Every Episode You Can Skip

While retaining the absolute spirit of its creator Akira Toriyama’s humor and style, Dragon Ball’s original anime never quite reached the hype levels of its numerous successors. Regardless, it’s a wonderfully charming anime focused on gags and adventure, with its Journey to the West inspiration readily apparent from the offset. But for those looking to experience Dragon Ball purely for its adventures as based on the manga, it’s important to know when filler factors in.

Dragon Ball had filler episodes much like the rest of the industry’s popular anime, a trend that’d continue even as the most stubborn long-standing pillers finally moved away in 2026. Intended to give the animators breathing room to work on manga-canon adaptations while also providing something new and fun for the viewers on a given week, Dragon Ball’s filler stories are skippable. But with only 21 of its 153 episodes being filler, a mere 14% of its run, it’s a fairly impressive, concise run with few detours for the discerning fans, much like for Dragon Ball Z’s filler content.

Every Filler Episode of Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball Filler Episodes That Are Worth Watching

Though filler has developed a poor reputation, not all of it is bad, and Dragon Ball in particular has a few standout examples that actually enhance the story or at the very least offer a fun adventure. Toriyama helped craft some of Dragon Ball’s filler, and it shows in the result. Episode 81, Goku Goes to Demon Land is the latter and Goku battles a few demons and saves a princess. It’s a simple story, but is well done and really helps to sell the series’ adventurous tone.

Another solid filler episode is episode 129, The Time Room. The episode features Goku traveling back in time to meet and train with a young Master Roshi. Roshi is an important character who often doesn’t get too many moments to shine, so having an episode dedicated to fleshing out his rivalry with Master Shen is a treat for fans.

Related

“Enjoy It Like A Toriyama Manga”: Dragon Ball Super’s Artist Gives The Best Possible Praise To An Underrated Manga

In a heartfelt tribute to his sensei, Dragon Ball’s Toyotarou gives special commendation to a little-known manga that Toriyama helped launch.

If there’s one filler episode every fan of Dragon Ball should watch though, it’s episode 130, Goku’s Doll. The episode is all about Goku facing an exact duplicate of himself. Goku is far from an introspective character, but this battle against himself sees him having to think about his weaknesses and limitations so that he can exploit them in the doll. It’s a great episode that fleshes out Goku and provides a great battle.

Which Dragon Ball Filler Episodes Should Fans Skip?

Dragon Ball’s filler is mostly solid and is inoffensive at worst, though that doesn’t mean every non-canon episode is a winner. If there’s one set of episode that most fans can agree on as being a waste of time, it’s the arc of Dragon Ball episodes from 149 to 152 that begins with Dress in Flames. The arc centers around the Ox King’s castle catching on fire as Goku and Chi-Chi attempt to find a special fan to put out the flames so they can rescue Ox King and get a wedding dress for Chi-Chi.

The arc definitely has potential that saves it from being terrible. Goku and Chi-Chi’s relationship is one aspect of Dragon Ball that very rarely gets the spotlight, so having an entire arc dedicated to them preparing for their wedding could have been great. Unfortunately, the result is largely unrewarding and doesn’t do much to endear fans to Chi-Chi. The arc is far from bad, but it isn’t exactly the series’ most compelling story.

How Does Dragon Ball’s Filler Compares to Other Anime Series

In terms of filler, Dragon Ball fairs pretty with only 14% of the series comprised of filler. This means that the original Dragon Ball has a slightly higher percentage of filler than both Dragon Ball Z, which sits at 13% filler, and Dragon Ball Super, which has only 11% filler. Unfortunately, all Dragon Ball anime lose out to One Piece as that series is only comprised of 9% filler. On the other side though, Dragon Ball is much better than series like Bleach and Naruto, which have 45% and 41% filler respectively.

With how studios like Pierrot have handled anime filler in the past, it’s generally impressive that Toei animation managed to only need 21 episodes of filler for the entirety of Dragon Ball’s run. Given this, it’s easy to see why Dragon Ball is very rarely in the conversation when it comes to the most abundant or worst filler.

Release Date

1986 – 1989

Network

Fuji TV

Directors

Osamu Kasai, Daisuke Nishio, Kazuhisa Takenouchi, Minoru Okazaki, Mitsuo Hashimoto, Yoshihiro Ueda, Yutaka Satoh, Yûji Endô

Writers

Akira Toriyama, Keiji Terui, Toshiki Inoue, Takao Koyama, Michiru Shimada, Yasushi Hirano, Katsuyuki Sumisawa, Yuichiro Oguro, Miho Maruo, Shunichi Yukimuro

• 

  Masako Nozawa

  Son Goku (voice)

• 

  Mayumi Tanaka

  Krillin (voice)