Dragon Ball Z Black Box Collection

[USSJ Roshi]

Anyone Interested?

eBay item number 253846343704

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/253870497542 ... 1555.l2649

[JohnnyCashKami]

That's considerably expensive for DVDs that can be bought at relatively low, low prices. The advantage here is, it comes with the special boxes but otherwise it's the same as the rest.

I bought the 7x Dragon Box Z sets for less than that.

[USSJ Roshi]

That's considerably expensive for DVDs that can be bought at relatively low, low prices. The advantage here is, it comes with the special boxes but otherwise it's the same as the rest.

I bought the 7x Dragon Box Z sets for less than that.

Where?

All I can find are from £30 to £100 individually.

[linkdude20002001]

Kami Cash means he doesn't feel that it's worth paying more to have the DVD singels in boxsets. As in, you can buy them for cheaper if you get just the singels without boxes.
I only paid at most US$30 per boxset. Tho, I don't have some of those later boxsets I don't have becuz they're a lot more than US$30. Since your collection contains those expensive boxsets, this isn't really unreasonably priced at all. I'd buy this from you if I didn't already have most of them already.

[LordCrumb]

People are free to sell things at what ever price they want... but, that is ridiculous.

Probably more expensive because they are the US discs being sold in the UK.

I've never liked the US boxes, they are pretty bland and different sizes. I much prefer the AU boxes.

[linkdude20002001]

People are free to sell things at what ever price they want... but, that is ridiculous.

Probably more expensive because they are the US discs being sold in the UK.

I've never liked the US boxes, they are pretty bland and different sizes. I much prefer the AU boxes.

How is this price ridiculous? That's ten boxsets. Each selling for US$20 to US$50 on average. US$367 divided by ten is US$37.
But let's look at how much EACH boxset sold for recently. $118.87 + $35.00 + $32.43 + $30.00 + $21.50 + $21.50 + $19.99 + $19.99 + $19.99 + $10.99 = $330.
Maybe he could drop his price to that (or you could, you know, make an offer of that amount), but at the same time, you've saving money by not having to pay shipping so many times, and getting so many at once is for more convenient than buying each one from a different seller.

[90sDBZ]

That's considerably expensive for DVDs that can be bought at relatively low, low prices. The advantage here is, it comes with the special boxes but otherwise it's the same as the rest.

I bought the 7x Dragon Box Z sets for less than that.

If you're in the UK getting hold of the singles can cost significantly more than if you were in the US as they were never released here. I collected them all myself a while back and many where dirt cheap on Amazon/Ebay US but wouldn't ship to the UK so I had to go with the higher priced UK listings. It was pretty frustrating as several of the them were £10-20 each including shipping while if I was in the US I would have got them for a fraction of that. Just another reason why it sucks that the UK were neglected by AB Groupe for several years who sat on the home video rights until Manga UK rescued them in 2012.

Having said that many of those boxsets for the singles are rare in themselves so the price here isn't that much of a surprise.

[Robo4900]

Just another reason why it sucks that the UK were neglected by AB Groupe for several years who sat on the home video rights until Manga UK rescued them in 2012.

Though whether that's all that much better than how it was before then is debatable...

[90sDBZ]

Just another reason why it sucks that the UK were neglected by AB Groupe for several years who sat on the home video rights until Manga UK rescued them in 2012.

Though whether that's all that much better than how it was before then is debatable...

I would say it's infinitely better. Before we had literally nothing outside of the Big Green movies 2-4 on VHS and DVD. I know the Orange Bricks have their issues but they're easily better than getting nothing at all. And they topped the UK anime charts consistently and sold so well that they lead to us getting DB, GT, Kai, and the old and new movies out. Resurrection F even got a massively successful theatrical run that broke into the UK Box Office top 10 which caused the run to be extended well beyond the initial plan. It even got an encore screening several months later. In fact both BoG and RF ended up on the Sky Movie channels for several months of reruns which would never have happened without Manga UK's theatrical run of RF.

There's no denying the RF theatrical run was huge for UK fans, and is likely to be repeated and probably surpassed by the new Broly movie.

And in the meantime we're getting Super out on DVD/Blu-ray which is now caught up with the US release and is consistently topping Amazon UK's anime bestseller chart.

