I grew up watching Dragon Ball Z, but I've only dabbled in the prequel series. With Akira Toriyama's unfortunate passing, I decided to visit the original manga, since it's quicker than watching the show and I've heard it's better.

Dragon Ball definitely has a different tone than Z. The original is a more whimsical story, full of adventure and innocence - it follows Goku as a young boy, and the first few chapters of the manga give interesting backstory to characters who end up being prominent in Z. It's a fun, light-hearted adventure story with a much heavier emphasis on comedy than the sequel series. It's also really, really, raunchy. Z's anime had it's comic relief sex joke gags, but this first volume spent a huge amount of time making jokes and panty-related gags. It's juvenile, silly, stuff, and something that was more acceptable back when this was written. I'm not going to criticize 1980's Japanese comics through the lens of 2020's America - and the writing clearly struck some sort of nerve both and Japan and stateside because Dragon Ball remains one of the most popular manga.

For as famous as DB is, the manga is relatively short, only 16 volumes, and it's easy to blow through a volume in just a few hours. I wouldn't say I'm hooked just yet - I find myself wanting to encounter characters that won't show up till Z - but as a person who doesn't normally read manga I'm willing to stick with it.