GOKU

Goku is the primary hero of the Dragon Ball series. The series started out with Goku as a child of age 12. Once he grew up and his son was born, the TV series' name changed from Dragonball to Dragonball Z. At the end of the series, Goku was roughly 45 years old. Goku is a Saiyan (or it is spelt Saiyajin but we prefer Saiyan) whose native world is the planet Vegita. He was sent to Earth in a space capsule right after he was born so he could conquer the planet. However, he hit his head and lost his "programming," thus becoming the kinder, gentler Goku we see in the series. Goku was raised as a human on Earth by Gohan (not his son), and did not learn of his true nature until his brother Raditz came to Earth. He detests being a Saiyan and considers himself a human. Later, when Goku's rage was awakened by witnessing the death of his friend Krillan his Super Saiyan power was awakened. When he goes Super Saiyan his eyes turn green and his hair gold. Currently, Goku can go to the 3rd stage of Super Saiyan power.

GOHAN

Gohan is Goku's first son. At the end of the series he was 26 years old. For a short while after the second time Goku died in the series, Gohan became the primary character. Gohan is the most powerful non-fused character in the DBZ series, but lacks the love of fighting his father has and thus rarely uses his full strength. Gohan is a very good-natured boy and unlike his father, hates fighting, although for a while he was more powerful. He is truly one of the most poweful beings ever. He is very polite towards just about everyone except to his enemies. He has an extreme power sleeping inside of him that is awakened whenever something he loves is threatened. He is a force to be reckoned with whenever enraged. Everyone always underestimates him as a kid but he uses his sensitivity to his advantage. Gohan is very bright and studies very hard, although this is somewhat due to the wishes of his very strict mother, Chi Chi. Gohan is the first character in the series to go Super Saiyan level 2, during the Cell Game; the power of his anger was kindled by watching his friends get beaten up, and the death of Artificial Human #16 sent him over the edge. It was roughly at this time that the series switched main characters from Goku to Gohan.

PICCOLO

Piccolo is Goku's old rival. He was born after Goku killed his father when he was a kid (accidentally by turning into the monstrous ape in the full moon); in his last breath the old Piccolo spat out an egg, and the new Piccolo hatched. Sick huh. That is one of the things rumored to how Piccolo was made but the true reason how it happened was that Kame was trying to get rid of all the evil in his spirit. Unfortunately he did thusforth creating Piccolo. Piccolo then went on to fight Goku in the final round of the Tenkaichi-Budokai, which he subsequently lost by a very close margin. Piccolo is a native of the planet Nameck, although he doesn't learn this for quite some time after his first appearance. As a Nameck, he can regenerate almost any part of his body lost. (usually the arms) He can also extend the range of his arms till they're really long. Later, he goes to Nameck to help Krillan, Goku, Gohan, and Vegeta fight Freeza after the Tenkaichi-Budokai, Piccolo becomes more and more of a "good guy." Eventually he becomes Goku's friend. Once one of the most powerful characters in the series, he can be considered a "high class fighter," and strong among the Z fighters. Although he acts like he doesn't care about anyone it is very untrue. Gohan taught him how to have emotions. Piccolo always challenges Goku early in the series but they eventually become friends.

PRINCE VEGETA

Vegeta is the "bad guy among the good guys." He first made his appearance back when Gohan was 4. Although he fights alongside the other Z fighters, he is still decidedly evil. As the prince of the Saiyans, he is very proud, has a huge ego, and is constantly trying to prove that he is the best fighter in the universe. Vegeta has a continual rivalry with Goku, or "Kakarott," (Goku's Saiyan name) and is obsessed with beating him in combat just to show that he is the stronger. This obsession with trying to be stronger than Goku proves to be a fairly large weakness as well. Despites his efforts to show otherwise, Vegeta has changed and has developed a conscience, and deep down cares about his friends. Furthermore, he is also somewhat emotional at heart. He demonstrates this when dealing with his son, Trunks, most notably just before he died trying to kill Majin-Buu. Although he pretends to hate Goku with a passion in reality he respects his power and maybe even likes him a bit.