I just don't see how the current situation for Dragonball in the UK could conceivably be even remotely worse than it was for all those years where we were got virtually nothing.

All of this goes back to Manga UK licensing the Orange Bricks in 2012. Even if you hate that release there's always the possibility that Manga UK will acquire the new masters that are in the works, and in the meantime there's still Kai as an alternative.

[Robo4900]

Just another reason why it sucks that the UK were neglected by AB Groupe for several years who sat on the home video rights until Manga UK rescued them in 2012.

Though whether that's all that much better than how it was before then is debatable...

I would say it's infinitely better. Before we had literally nothing outside of the Big Green movies 2-4 on VHS and DVD. I know the Orange Bricks have their issues but they're easily better than getting nothing at all. And they topped the UK anime charts consistently and sold so well that they lead to us getting DB, GT, Kai, and the old and new movies out. Resurrection F even got a massively successful theatrical run that broke into the UK Box Office top 10 which caused the run to be extended well beyond the initial plan. It even got an encore screening several months later. In fact both BoG and RF ended up on the Sky Movie channels for several months of reruns which would never have happened without Manga UK's theatrical run of RF.

There's no denying the RF theatrical run was huge for UK fans, and is likely to be repeated and probably surpassed by the new Broly movie.

And in the meantime we're getting Super out on DVD/Blu-ray which is now caught up with the US release and is consistently topping Amazon UK's anime bestseller chart.

I just don't see how the current situation for Dragonball in the UK could conceivably be even remotely worse than it was for all those years where we were got virtually nothing.

All of this goes back to Manga UK licensing the Orange Bricks in 2012. Even if you hate that release there's always the possibility that Manga UK will acquire the new masters that are in the works, and in the meantime there's still Kai as an alternative.

MangaUK imported the cheapest, worst releases, but because there was nothing else, people bought it. They rode the tide of the dub-only cinema screenings. If Madman hadn't put out Kai TFC, MangaUK would have never acquired it, so we wouldn't even have Kai in its entirety. I suppose one could also make the argument that MangaUK could have tried to acquire Ocean's dub of Kai for DVD, since they seem to only really care about dub-fans(See below), and Ocean's dub was always what aired on TV, but that would require them making their own DVD release, which was never going to happen. At least with Z, you can argue that MangaUK could have imported the DVD single masters and repackaged those into season boxsets, which is what they did with OG Dragon Ball. Instead, we got the crappy OBs, on which you'll find about 50% of episodes 68-122 are what aired here in the UK in terms of dubbing content, except the default option uses a different score, and even the broadcast score was meddled with slightly, and the mixing was screwed up, and a lot of vocal effects are missing, and it's not even consistent within itself about any of this.

MangaUK have a pattern of doing the absolute bare minimum they can to chase after the profits other companies like Funimation or Madman get, and for that reason, they are the worst. The only reason their DVDs of OG Dragon Ball are any good is because they hastily assembled new boxes for the Australian DVDs instead of acquiring Funimation's crappy boxset which they'd've had to standards-convert to PAL, except MangaUK screwed up and never fixed the problem Madman had with the initial release of the Fortuneteller Baba DVDs, so if you're a sub-fan you have to either import another DVD release, or just put up with the fact you'll be missing an entire episode.
So, their DVD release of OG Dragon Ball is fundamentally not fit for purpose. Madman fixed this on later printings, and offered replacement discs to anyone affected by the issue. To my knowledge, MangaUK have never fixed the issue or compensated anyone wronged by this issue in any way, shape, or form.

I have a hard time imagining any other company that could have acquired Dragon Ball doing a job even as poorly as MangaUK has done. We're in an even worse situation than the USA in a lot of ways, because at least USA-based fans can complain to Funimation and petition them to put out better releases. MangaUK have always only ever been a cheap import company, so all we British fans can do is pointlessly complain online about how crap we have it. At least AB Groupe bothered to put out their own DVDs at one point, and only gave up because they used the Big Green dub, the dub of those movies that was airing on TV at the time, so it flopped; MangaUK didn't even try doing something original that might cater to the fans they're serving specifically. Where's our release of the dubs that aired here? Why did Kai TFC get put on hold until Madman acquired it? Hell, if they're importing stuff, why haven't they imported Rock The Dragon?! (Yes they did say they'd look into it after I asked them on Twitter about it... I have a hard time believing they'll actually go through with it, given their history, and the fact the one guy who talked about it said there wasn't really much progress with it, then deleted his Twitter, and the MangaUK main account has never responded to any questions about it, at least as far as I've seen)

[90sDBZ]

Though whether that's all that much better than how it was before then is debatable...

