Apparently today is officially Goku Day in Japan, just for the celebration of anime's finest hero Son Goku from Dragonballz so I figured I review his introduction in the original Dragonball anime.

Do I really need to tell you the story?.........
Okay fine, Goku is a boy with a monkey tail who grows up alone having lost his grandfather, this doesn't seem to affect the kid as he functions quite well on his own. Bulma is a teenage girl in search of the mystical Dragonballs, large shiny stones that when seven are combined can summon a dragon and grant wishes, upon meeting Goku, Bulma explains what Dragonballs are as Goku has one and the two decide to search for the other Dragonballs, this starts a series of fantastic adventures fighting weird beasts, martial arts masters and plenty of juvenile jokes to go around.
And that last part is my biggest problem with this series, it's the juvenile jokes, they haven't aged well in an era that doesn't welcome them anymore. For example an early running joke is Goku trying to identify women by tapping them in a forbidden area. I'll let you work that one out.
Some other jokes are Bulma being a tsundere (you wouldn't think she invented it but she did) Oolong being a coward and a pervert and the first enemy boiling down to an imp dressed as a clown.
The story all round is terrible, but, and this a big but, it improves dramatically as the series goes on as stakes are raised and enemies get better and then you start looking at Dragonball as a fighting shonen anime rather than a mystical adventure one which foreshadows Dragonballz's premier towards the end.
Toriyama is a good artist and can choreograph an excellent fight scene but can't write a story without featuring horribly written jokes and pointless fanservice in an era that didn't feature it mainstream. The Overall experience knowing that this show is roughly the same age as me is slight disbelief that the most significant fighting anime of all time evolved from such a train wreck packed with really difficult to swallow 80s cliches, while it's a long series that does grow up over time, you still have to put up with the really bad parts to get to the good parts.
Final Verdict: This is why Dragonballz was licensed before Dragonball, the jokes really fall flat for a modern day audience and shows it's age badly as a result, while it does improve it takes time to improve and if you haven't already switched off by then, then you will be well rewarded for your patience.