How come Dr. Slump the Anime Series wasn't successful anywhere than Japan?

[Metalwario64]

You must live in a cave, having not seen Drunken Master 2 and Rumble in The Bronx. Those two films alone have been widely shown all over the world.

Most people on this forum (on average) don't really watch anything that isn't strictly children's cartoons/media of some sort. If its not something that was on Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, or someplace like that, and its not a Hollywood superhero/summer blockbuster tentpole from the last 10/15 years (or something similarly adapted from a familiar cartoon or geek property), then the average poster on this forum likely hasn't seen nor even heard of it, no matter how otherwise mainstream or well known it is. I'm genuinely not being a dick here: that's the honest to god reality on the ground here.

Trust me, I went through this very same exact dance literally COUNTLESS times when I first joined here back in the day (mid through late-2000s):

Me: "What? What do you mean you've never heard of Hard Boiled? Its John Woo's most famous movie!"

Typical Kanz Person: "Who's John Woo?"

Me: "You know: Face/Off, Broken Arrow, Hard Target..."

Typical Kanz Person: "Never heard of them. What channel were they on?"

Me: "Uh... they're movies."

Typical Kanz Person: "You mean like Land Before Time or Spider-Man?"

Me: "Uh... sure? But I mean more like actual action movies, more like Die Hard or Mad Max or Lethal Weapon or Predator."

Typical Kanz Person: "Those sound like movies my parents wouldn't have let me watch."

Me: "But you're how old now?"

Typical Kanz Person: "24."

Me: " "

I'm so glad I don't fit in that category. I love those movies. And even in that other thread, I've seen Videodrome as well.

[Doctor.]

Some people just aren't into movies. Personally speaking, I can't sit through a 2 hour movie without having the urge to pause it for half an hour and do something else. Only time this is an exception is when I'm at the cinema with friends and can occasionally make quick remarks about the plot. You can't really blame people for preferring quicker, faster-paced formats such as cartoons and animated films (which usually have a lower runtime). Even as someone who holds literature above every other medium, the appeal of reading a book is that you can pause, re-read and reflect. Can't really do something like that with a 2-hour flick in the same way you can with, say, a 24-minute anime episode.

[Bullza]

Well if it's appearance in Dragon Ball was any worthwhile example of the series, then I'd say it was because it was terrible.

[Attitudefan]

SNIP

I'm so glad I don't fit in that category. I love those movies. And even in that other thread, I've seen Videodrome as well.

Videodrome is a classic and actually quite telling...

But people I meet in person tend to be that way as well. They refuse to watch anything before the 21st century now because the older stuff looks and feels "too old" for them. I guess someday I will have to accept that the even the 90s was a long time ago at some point.

On the subject of Slump, I definitely think that since Slump isn't action packed and made to be consumed with a short attention span, licensors were not keen on picking it up in North America. Think about all the 80s and 90s shows (cartoons and beyond) move very fast and have little breathing room time. Plus, it's humour would have been heavily censored and probably not worth the time or cost to bother with that.

[Metalwario64]

SNIP

I'm so glad I don't fit in that category. I love those movies. And even in that other thread, I've seen Videodrome as well.

Videodrome is a classic and actually quite telling...

But people I meet in person tend to be that way as well. They refuse to watch anything before the 21st century now because the older stuff looks and feels "too old" for them. I guess someday I will have to accept that the even the 90s was a long time ago at some point.

I refuse to watch anything made before 2018.

[Attitudefan]

I refuse to watch anything made before 2018.

I refuse to watch anything before 2019, so ha!

I actually am curious if Dr Slump is considered "too old" looking, does that make the earliest arcs of Dragon Ball "too old" to enjoy as well? Slump and Dragon Ball's first arc or so look pretty identical in terms of style; not surprising, since a lot of the staff worked on both shows.

[tinlunlau]

You must live in a cave, having not seen Drunken Master 2 and Rumble in The Bronx. Those two films alone have been widely shown all over the world.

Most people on this forum (on average) don't really watch anything that isn't strictly children's cartoons/media of some sort. If its not something that was on Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, or someplace like that, and its not a Hollywood superhero/summer blockbuster tentpole from the last 10/15 years (or something similarly adapted from a familiar cartoon or geek property), then the average poster on this forum likely hasn't seen nor even heard of it, no matter how otherwise mainstream or well known it is. I'm genuinely not being a dick here: that's the honest to god reality on the ground here.