I would say it's infinitely better. Before we had literally nothing outside of the Big Green movies 2-4 on VHS and DVD. I know the Orange Bricks have their issues but they're easily better than getting nothing at all. And they topped the UK anime charts consistently and sold so well that they lead to us getting DB, GT, Kai, and the old and new movies out. Resurrection F even got a massively successful theatrical run that broke into the UK Box Office top 10 which caused the run to be extended well beyond the initial plan. It even got an encore screening several months later. In fact both BoG and RF ended up on the Sky Movie channels for several months of reruns which would never have happened without Manga UK's theatrical run of RF.

There's no denying the RF theatrical run was huge for UK fans, and is likely to be repeated and probably surpassed by the new Broly movie.

And in the meantime we're getting Super out on DVD/Blu-ray which is now caught up with the US release and is consistently topping Amazon UK's anime bestseller chart.

I just don't see how the current situation for Dragonball in the UK could conceivably be even remotely worse than it was for all those years where we were got virtually nothing.

All of this goes back to Manga UK licensing the Orange Bricks in 2012. Even if you hate that release there's always the possibility that Manga UK will acquire the new masters that are in the works, and in the meantime there's still Kai as an alternative.

MangaUK imported the cheapest, worst releases, but because there was nothing else, people bought it. They rode the tide of the dub-only cinema screenings. If Madman hadn't put out Kai TFC, MangaUK would have never acquired it, so we wouldn't even have Kai in its entirety. I suppose one could also make the argument that MangaUK could have tried to acquire Ocean's dub of Kai for DVD, since they seem to only really care about dub-fans(See below), and Ocean's dub was always what aired on TV, but that would require them making their own DVD release, which was never going to happen. At least with Z, you can argue that MangaUK could have imported the DVD single masters and repackaged those into season boxsets, which is what they did with OG Dragon Ball. Instead, we got the crappy OBs, on which you'll find about 50% of episodes 68-122 are what aired here in the UK in terms of dubbing content, except the default option uses a different score, and even the broadcast score was meddled with slightly, and the mixing was screwed up, and a lot of vocal effects are missing, and it's not even consistent within itself about any of this.

MangaUK have a pattern of doing the absolute bare minimum they can to chase after the profits other companies like Funimation or Madman get, and for that reason, they are the worst. The only reason their DVDs of OG Dragon Ball are any good is because they hastily assembled new boxes for the Australian DVDs instead of acquiring Funimation's crappy boxset which they'd've had to standards-convert to PAL, except MangaUK screwed up and never fixed the problem Madman had with the initial release of the Fortuneteller Baba DVDs, so if you're a sub-fan you have to either import another DVD release, or just put up with the fact you'll be missing an entire episode.
So, their DVD release of OG Dragon Ball is fundamentally not fit for purpose. Madman fixed this on later printings, and offered replacement discs to anyone affected by the issue. To my knowledge, MangaUK have never fixed the issue or compensated anyone wronged by this issue in any way, shape, or form.

I have a hard time imagining any other company that could have acquired Dragon Ball doing a job even as poorly as MangaUK has done. We're in an even worse situation than the USA in a lot of ways, because at least USA-based fans can complain to Funimation and petition them to put out better releases. MangaUK have always only ever been a cheap import company, so all we British fans can do is pointlessly complain online about how crap we have it. At least AB Groupe bothered to put out their own DVDs at one point, and only gave up because they used the Big Green dub, the dub of those movies that was airing on TV at the time, so it flopped; MangaUK didn't even try doing something original that might cater to the fans they're serving specifically. Where's our release of the dubs that aired here? Why did Kai TFC get put on hold until Madman acquired it? Hell, if they're importing stuff, why haven't they imported Rock The Dragon?! (Yes they did say they'd look into it after I asked them on Twitter about it... I have a hard time believing they'll actually go through with it, given their history, and the fact the one guy who talked about it said there wasn't really much progress with it, then deleted his Twitter, and the MangaUK main account has never responded to any questions about it, at least as far as I've seen)

All I'll say regarding the Orange Bricks is that the people who did buy them (and there were a lot) were more than happy with them. You need only look at the amazon UK reviews to confirm that.

