There's a long list of reasons the Dragon Ball franchise is famous. Intense fights, power scaling that seems to have no end, and a cast of characters who have withstood the test of time and remained well-known figures in not only the anime community but throughout pop culture as a whole. But there's one thing the Dragon Ball anime is infamous for: the tendency to draw out fights that were much shorter in the manga. And no battle shows this better than Goku's legendary bout with Frieza.
Numerous memes and jokes spawned from the arc that came dangerously close to overstaying its welcome. There were quips about how Frieza doesn't actually know what a minute is and jabs at Toei Animation for making an adaptation that was so obviously padding out its runtime. But the anime's version of the Frieza fight was extended to such ludicrous lengths for a reason.
At the time of the Frieza fight being adapted into anime form, Akira Toriyama was actually still writing the story in the manga. Neither Toei nor Toriyama himself expected the anime to catch up to the manga so quickly, so they were ill-prepared to deal with the situation when it occurred.
So while most of the Namek saga had adapted multiple manga chapters in a single episode of the anime, by the time the climactic fight against Frieza finally began in the anime, Toei was forced to adapt a single chapter of the manga. This usually totaled about 20-30 pages of action in a full 23-minute episode.
As anyone who watched the original cut of Dragon Ball Z's Frieza saga can attest, this did more harm than good. Entire episodes were dedicated to Frieza and Goku having a quick exchange of blows, followed by several minutes of expository dialogue and screaming as they powered up for far longer than they needed to. Toei even began to add filler moments of other characters reacting to the fight just to pad out the runtime.
But this was all done for Akira Toriyama's sake, so he wouldn't feel the need to rush out manga chapters just so the anime would have more content to adapt. So while the Frieza saga might've left many viewers fatigued on the snail's pace of a fight that was hyped up throughout the Namek saga, it was better than the alternative of overworking Toriyama -- or the anime taking a hiatus.
Luckily, this mistake was never repeated again throughout the rest of Dragon Ball Z's run. While some fights were a bit stretched out, none were as egregious as the Goku vs. Frieza battle that went down in history. Toei has certainly learned its lesson and now waits for the manga to have plenty of content to adapt before turning chapters into episodes. And while the Dragon Ball Super anime might be on hiatus right now, the manga has still been going strong, so Toei will have plenty of content to adapt and continue bringing more of Goku's adventures to life.