Trust me, I went through this very same exact dance literally COUNTLESS times when I first joined here back in the day (mid through late-2000s):

Me: "What? What do you mean you've never heard of Hard Boiled? Its John Woo's most famous movie!"

Typical Kanz Person: "Who's John Woo?"

Me: "You know: Face/Off, Broken Arrow, Hard Target..."

Typical Kanz Person: "Never heard of them. What channel were they on?"

Me: "Uh... they're movies."

Typical Kanz Person: "You mean like Land Before Time or Spider-Man?"

Me: "Uh... sure? But I mean more like actual action movies, more like Die Hard or Mad Max or Lethal Weapon or Predator."

Typical Kanz Person: "Those sound like movies my parents wouldn't have let me watch."

Me: "But you're how old now?"

Typical Kanz Person: "24."

Me: " "

Sounds horrific having to deal with these people.

[ZeroNeonix]

Sounds horrific having to deal with these people.

It's horrific to "deal with" people who don't like the same things you like?

[VegettoEX]

It's horrific to "deal with" people who don't like the same things you like?

It's difficult and frustrating to try having conversations with people who appear to and claim to want to have deeper conversations about things but have either been sheltered from consuming or (even worse) are entirely unwilling of their own accord to actively consume media outside of the narrow branch of children's television that would therefore enable those deeper conversations.

And it's not that there's some sort of required canonical library of literary and artistic works you must consume before discussing Dragon Ball, but when you're going to jump into the pool comparing things, you can't bust out Nickelodeon shows made after 2000 as your base and expect to still be part of the conversation... because that's not when Dragon Ball is from and none of that stuff served as a contemporary to it.

[coola]

Last time Drunken Master 2 aired here in Poland, was like 10 years ago As for Dr.Slump, manga got released here 2 years ago (It took almost 13 year hiatus, last volume was released in 2003) and anime aired in 1999 (French dub with Polish voice over) no idea how manga sold here.

[SuperCyan2]

Some people just aren't into movies. Personally speaking, I can't sit through a 2 hour movie without having the urge to pause it for half an hour and do something else. Only time this is an exception is when I'm at the cinema with friends and can occasionally make quick remarks about the plot. You can't really blame people for preferring quicker, faster-paced formats such as cartoons and animated films (which usually have a lower runtime). Even as someone who holds literature above every other medium, the appeal of reading a book is that you can pause, re-read and reflect. Can't really do something like that with a 2-hour flick in the same way you can with, say, a 24-minute anime episode.

Well, this is off-topic but I've meant to watch The Godfather trilogy although I've yet to because those movies are really long. Just today I binged Sneaky Pete Season 2 and loved it but that was split to a season of 10.

[tinlunlau]

Sounds horrific having to deal with these people.

It's horrific to "deal with" people who don't like the same things you like?

Considering segments of the earlier Dragonball made a shoutout to Jackie Chan and the Golden Harvest logo.

Case in point.
https://youtu.be/m3DYtawOiC8

[Kunzait_83]

It's horrific to "deal with" people who don't like the same things you like?

It's difficult and frustrating to try having conversations with people who appear to and claim to want to have deeper conversations about things but have either been sheltered from consuming or (even worse) are entirely unwilling of their own accord to actively consume media outside of the narrow branch of children's television that would therefore enable those deeper conversations.

And it's not that there's some sort of required canonical library of literary and artistic works you must consume before discussing Dragon Ball, but when you're going to jump into the pool comparing things, you can't bust out Nickelodeon shows made after 2000 as your base and expect to still be part of the conversation... because that's not when Dragon Ball is from and none of that stuff served as a contemporary to it.

Not just Dragon Ball, but its also very much equally irrelevant almost ANYTHING else that's out there. What so much of this community also fails to understand about the children's television/film works that function as the primary bulk of what they know, consume, and take seriously: that it also function's as an infinitesimally and microscopically narrow and tiny fraction of the overall landscape of creative media that's out there, including things that have tremendously shaped both the mainstream and more geek/niche landscapes since forever and ever ago. Its frustrating as hell, because I don't think most people here really know how much of an impossibly tiny (and in most cases, culturally irrelevant) box of works that they're needlessly cocooning themselves into.

