At this point in time how popular is the Dragon ball franchise

[Limit-Breaking]

I been wondering this for a long time now and it has always been a topic so rarely discussed, so i want to know how popular do you think the Dragon ball franchise is, is it anywhere close to star wars popularity or is it not even close.

Do you think it's not that popular at all and what are your reasons on why it's at the level of popularity.

[WittyUsername]

As far as anime and manga go (not counting Pokemon), Dragon Ball is probably at the very top in terms of lasting worldwide popularity. Not only is it a big deal in Japan, but it’s also pretty popular in many parts of Europe and the Americas, especially Latin America.

In terms of how the franchise compares to Star Wars, there’s not really any contest; Star Wars is definitely bigger. Even with the severe underperformance of Solo: A Star Wars Story, the franchise is still much more mainstream in the U.S. compared to Dragon Ball.

[8000 Saiyan]

Very popular I'd say.

[sintzu]

It's currently Bandai's #1 selling franchise, moving ahead of Gundam and One Piece so in terms of merchandising it's #2 just behind Pokemon. It's the 2nd best selling manga of all time. It's anime Super was always in the top 10 viewed and its last 2 movies did very good at the box office with RF making more than BOG. When it comes to the top Japanese franchises it's in the top 5, a very impressive accomplishment.

In terms of western franchises like Star wars, it's not even close, same goes for the other Japanese franchises that are comparable to DB. Solo which is the franchise's first flop will end up making close to 400 million $ while DB's biggest movie only made 65 million $ which is even further away from ep7's 2 billion $ box office number. With that said, if the people involved with star wars keep attacking their customers then that Solo number may look good compared to what's next so who knows where both franchises will be in the next few years. Another way of looking at DB's success compared to star wars is whether or not it's meeting expectations by the fans and companies involved which it is while star wars isn't so although one is bigger than the other, that bigger one is losing $$$ and support while the other one is gaining them so if you look at it that way then DB is more successful.

[Hellspawn28]

More alive than it was during most of the 2000's and earlier this decade.

[Bullza]

Well as of March it was the most popular it had ever been.

I just made a comparison between Dragon Ball, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Batman on Google Trends and I got this.

https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/expl ... y%20Potter

Which tells me that whilst Super was airing it was the one that received the most internet activity in general.

If you take a look at the last month though now that Super has ended.

https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/expl ... y%20Potter

You can see it's a bit above Batman and bit below Star Wars but it's certainly comparable.

[Limit-Breaking]

Well as of March it was the most popular it had ever been.

I just made a comparison between Dragon Ball, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Batman on Google Trends and I got this.

https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/expl ... y%20Potter

Which tells me that whilst Super was airing it was the one that received the most internet activity in general.

If you take a look at the last month though now that Super has ended.

https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/expl ... y%20Potter

You can see it's a bit above Batman and bit below Star Wars but it's certainly comparable.

Man that's pretty cool.

[Kakacarrottop]

2015 was the peak of the franchise's revival in the 2010s. It's now probably back to 2012 levels of popularity.

[ABED]

It's not the "attacks" on their fans, it's cashing in on pure nostalgia that is the issue for Star Wars's dip in popularity. It's hard without having the complete picture, but DB seems damn near immune from anything, including an incompetent and cheaply produced dub. I do wonder how much this can last. GT seemed to be the one instance where fatigue set in. I wonder if it was because it was 10 non-stop years on top of a mediocre series. Super is certainly benefitting from the time away.

[DBZAOTA482]

Not as popular as it was during it's heyday in Japan or when it was on Toonami in the states, but it's still massively popular with seemingly no end in sight. I may even say we're better off now than we were late 2000's and early 2010's.

Out of all the anime/manga, Dragon Ball, One Piece, Pokemon, Naruto, and Yu-Gi-Oh! are the ones that are big outside the niche.

