DRAGON Ball Z” — a violent, Japanese animated show that looks remarkably similar to “Pokemon” — is now the highest rated show on The Cartoon Network.
Based on the show’s wild ratings (about 1.7 million homes each week) and the mania surrounding anything resembling “Pokemon,” the network is planning to add another two Japanese animated shows next year called “Gundam W” and “Tenchi Meyo!”
“There’s a huge following for Japanese animation,” Cartoon Network spokeswoman Lori Goldberg said. “And the fans live for it.”
“Dragon Ball Z” airs twice daily, at 5 p.m. and again during late night. It also airs on the weekends, which means it is on TV for about five-and-a-half hours a week.
The show is basically an Asian take on the Superman legend with some Chinese mythology thrown in.
In Asia, “Dragon Ball Z” has been airing for 15 years. It first hit the U.S. on the Cartoon Network about a year ago.
Like most hard-core Japanese animation — an art form called Anime — “Dragon Ball Z” is a morality play, the lines between good and evil are clearly drawn and the interplay between the two can sometimes be very violent.
“We edit it very heavily for U.S. sensitivity,” Goldberg said, noting that blood is edited out and in some fight scenes certain frames are deleted from the show.
Goldberg added that the show is appropriately rated for television with TV-Y7FV, which means television that contains fantasy and violence appropriate for ages seven and up.
“None of the violence is real,” Goldberg added. “It’s all very fantasy based, there’s never a gun and everyone who dies comes back to life — they go to Heaven and then they come back and it teaches viewers that there are consequences to violence.
“There are good messages and it’s all very moral,” Goldberg said.
The Cartoon Network also currently airs another Anime called “Sailor Moon.” The half-hour series is about junior high school girls who protect the universe from evil. It also airs five days a week, at 4 p.m. and Saturdays at 1 a.m.
Anime has been around in Japan for about 30 years. Classic cartoon shows such as “Speed Racer” and “Voltron” were both Anime.
Several characteristics make Anime different from other types of animation. First, the drawing style is streamlined, showing as few specific details as possible, and the action tends to be quite violent at times.
The most violent versions of Anime air only outside the U.S., where the rules against explicit animation violence are less strict.
“Japanese people tend to be a bit more reserved in their emotionalism,” Anime expert Scott Mauriello recently told The Post. “They seem to pull it all out in their cartoon characters, who can be very emotional, angry or loving. It’s sort of a catharsis for them.”