Yeah, DBZ aired when I was an early teen, and then came to the US in my college years. This was the original "surpass your limits" and "there's always a bigger fish" version of the asskicking and ninja shows which became popular in the USA during the 80's. Probably the original inspiration for the ninja turtles too (before the swat teams decided to dress in turtle drag.)
With that said, there's a lot to be said for DBZ (DB original was more "cutesy" and only got deadly serious in Z, and got uber serious with overtones of the original in GT... which was nice since it was more to the point than Z.)
A whole bunch of the later show even deals with the concept of "people with power don't really give a shit about fame." This applies to pretty much the entire protagonist group. Even Vegeta, who is the epitome of the egomaniacal psycho, mostly just cares about being the baddest dude, and doesn't care to earn the recognition of the weak. The only respect the dude cares about is the respect of his peers... which largely means Son Goku and nobody else.
For an anime, its very old school, and like most of the cookie cutter martial arts animes that followed in its tracks, Z is most assuredly less serious in tone than say, the better Gundam shows (Wing and SEED are epic, as was the original series, other than their penchant for reusing frames, and having a few "Mary Sued" characters who are downright too badass to die), and of course, Noir (fansubs were better), all of which handle the political infighting and dirty backstabbing with far more gusto than the earlier cheerier 80's shows. Then again, we were their audience, and we all grew up, got older, more awake to the evil around us, so the tone of our fiction has taken a clue from our reality.
Since we're on the subject:
Ki is japanese, Qi is chinese (read Chi), Prana is the Hindu term, Vril (Vrill) is the term used by the Nazis in their own occult research (from which 90% of modern science derived, along with the entirety of western civilization post Operation Paperclip & WW2) and life force, bioelectrical field, mental focus, soul energy or whatever, would be various forms through which various groups have referred to this concept. One could even say that by observing that the Japanese martial artist more often focuses Ki for strikes, defense and self control, the chinese philosopher teaches Qi more as a mastery of the self, the Hindu teaches Prana as a way to ascend to another reality (I'm less familiar) and in the end, a lot of it deals with biorhythms and controlling them, with much of the art focusing on calming the mind, focusing it and controlling one's body ... and in most martial arts it starts with breathing properly. Does it exist as a measurable thing??? I can't say. Maybe we should get a crew together, kickstart a project and learn how to drop spirit bombs on sonzabitches what deserve it? Though I'm sure there are days when every guy (and possibly a gal or two) on this forum has pondered how cool and awesome it'd be for righteous people to be able to drop a genki dama (or just a nice beam spam) on some ninja turtle wannabes who were thugging on some poor bastard who didn't deserve to be treated with evil. Certainly would be nicer from the logistics standpoint. Ki is free to the adept practitioner... ammo is heavy.
Say... maybe we really SHOULD hit Kickstartr for that sort of thing.
Be a worthier project than pining for elections and waiting for the State Science Institute to advance society with discarded or unfinished 80 year old Nazi research?
PS - yes, I'm having a good, cheerful and utterly playful day.