As far as the Funimation/Ocean dub debate goes both aired on UK TV plenty during the height of its popularity on Cartoon Network UK. Yes Ocean aired for the majority of the run, but as we know there doesn't exist a complete uncut version of Ocean Z so it was always going to be Funimation's dub on the home release. Releasing an edited Ocean dub would have also meant excluding the Japanese version from the release which would alienate the UK sub fans. Z has obviously always been the big money maker so it was always getting released before Kai. Now in an ideal world we'd have also gotten a release of Kai with the option for Funimation, Ocean, and Japanese, but we have to remember that anime is a niche in the UK which limits the money and resources Manga UK would have to create such a release of their own.

And not that it makes a massive difference, but the encore screening I mentioned for Resurrection F was actually in Japanese.

I'll acknowledge that they have their faults as a company, and that that error on the DB sets should have absolutely been fixed, and Kai TFC should have been released much sooner. But that doesn't take away from the fact that for all those years prior to 2012 there wasn't so much as a whisper of anyone else picking up the rights. Nobody else seemed remotely interested in releasing the hugely popular Dragonball series in the UK. Yes they could have licensed it but they didn't, and Manga UK did, so I'll always be grateful to them for that.

And also you're wrong about the Big Green movies being released while they were airing. They were released on DVD/VHS in 2003 while they didn't air on Toonami UK until 2005. And just the fact that AB Groupe gave us that dub at all just speaks volumes honestly. You're clearly a big fan of the Ocean dub, so you tell me why AB Groupe never brought over the Pioneer Trilogy, the Saban dub, or at the very least the Westwood dub which they held the rights to already. You'd think at the very least they'd have aired the Ocean movie trilogy on TV but they were too cheap to even do that.

At least Manga UK did something with the home video rights which is always better than nothing in my book. And considering how many reviews there are on amazon UK from satisfied fans I'd say I'm not alone in that. Could things have been handled better? Yes. Could they have been worse? Yes, and they were much, much worse prior to Manga UK picking up the license. The franchise was literally dead over here outside of the videogames.

Without Manga UK reviving the franchise here we likely never would've had a legal way of watching Super. It's also worth noting that Jerome Mazandarani head of Manga UK tried very hard to get Super on TV for us but just couldn't get broadcasters to bite. He at least cared enough to try. At least Manga UK believed in the UK fanbase enough to push for a theatrical release of RF, something AB Groupe never did with the older movies back in the day while the show was still airing.

It's very easy to point fingers and criticise Manga UK, but we have to remember that Toei are the ones pulling the strings. For example Manga UK actually wanted to release Kai first, but Toei insisted on them releasing the Bricks, likely because they were the best selling release. I'm not complaining about it as I prefer Z anyway, but that's how it went down. At the end of the day we don't work for them and we don't know what their situation and resources are like. To me they seem like a company doing the best they can with what they have.

At the very least they're now completely on point with Super with part 5 coming out 1 week after the US release, and I trust them to do a great job with the Broly movie when the time comes.

[JohnnyCashKami]

Where?

All I can find are from £30 to £100 individually.

On eBay, people sometimes sell their Dragon Ball collections and it goes for undersold prices so it's all just a matter of patience to get a good deal. That is, for those outside US who want the Singles (even though Saiyan-Freeza arcs were never released uncut in Japanese).

Kami Cash means he doesn't feel that it's worth paying more to have the DVD singels in boxsets. As in, you can buy them for cheaper if you get just the singels without boxes.
I only paid at most US$30 per boxset. Tho, I don't have some of those later boxsets I don't have becuz they're a lot more than US$30. Since your collection contains those expensive boxsets, this isn't really unreasonably priced at all. I'd buy this from you if I didn't already have most of them already.

"Kami Cash"

That oddly reminded me of Nissan's Qashqai series.

