So, something worth noting for better or for worse is that
on this day 10 years ago it was finally revealed that the Dragon Ball series would be coming to DVD in the UK and Ireland.
It should be noted that while this day marks the anniversary of said announcement, it had leaked much earlier than that. Fans less than a year earlier noticed a BBFC listing for Dragon Ball Z, which Manga UK were
quick to shut down. It's likely with such a massive license on their hands strict NDAs were in place the company had to abide by. Fans of course knew, with such specifics like the number of discs, episodes per disc and special features listed this listing was legit and only a matter of time before it would be revealed publicly.
Prior to the formal announcement Manga UK confirmed via Twitter on 16th March 2012:
Worst kept secret in the anime biz isn't it? Will reveal all at MCM Expo Birmingham on Sat 31t March.
As the aforementioned announcement predates said convention by 3 days, it seems Manga UK knew they wouldn't be able to contain the excitement for a Dragon Ball home release any longer. It was a long time coming, and the DVDs they initially released would become huge sellers despite already being imported in large quantities.
Regardless of how one feels about the orange bricks they were a very lucrative product for Manga UK, and led to the rest of the series, and all the movies and specials that have had releases in other English-speaking countries (with the exception of Path to Power and Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return) being released here. For countries that once only ever had three movies with poorly done English dubs on store shelves, I was happy to see that in only a few years time from Manga UK picking up the series fans could walk into a HMV and have so many more options.
Here's
another article published the same day, courtesy of animechronicleuk by Jeremy Graves, at the time a freelance videographer for Manga UK, who went on to be Community Liaison for the company, and then worked his way up to being a Marketing Executive for Anime Limited.
The mention here of a "Malaysian dub cast" can likely be chalked up to Jeremy confusing the Big Green dub with the Speedy dub, but I do appreciate the fact he acknowledged the Ocean Group dubs in this article, as it shows Manga UK were at least aware of them. From what I've heard Manga UK were interested in acquiring the Ocean dubs as extra audio tracks at one point, but were unaware they were edited, which would mean they couldn't sync to uncut footage. The higher-ups wanting a bilingual release for a flagship property shut down the idea.
Since then none of the Ocean dubs have been released on home video here, or even seen the light of day since Dragon Ball's original run on Cartoon Network, CNX and Toonami ended in 2005. Manga UK's announcement was also a good nine years after the closure of the UKDB site I mentioned previously, which may explain another scoop I've heard, that being Manga UK were unaware who owned the Ocean dubs. It is therefore no surprise the company's head at the time Jerome Mazandarani said there were "rights complications" with the Ocean dubs to a friend of mine who asked him if these dubs could be released.
Sadly in the years since UKDB closed much of their research was lost to time and only shared among fans who either owned or frequented the site at the time (sadly I wasn't one of these lucky ones), which has led to misconceptions Manga UK were likewise led to believe, such as AB Groupe producing said dubs. Indeed not only did the UKDB crew uncover the Westwood and Blue Water dubs were in fact produced by Westwood Media, a production arm of Ocean (by extension meaning yes contrary to popular belief Ocean, did, for all intents and purposes produce their own dubs), but more recently a veteran of these forums took the initiative to call Ocean Studios himself and was told by a higher up the company still had all the masters for these dubs and could easily provide them should any distributor be interested in doing a DVD release.
With the successes Manga UK since had with this franchise it is arguably a shame the information about who produced the Ocean dubs wasn't more widely circulating at the time. In theory they could have worked out a deal with Ocean and TOEI to get the Canadian dubs released physically as an independent release that would not need to compete with the season sets, which catered to the two other markets, which no doubt existed among UK and Irish DVD buyers, that being fans of the Japanese version and Funimation's dub.
I certainly would have welcomed a release with all the Ocean dubs and the TV promos recorded over the years as a love letter to UK Dragon Ball fans. I do hope something like this could still become a reality. Manga UK in the last year has undergone two rebrandings, firstly to Funimation on 19th April 2021 and more recently Crunchyroll on 2nd March 2022. The same team still work at the UK office, so I urge anyone that wants the Ocean dubs to be available once again to continue to email, Tweet the company to make your voice heard. It may never happen, but it's always better to try.