest "Dragon Ball Z" has ever been on DVD. At this rate, $250 will get you the whole show. All 291 episodes for what you would originally pay for the privilege to own 39 episodes. Despite the issues with the widescreen, it's hard to argue when the savings are that huge. Whether or not the widescreen issue is enough to scare you away from this DVD is entirely up to you.

Re-watching the show again after I hadn't seen it for several years has made me see it in an entirely different light. It no longer seems to be the greatest action show I remember it to be. Some of the fights are rather silly looking, there are stretches of time that contain way too much filler, and several episodes early on in the show seem to wasting time while they are waiting for the story to come around. That said, when the show is good it's very good. Character development in these early episodes is excellent, there are many heartbreaking moments, and to actually go back to when Goku wasn't a Super Saiyan is a revelation as it shows me that it was more interesting to see these characters grow stronger then it was to watch them...well, BE stronger! It's not a perfect show, but a good portion of the episodes on this set do hold up quite well, and there's a reason we'll still be watching "Dragon Ball Z" several years from now. . For now though, I think I can live with these sets. On that note though, why is Vegeta on the cover for Season One while Goku gets banished to being on the cover of Season Two?