MangaUK imported the cheapest, worst releases, but because there was nothing else, people bought it. They rode the tide of the dub-only cinema screenings. If Madman hadn't put out Kai TFC, MangaUK would have never acquired it, so we wouldn't even have Kai in its entirety. I suppose one could also make the argument that MangaUK could have tried to acquire Ocean's dub of Kai for DVD, since they seem to only really care about dub-fans(See below), and Ocean's dub was always what aired on TV, but that would require them making their own DVD release, which was never going to happen. At least with Z, you can argue that MangaUK could have imported the DVD single masters and repackaged those into season boxsets, which is what they did with OG Dragon Ball. Instead, we got the crappy OBs, on which you'll find about 50% of episodes 68-122 are what aired here in the UK in terms of dubbing content, except the default option uses a different score, and even the broadcast score was meddled with slightly, and the mixing was screwed up, and a lot of vocal effects are missing, and it's not even consistent within itself about any of this.

MangaUK have a pattern of doing the absolute bare minimum they can to chase after the profits other companies like Funimation or Madman get, and for that reason, they are the worst. The only reason their DVDs of OG Dragon Ball are any good is because they hastily assembled new boxes for the Australian DVDs instead of acquiring Funimation's crappy boxset which they'd've had to standards-convert to PAL, except MangaUK screwed up and never fixed the problem Madman had with the initial release of the Fortuneteller Baba DVDs, so if you're a sub-fan you have to either import another DVD release, or just put up with the fact you'll be missing an entire episode.
So, their DVD release of OG Dragon Ball is fundamentally not fit for purpose. Madman fixed this on later printings, and offered replacement discs to anyone affected by the issue. To my knowledge, MangaUK have never fixed the issue or compensated anyone wronged by this issue in any way, shape, or form.

I have a hard time imagining any other company that could have acquired Dragon Ball doing a job even as poorly as MangaUK has done. We're in an even worse situation than the USA in a lot of ways, because at least USA-based fans can complain to Funimation and petition them to put out better releases. MangaUK have always only ever been a cheap import company, so all we British fans can do is pointlessly complain online about how crap we have it. At least AB Groupe bothered to put out their own DVDs at one point, and only gave up because they used the Big Green dub, the dub of those movies that was airing on TV at the time, so it flopped; MangaUK didn't even try doing something original that might cater to the fans they're serving specifically. Where's our release of the dubs that aired here? Why did Kai TFC get put on hold until Madman acquired it? Hell, if they're importing stuff, why haven't they imported Rock The Dragon?! (Yes they did say they'd look into it after I asked them on Twitter about it... I have a hard time believing they'll actually go through with it, given their history, and the fact the one guy who talked about it said there wasn't really much progress with it, then deleted his Twitter, and the MangaUK main account has never responded to any questions about it, at least as far as I've seen)

Well, Madman authored the FUNimation Singles to PAL DVD format so Manga UK could have licensed that instead of the shitty Orange Bricks. The problem at hand remains to be that the Singles never had uncut Japanese audio on them and were the Ocean Dub release before it moved on to the FUNimation dub.

Manga UK is like, the fast-food chain of anime distributors.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I'll acknowledge that they have their faults as a company, and that that error on the DB sets should have absolutely been fixed, and Kai TFC should have been released much sooner.

You could argue they should have released the older movies sooner too, especially because now it's all about TOEI's new remasters. That said I'm hoping they will never fall behind on Funimation's main line releases now that they have been proactive enough to get Part 5 out within a week of the US release date.

But that doesn't take away from the fact that for all those years prior to 2012 there wasn't so much as a whisper of anyone else picking up the rights. Nobody else seemed remotely interested in releasing the hugely popular Dragonball series in the UK. Yes they could have licensed it but they didn't, and Manga UK did, so I'll always be grateful to them for that.

And also you're wrong about the Big Green movies being released while they were airing. They were released on DVD/VHS in 2003 while they didn't air on Toonami UK until 2005. And just the fact that AB Groupe gave us that dub at all just speaks volumes honestly. You're clearly a big fan of the Ocean dub, so you tell me why AB Groupe never brought over the Pioneer Trilogy, the Saban dub, or at the very least the Westwood dub which they held the rights to already. You'd think at the very least they'd have aired the Ocean movie trilogy on TV but they were too cheap to even do that.

