@Chopperrules:
Okay guys, I'll take your advice and not worry about the movies for now. It'll take some time to watch just Dragonball, not even counting Kai.
Now, you guys mentioned that the Dragonball dub is bad. Who dubbed it? FUNi? Should I watch it in Japanese? Because I was going to watch Kai in the dub to start off since I heard it is good.
It's confusing, I know. FUNi's had the entire franchise since 1995 and has only now done an actual proper dub that resembles the original the closest, which is Kai.
DB, DBZ and DBGT are also confusingly dubbed in different ways, mostly due to how…inconsistent they are. For example, Dragon Ball was the only one of the three that used the original background music until they released their season sets of DBZ and DBGT. Not only this, but the music used for Z and GT are vastly different in the dubs. Granted, Z and GT were also scored by two different people in Japan, but they still retained the tones that worked with the series'.
In Z, you'll notice a lot of electric guitar and keyboard used, with plenty of synthesized tones. There's rarely a lack of silence, as well. The dub seemed to have a thing for giving everyone and everything a theme, rather than setting a mood that fit the scenes properly. The music in this dub has pretty much set off wars of all kinds. It's a love it or hate it kinda thing.
In GT, it sounds more like it's trying to appeal to the rap and hip-hop genre. Down to them changing what were aerobics dance instructors in the original into beat-boxing rappers in the dub. The music here is pretty much universally hated.
The scripts for the episodes are also radically different. DB was really the closest to a proper translation of one of the series' prior to Kai, as it seemed to try to tell the story while throwing in their own changes every now and then. Meanwhile, DBZ has had so many radical changes to even tiny pieces of detail that it's also lead to confusion due to canon material established in the original.
For example, you'll learn of certain people who will appear later on in the series. The Japanese term used for them is Jinzouningen, or Artificial Human, as it translates to. Right after the first mention of this word is used in the original, it is then stated that the beings in reference are Cyborgs. This means they're humans with machine parts within them (in their case, nanomachines flowing through their bloodstream to give them an endless supply of energy).
The dub, however, forgoes all of this and simply refers to them as Androids. This implies that they're machines made to look human. For an entire saga, we end up hearing all sorts of "jokes and cracks" at them to being toasters, buckets of bolts and so on. This also contradicts certain events that occur a saga later that calls them into question regarding their bodies.
DBZ's dub was also filled with a lot of dialogue changes that affected character personalities, which also affected the moods for certain scenes. At times, serious moods were killed due to someone trying to crack a joke or something.
GT had some of the same problems as Z, in terms of script changes in dialogue and material details.