[Kunzait_83]

It's not the "attacks" on their fans, it's cashing in on pure nostalgia that is the issue for Star Wars's dip in popularity. It's hard without having the complete picture, but DB seems damn near immune from anything, including an incompetent and cheaply produced dub. I do wonder how much this can last. GT seemed to be the one instance where fatigue set in. I wonder if it was because it was 10 non-stop years on top of a mediocre series. Super is certainly benefitting from the time away.

It was definitely the 10 non-stop years end of it, without question. Even prior to GT, during the latter half of the Boo arc, franchise fatigue was setting in: both for Japanese fans as well as Western fans of the time. The general consensus among a great many fans back then was that the series had been going on for a VERY long time and was seen as getting kind of tired out and running on fumes.

I personally loved the Boo arc myself back then, so I didn't share this sentiment myself at the time (it was too infectiously weird and out there for me to hate on, and still is): but that was DEFINITELY where the overall fanbase's head was at regardless. DB was seen as having worn out its welcome and gone on for at least a story arc or two too long (where that particular line was drawn exactly was much more open to debate and depended entirely on who you asked back then) and was seen as in danger of completely running out of gas.

GT being seen as a Toriyama-less letdown certainly did it (and the general franchise) no favors either, but the general franchise fatigue was more than palpable and easily seen well prior to GT: I'd say probably sometime a little bit after Vegeta's self-destruction against Boo, roughly around the time of Boo's good/evil division and the transition into Super Boo and all the "intermediary" Boo forms that you (ABED) have been discussing your disinterest in lately: that was the point that I can clearly remember (basically a decent chunk of 1995 heading into 1996 or so) general weariness for DB setting in throughout the overall fanbase all around (East and West).

[Baggie_Saiyan]

I'd say really really popular, I've already talked about how the merchandise isn't remotely slowing down (Since Sept 17 in a 13 month span Japan will have had 9 Ichiban Kuji's that is insane!) but also the fact Toei are aiming for a global release for the new movie AND the fact there is a North American DB tour happening in the summer, that tell's you all you need to know.

Before Toei Europe's website went down there was a post about how for 2017 DBS was doing far better then originally predicted in Europe.

I don't think anyone in 2013 imagined DB would ever get to being this big again.

[emperior]

It is very popular right now, but I'm sure they have barely scratched the surface when it comes to how popular Dragon Ball can be.
Despite its obvious scheduling issues, Super has still managed to become incredibly popular throughout the world.
This is also despite the many poor choices they have taken: It took them over 60 episodes to realize they had to provide a way for fans to legally watch the show subtitled. Not to mention how the dubbed releases came very late, and how all the dubs are still very far behind the Japanese release even though the show has already ended there.
We also haven't gotten a single TV Special for Super, and the upcoming movie will be the first "Super" movie we get, and although they are aiming for a global release, we know that the movie won't get a simultaneous release. We just got news that it will release in January in Latin America, which is already a huge improvement compared to the releases of BoG and RoF, which happened much further down the line.

2018 has been a big step into the right direction so far. The upcoming movie is finally fixing the overall shiny look and bad character models Super had, as well as having an incredibly healthy production which Super and both RoF and BoG lacked.
They are also releasing some animated episodes to promote Super Dragon Ball Heroes, and they have already released Dragon Ball Legends, which is a very nice and promising game.
FighterZ was received very well, especially for its incredible anime-like graphics and deep gameplay despite it being a part of a very niche genre. It still showed how massive Dragon Ball is, and what fans expect out of a Dragon Ball game for consoles. Hopefully the next game will try to capture the anime look as FighterZ did.