If I recall correctly, Jerome said during his interview on the Kanzenshuu podcast (Episode #0296) that the high costs of DVD box sets in the early and mid 2000s was discouraging for distributors. I can understand where he's coming from, as series like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! didn't have full seasons on VHS and DVD in the UK until Manga released their box sets, and most distributors most likely saw Dragon Ball in the same light - another kid's fad that would fade in a few years. Best case scenario AB could have released single volumes but they would have had to start with the Saban dub, so they would have been depending on the first 107 edited episodes to sell well before they even started putting out the Westwood dub. I guess they could have put out the Blue Water dubs and started releasing single VHS and maybe DVD releases from the get-go, but sadly neither is as popular as Z, so AB may not have had the foresight to know those dubs would be collectors items in years to come. That definitely shows the confidence Manga UK had in the brand, regardless of anything else. Not to say they couldn't create more original releases, they certainly could, and I'd like them to. I want a release of the Canadian dubs more than anyone, but it would have been a huge risk back then, and it would be a tough sell now because so much time has passed.

[JohnnyCashKami]

Do you guys think Manga UK are the ones who handle the DVDs and Blu-rays that they package with their releases? Check the credits. Manga UK is far from what many of you are hoping it to be.

[Robo4900]

MangaUK imported the cheapest, worst releases, but because there was nothing else, people bought it. [...]

All I'll say regarding the Orange Bricks is that the people who did buy them (and there were a lot) were more than happy with them. You need only look at the amazon UK reviews to confirm that.

[...]

At the very least they're now completely on point with Super with part 5 coming out 1 week after the US release, and I trust them to do a great job with the Broly movie when the time comes.

Fair enough.

If I recall correctly, Jerome said during his interview on the Kanzenshuu podcast (Episode #0296) that the high costs of DVD box sets in the early and mid 2000s was discouraging for distributors. I can understand where he's coming from, as series like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! didn't have full seasons on VHS and DVD in the UK until Manga released their box sets, and most distributors most likely saw Dragon Ball in the same light - another kid's fad that would fade in a few years. Best case scenario AB could have released single volumes but they would have had to start with the Saban dub, so they would have been depending on the first 107 edited episodes to sell well before they even started putting out the Westwood dub. I guess they could have put out the Blue Water dubs and started releasing single VHS and maybe DVD releases from the get-go, but sadly neither is as popular as Z, so AB may not have had the foresight to know those dubs would be collectors items in years to come. That definitely shows the confidence Manga UK had in the brand, regardless of anything else. Not to say they couldn't create more original releases, they certainly could, and I'd like them to. I want a release of the Canadian dubs more than anyone, but it would have been a huge risk back then, and it would be a tough sell now because so much time has passed.

Fair, though Funimation did fine on edited-only releases for 53 episodes. And the Madman sets of the Ginyu saga were dub-only.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

If I recall correctly, Jerome said during his interview on the Kanzenshuu podcast (Episode #0296) that the high costs of DVD box sets in the early and mid 2000s was discouraging for distributors. I can understand where he's coming from, as series like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! didn't have full seasons on VHS and DVD in the UK until Manga released their box sets, and most distributors most likely saw Dragon Ball in the same light - another kid's fad that would fade in a few years. Best case scenario AB could have released single volumes but they would have had to start with the Saban dub, so they would have been depending on the first 107 edited episodes to sell well before they even started putting out the Westwood dub. I guess they could have put out the Blue Water dubs and started releasing single VHS and maybe DVD releases from the get-go, but sadly neither is as popular as Z, so AB may not have had the foresight to know those dubs would be collectors items in years to come. That definitely shows the confidence Manga UK had in the brand, regardless of anything else. Not to say they couldn't create more original releases, they certainly could, and I'd like them to. I want a release of the Canadian dubs more than anyone, but it would have been a huge risk back then, and it would be a tough sell now because so much time has passed.

Fair, though Funimation did fine on edited-only releases for 53 episodes. And the Madman sets of the Ginyu saga were dub-only.

