Dragon ball bow with the highest stakes

Key foods

• The Dragon Ball franchise evolved from light adventures to darker stories with intense battles as Goku aged.
• The Future Trunks saga featured a powerful psychic and doomed realities, leaving the heroes on the losing end.
• Epic Universe Survival raised the stakes in an epic tournament where losing meant wiping their universe out of existence.

Dragon ball It begins with Goku joining Bulma to find the Dragon Balls as a fun adventure to get a boyfriend. While its main premise is style, D Ragon ball It got a little more complicated with fights, deaths, and revelations that made the franchise even more intense as Goku got bigger and bigger.

Throughout the series, though, there were dragon balls and other elements that played down the dangers as constant back-ups in case of trouble. However, the franchise still managed to advance in certain arcs by introducing new villains, epic battles, and the occasional obsolescence of dragon balls.

8 The saga of Future Trunks

A powerful psychiatrist who destroys reality

• Super dragon ball
• Episodes: 47-76

As one of the dark conspiracies in Super dragon ballThe Future Trunks Arc has one of the best villains that introduces Zamasu's psychotic tendencies. Although initially an excellent candidate for Supreme Kai, Zamasu's hatred of mortals quickly turns into his desire for destruction, which is doomed by reality to the future demise of the real Trunks.

Not only does it show the destructiveness of other realities, but Zamasu's fused power is immense as the Z-Fighters are repeatedly defeated in battle. While the enemy is ultimately defeated, this arc never had the heroes at the helm, leaving the audience with the reality of doomed timelines.

7 Android epic

A dire future raises the stakes

• Dragon Wing Z
• Parts: 119-139

While Cell's saga was a bigger threat to the world, the Android arc raised all the stakes in both storylines, starting with Future Trunks talking about the dark future he's coming from. By showing a future without Goku and where most of the Z-fighters have been killed, the audience quickly learns what is at stake if the heroes fail.

With the help of the future Trunk, the heroes are able to fight off many Android threats, but not before a few setbacks, especially as more information is discovered about the horrific events in Trunk's reality and its high death toll.

6 cellular arch

Hope and darkness make a strong ending

• Dragon Wing Z
• Episodes: 140-194

Cell Saga is full of excitement and mixes good moments with evil menace. The saga has one of the best arc endings in all of anime series, with a long and epic battle that determines the future of Earth. While the competitive nature of that time lightens Cell's threat, the villain constantly reminds the audience of his abilities.

The stakes in this saga are constantly shifting, leaving fans feeling hopeful as new villain abilities are revealed and then discovered. However, the ending is where things look really dark, as most of the Z fighters are incapacitated, Goku is dead, and Cell is once again rebuilt, relying on an injured teenage Gohan to finish the fight.

5 Majin Buu Arc

An inconsistent saga with heroes who are constantly incapacitated

• Dragon Wing Z
• Parts: 220-227

As one of the most polarizing arcs in anime, the quality of the Buu Arc may not always be the highest, but it definitely keeps the stakes high. Including frustrating moments, as Majin Buu is like an invincible enemy and as many characters have died or been incapacitated at one point or another.

In the Majin Buu saga, the Angels and Gods of Destruction had yet to be introduced, meaning the villain felt like the greatest threat imaginable to the world, and Goku needed everyone's help to defeat the enemy in the end.

4 Epic survival in the world

The best in an epic match full of threats

• Super dragon ball
• Episodes: 77-131

In terms of actual threat, the Power Races have the highest scope, as losing it would mean their world wiped out. However, with so many powerful fighters on a team, combined with tournament settings, it makes it easier to ignore high-profile threats.

With an entire world in the game, the battles show just how devastating a loss would be, resulting in incredible moments that make this epic so watchable. In particular, each enemy in the tournament poses a different threat, but none are as big as Jiren, who is so powerful that they unite Goku and Frieza at the end.

3 Frieza's arc

An epic full of stressful moments, intense battles and a terrifying villain

• Dragon Wing Z
• Episodes: 39 – 107

The Frieza saga is full of great fights, high stakes and memorable scenes, with some of the franchise's most iconic moments. It's one of the few arcs that feels like there's an ever-present threat, which makes the plot an incredibly terrifying saga.

With dragon ball hunting, a powerful tyrant, and hordes of Lockleys, this entire saga is full of tense moments. The stakes are so high that Goku must unlock an all-new transformation to defeat the evil antagonist who seeks to dominate the entire universe.

2 The Saga of King Piccolo

Unprecedented evil brings great deaths

• Dragon ball
• Episodes: 102-122

While Dragon ball The world was much smaller in the first anime, King Piccolo's arc was able to raise the stakes without having to threaten every creature. At that point, King Piccolo was introduced as the biggest threat, responsible for killing off several of the main characters for the first time.

Additionally, with Shenron's death, the Dragon Balls became obsolete, making the number of deaths and each encounter more intense. As one of the best sagas of the entire franchise, the saga of King Piccolo was a turning point in the series, and for the first time, it had a dark, evil and invincible threat, making most of the events unprecedented.

1 Saiyan arc

A set of high stakes for all of Dragon Ball Z

• Dragon Wing Z
• Episodes: 1-35

After the end Dragon ball, Dragon Wing Z It made sure to keep the stakes low, with the first arc revealing that Goku is part of a warrior race that is apparently much stronger than him. The Saiyans actually turned out not to be the biggest threat that Goku and the Z-Fighters had to face, but they still managed to deal a lot of damage and raise the stakes to unprecedented levels.

The saga was responsible for killing Goku for the first time to defeat his brother Raditz, one of the weakest Saiyan warriors in the franchise, showing that the protagonist was not invincible. Additionally, the eventual deaths of Piccolo and Kami meant that the Dragon Balls could not be used to help, leaving the Z-Fighters in the desperate position of having fewer safety nets than in later sagas.