Dragon Ball-Z With the ending of Dragon Ball, Toei Animation quickly released a second anime television series, Dragon Ball Z ,, DBZ). Picking up where the first left off, Dragon Ball Z is adapted from the final twenty-six volumes of the manga series. It premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on April 26, 1989, taking over its predecessor's time slot, and ran for 291 episodes until its conclusion on January 31, 1996.[7] Following the cancelled dub of Dragon Ball, Funimation Productions licensed Dragon Ball Z for an English language release in North America. They contracted Ocean Studios to handle the dubbing, Saban Entertainment to handle television distribution, and Geneon Entertainment to handle home video distribution. Ocean's dub of Dragon Ball Z was heavily edited for content, as well as length, reducing the first 67 episodes into 53.[28] The series premiered in the United States in September 1996 on The WB Television Network and aired there until May 1998 before being cancelled, once again due to low ratings. Three months later, the Ocean dubbed episodes began airing on Cartoon Network as part of the channel's new Toonami programming block, where the series received much more popularity. Soon after, Funimation continued dubbing the series from where the cancelled dub left off, now using their own in-house voice cast, a new musical score, and less editing.[29] The new dub of Dragon Ball Z aired on Cartoon Network from September 1999 to April 2003 Last Updated: 20 May 2011