It doesn't matter. Anime on home video was a tough sell back when Dragon Ball Z originally aired. Everything sold better in the US because there was a bigger market for it. Compare Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh's many DVD releases in the US compared to over here where neither series made it past volume 11 on VHS. Maybe Dragon Ball Z would have done better had AB released the series. Maybe not. We don't know. All we know is that other anime didn't sell as well as they did overseas regardless of the sub being available or not. I do think AB should have at least tried to release more DVDs though, as I said, even if they didn't make it to Dragon Ball Z episode 108 if they took a chance with the other two series we probably still could have had at least had partial releases of the Blue Water dubs (even a few singles volumes of the first few episodes would have been better than never having a home release at all).

At least Manga UK believed in the UK fanbase enough to push for a theatrical release of RF, something AB Groupe never did with the older movies back in the day while the show was still airing.

I'd guess AB didn't try get the Big Green dub movies in theatres because they weren't willing to spend the money on marketing it. I have to agree with 90sDBZ that Manga UK have shown confidence in the movies doing well at the box office. The fact AB just released some low budget dubbed movies on home video makes it seem like they had no faith in the franchise's longevity and thought a release parents could buy for their kids would suffice. Manga UK may be like the covers band of anime distributers, but I do respect them for not treating Dragon Ball like just another throwaway kids cartoon.

[90sDBZ]

If I recall correctly, Jerome said during his interview on the Kanzenshuu podcast (Episode #0296) that the high costs of DVD box sets in the early and mid 2000s was discouraging for distributors. I can understand where he's coming from, as series like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! didn't have full seasons on VHS and DVD in the UK until Manga released their box sets, and most distributors most likely saw Dragon Ball in the same light - another kid's fad that would fade in a few years. Best case scenario AB could have released single volumes but they would have had to start with the Saban dub, so they would have been depending on the first 107 edited episodes to sell well before they even started putting out the Westwood dub. I guess they could have put out the Blue Water dubs and started releasing single VHS and maybe DVD releases from the get-go, but sadly neither is as popular as Z, so AB may not have had the foresight to know those dubs would be collectors items in years to come. That definitely shows the confidence Manga UK had in the brand, regardless of anything else. Not to say they couldn't create more original releases, they certainly could, and I'd like them to. I want a release of the Canadian dubs more than anyone, but it would have been a huge risk back then, and it would be a tough sell now because so much time has passed.

I don't think I'd heard that particular podcast until now. That's interesting stuff.

Still AB Groupe back in the day could have put all the old movies out with the more familiar dubs to really test the waters before thinking about committing to boxsets for the series. As both the Ocean and Funimation dubs had aired on TV it would have made a lot more sense licensing them than suddenly releasing the Big Green dub which nobody was familiar with at the time.

Using the Big Green dub for the few movies they did release really wasn't a fair test for the UK market and they shouldn't have been remotely surprised if they undersold. If they'd simply licensed the Pioneer Trilogy first and it had done well they could have continued with the Funimation movies or maybe had the Ocean cast dub the rest for consistency, and then if they'd been a huge success move on to the series.

This would have been a better approach for them, but like you said AB Groupe didn't have faith in the longevity of the franchise.

[JohnnyCashKami]

If I recall correctly, Jerome said during his interview on the Kanzenshuu podcast (Episode #0296) that the high costs of DVD box sets in the early and mid 2000s was discouraging for distributors. I can understand where he's coming from, as series like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! didn't have full seasons on VHS and DVD in the UK until Manga released their box sets, and most distributors most likely saw Dragon Ball in the same light - another kid's fad that would fade in a few years. Best case scenario AB could have released single volumes but they would have had to start with the Saban dub, so they would have been depending on the first 107 edited episodes to sell well before they even started putting out the Westwood dub. I guess they could have put out the Blue Water dubs and started releasing single VHS and maybe DVD releases from the get-go, but sadly neither is as popular as Z, so AB may not have had the foresight to know those dubs would be collectors items in years to come. That definitely shows the confidence Manga UK had in the brand, regardless of anything else. Not to say they couldn't create more original releases, they certainly could, and I'd like them to. I want a release of the Canadian dubs more than anyone, but it would have been a huge risk back then, and it would be a tough sell now because so much time has passed.