[Yuli Ban]

I'd like to say that this is at least one of the top three greatest eras for Dragon Ball. Consider that the movies and video games are actually selling well, damn well at that, which is like a splash effect that the original run of Dragon Ball didn't have. The movies were biyearly events of increasingly questionable quality and the only games the franchise got in the early 90s rarely came to the West. During the 2000s heyday, it was certainly popular, but by this point it had already passed in Japan and was more of a syndication phenomenon elsewhere, with middlingly popular games. Not to mention that the manga was already finished by that point.
In the present, we have the whole shebang all at once. The only reason why the raw numbers are lower in terms of viewership is because it's not like the way it was in the 80s and early '90s when cable was cutting edge entertainment technology and most people still only had maybe a couple dozen channels to watch. With streaming and recording, you don't have to sit your ass down when the episode airs and pray to God, any god, every god, that you can find a cheap tape of it or hope that there's a rerun in a few months if you missed it. Nor do you hear that it aired in another country and then have to either wait a year for a butchered censored dub to air where you live or traverse the anime black market to find hilariously inaccurate try-hard fansubbed versions. No, you can watch it with accurate subs within minutes of it airing, or you can binge watch it for free.

So if I had to really guess, all things considered, it's probably the most popular it's ever been right now. Because not only do you have a white-hot TV series, two hit movies, multiple really solid games starting with Xenoverse, and merchandise sales breaking into the exosphere, but you also have Dragon Ball's general diffusion throughout the world so that more people know of it anyhow. Now that there's more content being made, people who have passively heard of Dragon Ball will be more inclined to jump in. And thanks to the internet, including forums like Kanzenshuu, there's more fan participation than ever before.

Definitely a far cry from the peak of the Dark Ages of Dragon Ball back between 2009-2012 or so, when the best that came out of the franchise was Dragon Ball Kai, which was already a let down compared to what we hoped it to be, while the general quality of releases was set by Ultimate Tenkaichi, Z for Kinect, and Dragonball: Evolution.

[Mister_Popo]

It's very popular in US and Japan, but in Europe it tends to differ, is my impression. It depends on the country.

Pokemon seems to be the best known anime franchise. In my country (Belgium) for instance Dragon Ball does ring a bell with a number of people, but there are a lot more that don't know what the story actually represents or don't know it at all. The manga is available but only in very specialised comic-book-stores. The last two movies came out and there are some games available but that's about it. The DVD's, Blue-Rays and other merchandise like toys aren't commonly available in multimediashops, you have to order or watch it online. Pokemon however is very well known within my country.

[Lord Beerus]

It's nowhere near as successful on TV as it was during it's heyday in Japan or America for various reason beyond Dragon Ball's control, but if we're taking into consideration success of movies, games, profit from home releases and general merchandise, the numbers don't lie, Dragon Ball right now is VERY popular.

When you multiple cities across the world setting up giant TV screens so that thousands of people can watch a few episodes of anime as if its a concert, I think it's safe to say that you've managed to hook in a unique audience like never before.

[DBZAOTA482]

Once this new movie comes out, I have a feeling Dragon Ball will be more popular than it's ever been considering Sony Pictures now owns distrubution rights. It's guaranteed a wide release and looking at how well Xenoverse and FighterZ are doing, it will DOMINATE!!!

[Cure Dragon 255]

Nope. Its Fox. Or at least that's the way it is in Latin America.

[majinwarman]

It's nowhere near as successful on TV as it was during it's heyday in Japan or America for various reason beyond Dragon Ball's control, but if we're taking into consideration success of movies, games, profit from home releases and general merchandise, the numbers don't lie, Dragon Ball right now is VERY popular.

When you multiple cities across the world setting up giant TV screens so that thousands of people can watch a few episodes of anime as if its a concert, I think it's safe to say that you've managed to hook in a unique audience like never before.

And to think back in 2011 we thought Kai was the only Dragon Ball content we would get.

[sintzu]

To think back in 2011 we thought Kai was the only Dragon Ball content we would get.

When Kai started back in 2009 it was supposed to be a new anime but Toriyama wouldn't do it so they went with Kai instead. The franchise took a 5 year break after GT in 1997 before releasing the Kanzenban and 3 anime on home video starting in 2002 which was all done in February 2009 so they may have intentionally had things that way to lead up to the new anime on April 2009 but it never happened so Kai took its place. With the original material being re-released and the video games at their peak, I wonder how popular DB would've been had that new anime taken off back then.