The final volume of original Dragon Ball, and it's just as fun as all the other volumes. Here we get the final confrontation between Goku and Piccolo. It's fun to see Piccolo as an evil character - he's much different than his character in Z and despite being a big fan of Z I really didn't know his backstory.

The fight scenes are excellent as always and the art is nice and clean. This volume is almost entirely fighting with almost none of the comedy that featured more heavily in the early volumes. Dragon Ball clearly evolved over time, from a funny gag manga to this shonen manga that solidified in Z.

I'm glad I decided to go back and read Dragon Ball. I've been a fan of Z forever, and was really doing myself a disservice by not reading the original series. Sure, it's not required reading for Z, but it's a quality manga and well worth reading on its own. I definitely see why there's a large section of the fanbase that prefers DB over Z.