TRUNKS

Trunks is Vegeta's son. In his future, all of the Z fighters were killed by the Artificial Humans, except for Goku, who died of heart disease. Trunks travels 20 years back in time to give medicine to Goku so he can survive this disease and defeat the Artificial Humans. Trunks' returning in time alters the past in other ways which can be seen later. After giving the medicine to Goku, Trunks goes back to his own time, but returns again three years later to help the Z fighters battle the Artificial humans. During this time, he becomes extremely powerful and surpasses every other one of the Z fighters except for Gohan and (maybe) Goku. The Trunks here, "Future Trunks" and the "current Trunks" are radically different characters. "Future Trunks" is very polite like Gohan and has very strong values, but the current "Chibi Trunks" has a bad attitude and is somewhat like his father. Chibi Trunks never truly reaches the power level of his future counterpart; possibly because he lived through mostly peaceful times, whereas Future Trunks did not.

BULMA

She is the second character to appear in the series, and has been a major character in both DB and DBZ. She created the "Dragon Radar" which can sense the location of the Dragon Balls by the radiation they emit, and was the one who first started the search for the Dragon Balls. She is also Trunks' and Bra's mother. She is a major influence on almost all of the major characters and is most notably the only character who was able to "tame" Vegeta. Her father also built the space ship for Goku's trip to Nameck.

CHICHI

Chichi is Ox King's daughter, who also first appeared about the same time as he did. After the first time we see Ox King and Chichi they don't reappear for a long time (in the manga). The next time we see Chichi, she gets married to Goku. Therefore, she is also Gohan and Goten's mother. Her distinguishing trait is her temper; she gets mad alot. She is a very overprotective mother, which is probably justified in that her son is constantly drawn into fights against some of the toughest people in the universe. She wants Gohan to become an Astronaut or something like that which would be a true waste.

KRILLAN

Krillan is Goku's best friend, and has been around since the first series. He is a fighting monk who leaves his temple to find and train with Mutenroshi. He is kind of short, has no nose and throughout most of the series, has no hair either. Krillan trained with Goku under Mutenroshi and afterwards shared many adventures with him. Krillan has died more times than anyone else in the series. He is one of the weaker fighters, but this is partially due to his low self-confidence. Nevertheless, he has gotten fairly powerful due to all his fights with the really powerful enemies, and I think is the next strongest Z fighter after Piccolo. He becomes good friends with Gohan probably because they are almost the same height in the beginning. He is caring and will do almost anything for his friends.

GOTEN

Goten is Goku's second son, and a dead ringer for Goku when he was a little kid. At the end of the series, Goten was 17 and looked nothing like Goku though. Goten is very powerful for someone his age, although he is a little bit neive like his father. He can fuse with Trunks to become Gotenks, one of the most powerful characters in the series.

GOTENKS

Using the Fusion, Goten and Trunks can fuse into Gotenks. Gotenks is very powerful, second only to Gohan and Vegitto, and also is the only character other than Goku that can change to Super Saiyan level 3. However, he has a huge ego which gets him in trouble.

VEGITO and GOTENKS

When Goku and Vegita fuse using the fusion earings, they become Vegitto (Vegita+Kakarott=Vegitto), the most powerful character in DBZ. When Vegita and Goku fuse with the earrings of Kaioshen they become Vegetto and when they do manual fusion its called Gogeta. They are two different fusions. Like Gotenks, Vegitto has a huge ego.

RADITZ

Raditz is the first villain to appear. He is Goku's older brother, and traveled to Earth to see whether or not his brother Kakarott had conquered the planet. Upon learning of Goku's "reprogramming," Raditts demanded that Goku kill 100 Earthlings and show the bodies to him, or else he would kill Gohan, who was only 4 at the time. Goku and Piccolo chased after him, and after a battle, managed to kill him. However, Goku sacrificed himself by holding Raditz in place while Piccolo could attack, and was killed in the same blow the special beam cannon.

NAPPA

Nappa is a large, bald Saiyan who was Vegita's caretaker as a child, and came to Earth the same time he did. He is awesome especailly when he blew up the navy. He was the Military ruler of Vegita. The Saibaimen were seeds that Nappa brought with him to earth that could hatch into small fighting humanoids when planted in the ground. The Saibaimen killed Yamucha, but were then all the rest except for one were destroyed by Krillan. Piccolo picked up the last one However, Nappa then managed to kill Tenshinhan, Chaozu and Piccolo before Goku could come to help. He didn't really kill Chauzu though, because he bravely Kamikazee attacked him. Goku defeated Nappa, who was promptly killed by Vegeta for his failure. Which is very ironic considering Nappa raised him and all.