I don't think I'd heard that particular podcast until now. That's interesting stuff.

Still AB Groupe back in the day could have put all the old movies out with the more familiar dubs to really test the waters before thinking about committing to boxsets for the series. As both the Ocean and Funimation dubs had aired on TV it would have made a lot more sense licensing them than suddenly releasing the Big Green dub which nobody was familiar with at the time.

Using the Big Green dub for the few movies they did release really wasn't a fair test for the UK market and they shouldn't have been remotely surprised if they undersold. If they'd simply licensed the Pioneer Trilogy first and it had done well they could have continued with the Funimation movies or maybe had the Ocean cast dub the rest for consistency, and then if they'd been a huge success move on to the series.

This would have been a better approach for them, but like you said AB Groupe didn't have faith in the longevity of the franchise.

AB Groupe is a French company so you can't really complain about it. They went the extra mile to give UK a few English dubs (mediocre but I digress) when they didn't have to.

Still waiting for the day to watch Big Green dub of GT Special.

[90sDBZ]

If I recall correctly, Jerome said during his interview on the Kanzenshuu podcast (Episode #0296) that the high costs of DVD box sets in the early and mid 2000s was discouraging for distributors. I can understand where he's coming from, as series like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! didn't have full seasons on VHS and DVD in the UK until Manga released their box sets, and most distributors most likely saw Dragon Ball in the same light - another kid's fad that would fade in a few years. Best case scenario AB could have released single volumes but they would have had to start with the Saban dub, so they would have been depending on the first 107 edited episodes to sell well before they even started putting out the Westwood dub. I guess they could have put out the Blue Water dubs and started releasing single VHS and maybe DVD releases from the get-go, but sadly neither is as popular as Z, so AB may not have had the foresight to know those dubs would be collectors items in years to come. That definitely shows the confidence Manga UK had in the brand, regardless of anything else. Not to say they couldn't create more original releases, they certainly could, and I'd like them to. I want a release of the Canadian dubs more than anyone, but it would have been a huge risk back then, and it would be a tough sell now because so much time has passed.

I don't think I'd heard that particular podcast until now. That's interesting stuff.

Still AB Groupe back in the day could have put all the old movies out with the more familiar dubs to really test the waters before thinking about committing to boxsets for the series. As both the Ocean and Funimation dubs had aired on TV it would have made a lot more sense licensing them than suddenly releasing the Big Green dub which nobody was familiar with at the time.

Using the Big Green dub for the few movies they did release really wasn't a fair test for the UK market and they shouldn't have been remotely surprised if they undersold. If they'd simply licensed the Pioneer Trilogy first and it had done well they could have continued with the Funimation movies or maybe had the Ocean cast dub the rest for consistency, and then if they'd been a huge success move on to the series.

This would have been a better approach for them, but like you said AB Groupe didn't have faith in the longevity of the franchise.

AB Groupe is a French company so you can't really complain about it. They went the extra mile to give UK a few English dubs (mediocre but I digress) when they didn't have to.

Still waiting for the day to watch Big Green dub of GT Special.

AB Groupe despite being a French company held the rights for the UK broadcast and home video releases. The show was a massive success on CN UK/CNX/Toonami UK from 2000 to 2005 which they no doubt made a considerable profit from. Being based in another country doesn't excuse the careless treatment they gave the franchise, and certainly doesn't take away the fans' right to want better. If it had been left up to them Dragonball would have remained a dead franchise in the UK forever while the rest of the world enjoyed watching Super.

Aside from that it was also AB Groupe who prevented the Kikuchi score from being used in the videogames in various countries for years. They held the rights hostage and charged an absurd amount for the score to be used.

[JohnnyCashKami]

If it had been left up to them Dragonball would have remained a dead franchise in the UK forever while the rest of the world enjoyed watching Super.

To be fair, anime in UK has never been that big of a hit (from the looks of it) and much less Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball was and continues to be hugely popular in European countries, other Western countries and elsewhere but Britain has been the oddball for it. It doesn't help that back then they'd only show Dragon Ball on premium paid channels in UK whereas now, there's CX (?) whom air Kai, ain't it?

I remember something about Pokémon doing great in Britain but heck, it's Pokémon so it was bound to.