Dragon Ball is the first in a trio anime adaptations of the highly popular
Dragon Ball manga series by Akira Toriyama. Produced by Toei Animation, the anime series premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on February 26, 1986 and ran until April 12, 1989. Spanning 153 episodes, it covers the first 16 volumes of the 42 volume manga series. It is followed by
Dragon Ball Z, which covers the remaining manga volumes, and
Dragon Ball GT, the plot of which was created solely for the anime.
Harmony Gold USA licensed the series for an English language release in North America in the late 80s. In the their voice dub of the series, Harmony renamed almost all of the characters, with some names appearing very odd, such as the central character Son Goku being renamed to "Zero" and the character Korin's name changed to "Whiskers the Wonder Cat". This dub version was ill-received and was quickly canceled.[
citation needed]
In 1995, Funimation Entertainment acquired the full license for the series for both broadcast and distribution in North America. Funimation initially had BLT Productions create the English voice track for the series and the series was edited for content. Thirteen episodes aired in syndication before Funimation canceled the project due to low ratings, switching to the sequel anime series
Dragon Ball Z, which was more action oriented.[
citation needed] In March 2001, Funimation announced the return of
Dragon Ball to American television, featuring a new English audio track produced in house and less editing. The redubbed episodes ran on Cartoon Network from August 2001 to December 2003. Funimation also broadcast the series on Colours TV and their own Funimation Channel starting in 2006. Funimation began releasing the uncut episodes to Region 1 DVD box sets in March 18, 2003. Ech box set, spanning an entire saga of the series, included the English dub track and the original Japanese audio track with optional English subtitles. The Emperor Pilaf Saga, however, has not been released to DVD, due it still being licensed for distribution by Lionsgate.
Dragon Ball uses two pieces of theme music for the entire series. '"Makafushigi Adventure!" by Hiroki Takahashi is used for the series opening theme and Ushio Hashimoto's "Romantic Ageru Yo" is used for the ending theme.
Source:
Wikipedia 