DODORIA and ZARBON

Zarbon and Dodoria are Freeza's two top henchman. Dodoria is a large, bloated alien with a spiky head, and Zarbon is an alien that looks like a human but has the ability to transform into a powerful reptilian-like creature. They had traveled to Nameck to assist Freeza in his search for the Dragon Balls. While chasing Gohan, Dodoria ran into Vegeta and was killed by him. Zarbon likewise ran into Vegeta in a search for a Dragon Ball, but when Vegeta attacked him Vegeta beat him up pretty bad. Then Zarbon transformed into his reptilian form and won. He then left after slamming him face first into the ground. It was pretty funny. However, at their second confrontation, Vegeta killed Zarbon.

THE GINYU FORCE

When Vegeta, Gohan, and Krillin started causing trouble on Nameck, Freeza called the Ginyu Force, a five-man elite fighting force. They are fairly famous throughout the galaxy and often show off in stupid battle formations. The members of the Ginyu Force are: Guldo, a small, four-eyed creature with the ability to stop time, Jees, a human-like being with long hair, Berter, a reptilian humanoid, Recoome, a very large humanoid who can take alot of crap, and the leader Ginyu, who has the power to change bodies with his target. Guldo and Jees were killed by Vegeta, Recoome and Berter were beaten by Goku, and Ginyu was effectively stopped when Goku threw a frog into his body-changing beam, thus turning him into a frog.

FRIEZA and COLD KING

Frieza is probably one of the three most important villains during all of the DBZ series; he was the major bad guy for nearly eight manga volumes and roughly 40 TV episodes, and the actual fight against Freeza was the longest, most drawn-out battle in the entire series. Freeza is an alien bent on controlling the entire universe, and wanted to make himself immortal using the Namek Dragon Balls. He is also the leader of a large fighting squadron. Freeza hates all Saiyans, especially Vegeta. Freeza has the ability to transform himself three times with each form more powerful than the last. After his final transformation, he killed Dende and Vegeta before Goku could come and fight him. Goku apparently killed him with a Genki-Dama (spirit bomb), but he survived and killed Krillan, upon which Goku went Super Saiyan for the first time. Again, Goku apparently killed Freeza, but he managed to survive to come back to Earth as a half-cyborg one year later. However, when Freeza came to Earth Trunks made his first appearance and finished him off for good.
Cold King is Frieza's father he is more powerful than Frieza but is still easily killed by Trunks. He is only seen for a brief time during the Trunks Saga.

CELL

Cell is Dr. Gero's "Ultimate Artificial Human." He is completely organic, made up of the cells of Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, and Freeza, all collected during their various battles on Earth by a spy robot. He has a long tail with which he can absorb humans and take their energy. If he absorbs #17 or #18, then he changes his shape and gets a huge power up. If he manages to absorb both, then he goes "Kanzentai," his perfect form. He manages to do this and becomes so powerful that none of the Z fighters can come even close. Cell is in many ways very similar to Goku, in that he lives to fight strong opponents. Hoping to have a fun battle, he holds the "Cell Game," a tournament like the Tenkaichi-Budokai. He says that if nobody can beat him in a one-on-one fight, he will destroy the Earth. Goku tries to beat Cell but could not, so he makes Gohan fight him instead. Gohan manages to kill Cell, but not before Cell kills Goku.

BUU

Buu is one of the three most important evil people in the DBZ series he has the ability to steal power making him stronger. I don,t really know much about him except he is pretty cool.

CYBORG 17

Juunanagou is the most powerful Cyborg to appear in the series. He is notably evil is the Future Trunks Timeline. He and his twin, Juuhachigou, destroyed more than half the population of Chikyuu. In the normal timeline, however, he was brought to life after the major purge of the western capital. His master, Dr. Gero brought him to life to stop the Z warriors that were approaching his lair. Juuhachigou was also brought to life. Juunanagou detested Gero enough to kill him as the Z warriors figure out how to open the mechanical door between the secret lair. Juunanagou is the most serious about fighting, and has the most pride about his techniques. His first purpose was to kill Gokou, he never succeed in his mission, and also ended up helping Gokou, by giving up energy to complete the spirit bomb that killed buu. He was the first cyborg to be absorbed by Cell, simply becuase he didn't run when he should have. He later appears in GT when Dr. Gero reappears with his accomplice Dr. Myuu. With them they bring Hellfighter Juunanagou, to fuse with 'old' Juunanagou. When they fused they turned into Super Juunanagou, who tried to kill Gokou, but didn't succeed.