The issue obviously isn't about trying to talk to people who match up 1 to 1 with your interests: that's a totally disingenuous, glib, and solipsistic answer to what I'm talking about here. The issue is a degree of ignorance about much of the outside world of art and media beyond works that primarily serve as "baby's first building blocks" that parents largely use to help distract and "babysit" their kids for them for hours at a time.

Obviously this is a Dragon Ball forum: so Dragon Ball, a children's comic/cartoon is the primary focus we're all gonna discuss. But the issue of course with a work like DB is that almost ALL of its primary creative/cultural influences are things which exist VERY impossibly far, far, FAR away from the Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Fox Kids, Kids' WB, Jetix, Disney Channel, etc. programming blocks of 1999 to today: not merely just because it obviously PREDATES all of those works, but also moreover because Toriyama's main diet of media that overwhelmingly informed his work consisted of primarily non-children's works aimed more at adults or older audiences (just like virtually almost ALL Shonen mangaka of his day pre-late 90s).

So if we're going to discuss Dragon Ball in depth here (as is the entire point of a site like Kanz) then obviously we're going to discuss things like Toriyama's influences as well as works of media that are most similar to and comparable to DB (including ones that were contemporary to it, not just works that were later "inspired" by it). And the problem with that is, a vast overwhelming majority of the audience not only not having any knowledge or experience with the man's creative influences, but also not having any knowledge, experience, or even BASIC INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY for works that exist outside of the TINY (and to Dragon Ball's case, wholly irrelevant) little bubble that encompasses children's television and film animation, is something that is utterly and inescapably CRIPPLING to any fruitful critical conversation. Even about an otherwise silly children's work like DB itself.

This is the ENTIRE reason why something like the Wuxia thread was necessary in the first place, and why it took some random idiot schmuck like me to come along to finally broach this unbelievably crucial and relevant piece of the conversation about DB after roughly 20 years of its fanbase existing and growing steadily in North America with total and complete abject ignorance towards the topic every step of the way (even with Google and Wikipedia and so on at their complete disposal).

Its kinda hard for a topic like Wuxia, which is largely and primarily (though far from exclusively) the domain of adult-aimed foreign media works, to come up or to even be discovered by the fandom at large when the only things that 90% of the fanbase cares about outside of Dragon Ball itself is what Nicktoons and Toonami's current lineups of cartoons are consisting of, what's happening with the latest Power Rangers or Pokemon series, or what children's film franchises like the MCU or Pixar or Harry Potter and whatnot are currently doing: to the point that even unbelievably massive pop cultural films or TV milestones (that are outside the children's realm) like The Departed or The Wire and whatnot can come and go without hardly a single solitary soul here being any the wiser of their mere existence half the time.

And trust me, material outside of the children's cartoon and film realm largely indeed have skated on by mostly unnoticed for much of the past decade+ for a frighteningly LARGE number of folks here. I know this now from almost 15 solid years of personally engaging with countless people here not just on the forums, but off as well: on platforms as diverse as this site's own Private Messaging, on AOL Instant Messenger (back when that was still a thing), Skype, the official Kanz IRC chat, etc.

Not only is that not conducive to quality discussion about Dragon Ball itself (a work that despite being a silly piece of children's fluff itself, took most of its creative inspiration from an unbelievably DIZZYING array of diverse and eclectic works which are in most cases anything but silly children's fluff), but frankly this kind of self-imposed sheltering just plain isn't intellectually or emotionally healthy PERIOD in a more GENERAL sense: especially when trying to engage in ANY sort of pop cultural discussion about ANY kind of creative media at all: both within the realm of anime and manga, and further beyond.

tinlunlau is 1000% correct to be incredulous that an ostensibly grown person hasn't seen or heard of movies like Drunken Master II or Rumble in the Bronx (two films which apart from being massively mainstream works themselves, had also singlehandedly BUILT the mainstream American career of Jackie Chan among mainstream U.S. audiences): not just in a general sense, but also ESPECIALLY on a forum that is, theoretically, supposed to be home to diehard Dragon Ball and Toriyama fans. The works of Jackie Chan alone function as a MASSIVE creative component of Dragon Ball's entire identity, to say nothing of the general output of Golden Harvest from the series' time, and moreover just the general landscape of Hong Kong kung fu and wuxia films.

And yet we almost NEVER discuss those kinds of works on here, despite their utterly MASSIVE level of importance to Dragon Ball. Instead, we generally just discuss Dragon Ball almost exclusively from the broader context of much LATER Shonen works which took their inspiration from DB. And the reason this community does so is because most of those later works (and this is a wider problem with most post-DB Shonen in general) almost solely take their creative influence from both DB itself, as well as other Shonen/Japanese children's works that the authors grew up on. Which is a HUGE difference from the approach that Toriyama and his contemporary mangaka from his generation took, which was their consuming an unbelievably diverse array of non-children's works, both at home (Japan) as well as internationally abroad.

This is of course VASTLY more recognizable and convenient for modern Western DB fans; because they themselves largely cordon themselves off to exclusively children's media (either U.S.-based, or Japanese), so dumping all their anime and manga-oriented focus onto post-DB and post-late 90s Shonen works means that there's almost no real reason for them to EVER have to ever even so much as RISK acquainting themselves - even ACCIDENTALLY - with anything that isn't safely outside their familiar wheeelhouse. Of course its had the side-effect of making the discourse about DB itself MASSIVELY skewed and divorced far, far, far away from the assortment of works that are most relevant to its actual development and creation, as well as that which were contemporaneous with its run, rather than post-dating it.

Hell, we oftentimes can't even get most DB fans (outside of Kanzenshuu at least) to engage with or acknowledge Dr. fucking Slump: a work which is both an actual children's title itself (and an even fluffier one than DB no less) as well as Toriyama's most overwhelmingly iconic and famous non-DB work, to say nothing of the OTHER major work that's crucial to understanding DB's development into what it is. When even Dr. Slump (silliness and child-oriented fluffiness personified) is in most cases too left of the dial for this audience... I mean, that's just incredibly damning.

But this is a much bigger issue than just Dr. Slump or Hong Kong films or Wuxia or whatever else: what tinlunlau, and a lot of other unsuspecting "normal" folks - for want of a better word - like him that might casually post on here, obviously doesn't know (but I unfortunately do, due mainly to how much ludicrously pathetic amount of time and engagement I now have under my belt with this place's broader active community) is that a strange bit of ignorance like not knowing what international superstar Jackie Chan's most iconic and famous films are or not caring much for the DB author's OTHER most iconic and notable work, is only the tip of the iceberg for this community's long-held incredibly bizarre and ultimately crippling aversion to engaging with any kind of works of media that aren't safely within the domain of familiar and massively formulaic children's media: to the exclusion of not just even some of the most mainstream and notable adult-aimed works that are out there, but even often to the exclusion of OTHER Japanese children's works (like Dr. Slump and countless other famous and iconic older Shonen) which don't fit within a VERY specific and Toonami-approved mold of style, execution, subject matter, etc.

Any way you slice it, this is a SERIOUSLY crippling piece of (largely self-imposed and pointlessly so) cultural ignorance which is not only obstructive to fruitful discourse about even a silly, fluffy bit of children's nonsense like Dragon Ball, but just to ANY sort of fruitful, critical discourse about pop culture and media (both niche AND mainstream, including anime anf manga-related and well far beyond) in a VERY general sense.

This is a major and GLARING elephant-in-the-room of a community issue I'd been meaning to tackle on this site for MANY long years now, and I honestly wish that I had long, long ago. Its gotten so bad around both here and in general online anime/manga discourse that its long-since gotten to be way beyond overdue a serious look-in-the-mirror confronting.

[Hellspawn28]

I guess Funimation didn't bother with the series in the past because the old animation and the strange humor would have turn people off. I do wish that they did release the 1997 series in the early 2000's. It would fit fine with everything else that they where releasing at the time.

Me: "You know: Face/Off, Broken Arrow, Hard Target..."

Typical Kanz Person: "Never heard of them. What channel were they on?"

I would imagine a typical Kanz person here would have seen at least Mission Impossible II since it was a PG-13 summer blockbuster .

[Super Sonic]

That could depend on their age. Recall during DBZ's original US broadcast, majority of the US fandom were kids, and might not have paid attention to certain big things at the time. I was 17 at the time and saw things about it and did watch it. As for the mention on how some guys' parents wouldn't let them watch when they came out, and they never did, that tends to happen as sometimes you just never get around to it. For example, I was in between 2nd and 3rd grade when Boyz N the Hood came out and my folks' R-rated ban was full in effect. After it was lifted, I just never got around to seeing it fully. Also learned enough about the movie via word of mouth that knew the gist and major events it wouldn't have been new to me as knew the plot already.

Will say though that while it's been over a decade since I watched those episodes, I did enjoy the Dr. Slump crossover that happened in DB and at least Funimation was able to keep that without problems. Not sure when it happens, but heard something about a couple One Piece eps were standalone crossovers with Toriko that after Funi's license ended they had to skip or something.

[SuperCyan2]

That could depend on their age. Recall during DBZ's original US broadcast, majority of the US fandom were kids, and might not have paid attention to certain big things at the time. I was 17 at the time and saw things about it and did watch it. As for the mention on how some guys' parents wouldn't let them watch when they came out, and they never did, that tends to happen as sometimes you just never get around to it. For example, I was in between 2nd and 3rd grade when Boyz N the Hood came out and my folks' R-rated ban was full in effect. After it was lifted, I just never got around to seeing it fully. Also learned enough about the movie via word of mouth that knew the gist and major events it wouldn't have been new to me as knew the plot already.

Will say though that while it's been over a decade since I watched those episodes, I did enjoy the Dr. Slump crossover that happened in DB and at least Funimation was able to keep that without problems. Not sure when it happens, but heard something about a couple One Piece eps were standalone crossovers with Toriko that after Funi's license ended they had to skip or something.

I've noticed that the type of series licensed in the English market tend to be normally from the same genre as most are so the distributor is playing safe in assuming its viewers will enjoy it, meaning that they won't take the risk of licensing something different like a series from World Masterpiece Theater (Anne of Green Gables, Tom Sawyer, Marco, Heidi, The Swiss Family Robinson, Story of Perrine, etc), Kaiketsu Zorro (it did get an official and complete English dub but it's pretty much unknown), D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers or the fairy tale series that Saban once took on. Or hell, why not Kochikame, eh?

I'm grateful that Doraemon has been given a chance but unfortunately it seems it was unsuccessful so that was tanked (solid dub by Bang Zoom!) and the FUNimation dub of Crayon Shin-chan? Holy fucking Christ! What a shitshow that is. FUNimation made the dub almost appear as a parody of South Park, the only thing that identifies it to be a Shin-chan dub is the video footage itself because if you extract it and just listen to it, you'd not know that'd be from Shin-chan. If FUNimation were to make a Dr. Slump as bad as the Shin-chan one is, then they'd better just leave it alone because they would utterly remove its original essence of the comedy, characters, series and music as a whole.

For reference, the shows I mentioned are widely popular in the Spanish and Portuguese communities and if you ask a Spanish person to sing the song of Heidi/Marco he or she probably knows it by heart.

[Bruma rabu]

I guess Funimation didn't bother with the series in the past because the old animation and the strange humor would have turn people off. I do wish that they did release the 1997 series in the early 2000's. It would fit fine with everything else that they where releasing at the time.

Me: "You know: Face/Off, Broken Arrow, Hard Target..."

Typical Kanz Person: "Never heard of them. What channel were they on?"

I would imagine a typical Kanz person here would have seen at least Mission Impossible II since it was a PG-13 summer blockbuster .

Well Funimation was much smaller in those days so dragon ball was probably the biggest show they had and probably focused all their efforts on that. I wonder if its Toei that's actually holding Dr.Slump back. Or is the demand really just not there?

[SuperCyan2]

Well Funimation was much smaller in those days so dragon ball was probably the biggest show they had and probably focused all their efforts on that. I wonder if its Toei that's actually holding Dr.Slump back. Or is the demand really just not there?

It doesn't seem to be a TOEI-problem but that foreign distributors are wary about taking a risk with this anime series because it's hardly known anywhere and the countries that received a dub, it ended up being stalled or cancelled.

[Damned]

Speaking of the French Dr. Slump Arale Blu-rays, Box 2 is apparently set to release on April 25th, so it looks like the sales are already doing better than the 2012 DVD release did. Anybody who has the first set know how the picture quality is? Does it use the same masters that Toei's remastered DVD sets use?

[Hellspawn28]

I'm so glad I don't fit in that category. I love those movies. And even in that other thread, I've seen Videodrome as well.

'
Reminds me when my friend told me that his class was shock at learning that pornographic films like Deep Throat were once shown in theaters and how none of his students know what Mystery Science Theater 3000 is. I would imagine them must be close to my age in their mid-late 20's.