The majority of the information in the “Full Color” section of the website has been recycled, saying the “adventurous battle scenes” will be presented in new “vivid colors”, each volume will contain 17 chapters on 248 pages, etc. So far only the Saiyan and Freeza arc releases are listed, with both now set at a price point of ¥630. However, the Chōzenshū section unveils the names of the remaining guides:
Dragon Ball Chōzenshū 1: Story & World Guide — 05 February 2013
Dragon Ball Chōzenshū 2: Animation Guide Part 1 — 05 March 2013
Dragon Ball Chōzenshū 3: Animation Guide Part 2 — 04 April 2013
The first Chōzenshū volume is a combination of “Daizenshuu 2: Story Guide” and “Daizenshuu 4: World Guide”, both of which are manga-oriented guides. The second and third Chōzenshū volumes are a not yet specified combination of the various anime-based books, including “Daizenshuu 3: TV Animation Part 1″, “Daizenshuu 5: TV Animation Part 2″, “Daizenshuu 6: Movies & TV Specials”, and the final supplemental daizenshuu, “TV Animation Part 3″. The fourth and final Chōzenshū volume will be based on “Daizenshuu 7: Dragon Ball Large Encyclopedia”, and will presumably be the guide with the most updated data and information.
Shueisha has also updated their listings with anticipated April manga releases, which now includes the first tankōbon volume of Dragon Ball SD, the ongoing spin-off by Naho Ooishi in Saikyō Jump. There is no price point listed just yet, nor any other information about how the chapters will be handled — four quarterly chapters were initially released that quickly covered the main story points of the series, followed by monthly chapters which more gradually cover the series.
We will be sure to keep you updated in every area!
Despite FLOW being announced to perform a cover of “CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA” — the first opening theme to the Dragon Ball Z TV series — for the upcoming Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods theatrical film, as well as having a CD single announced for said song… we really have not known a whole lot about the CD single other than its release date and a possible inclusion of a bonus/insert song.
HERO 〜希望の歌〜-Instrumental- (“HERO ~Song of Hope~ -Instrumental-“)
CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA -Instrumental-
Perhaps the most curious inclusion is the apparent “Official English Version” of “CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA”. There have been plenty of CD single releases with English versions in the past (particularly for video games, such as with “Sparking! METEOR / Burst Limit” and “Infinite World“), but this has not necessarily meant that the English versions would be included or featured in the games. Does this imply a forthcoming international release announcement…? We are certainly in no way comfortable enough to make that leap of faith, but we cannot help but get excited!
Track 3 will be a remix of a song from way back on the band’s fourth CD single in April 2004 (containing a song Naruto fans are likely familiar with). DJ DRAGON penned a short blog post about his remix of the track, stating it is a “super climax of the standard song” and is a “very flashy EDM (electronic dance music) REMIX”.
The English word “Hero” has come up a few times in Dragon Ball feature presentation music history, popping up in both the title to Dragon Ball Z Movie 6’s closing theme (“HERO (Kimi ga Hīrō)”) and the 2008 Jump Super Anime Tour Special’s closing theme (“Orange Hero”). Will “HERO ~Song of Hope~” be this supposed insert song for Battle of Gods…?
FLOW’s performance for the movie was briefly featured in this month’s March 2013 issue of V-Jump, though written out as “CHA-RA HEAD-CHA-RA”.
The first-press version of FLOW’s CD single will come with a digipak cover featuring an exclusive Dragon Ball illustration, which still has yet to be revealed. The CD single (KSCL-2209) drops 20 March 2013 in Japan.
We are very proud of having been able to partner with Akira Toriyama, a pioneer among manga creators, in bringing the first-ever Japanese film to IMAX Digital Theater screens.
With its fast-paced action scenes and eye-popping visuals, we are certain that Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods will be perfect for the IMAX experience.
The film is planned to screen at all 16 IMAX Digital Theater locations across the country.
IMAX is a high-resolution format used for theatrical and special types of video presentations. Most features made with IMAX in mind are also made with smaller screen presentations in mind, since not every theater or screening house will be capable of presenting the material in such a format.
In addition to the previously-announced “Parents and Children Play Together! Mightiest Battle Goods, Round 1” items at KFC in Japan, the food outlet is going all-in with a new series of promotions.
Starting Thursday, 28 February 2013, KFC restaurants nationwide will begin a Dragon Ball Z promotion which will involve the selling of five different meals or packs that will come with a bottle with a glowing cap called “Hikaru! Dragon Bottle” with eight kinds of bottles in all. On a limited basis, they will also be selling “complete packs” with all eight included in one collection.
Seven of the bottles have a Dragon Ball (One-Star through Seven-Star Ball) as the cap, while the remaining one has a cap modeled after Goku’s hair as a Super Saiyan. The bottles themselves are made of aluminum and have a character from the upcoming film, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, on the side.
“Hikaru! Dragon Bottle Mightiest Pack A” includes two pieces of Original Chicken, two pieces of “Colonel’s Crispy”, large French Fries, and one bottle
“Hikaru! Dragon Bottle Mightiest Pack B” includes five pieces of Original Chicken, large fries, and one Dragon Bottle
“Hikaru! Dragon Bottle Mightiest Meal C” includes one piece of Original Chicken, large fries, and one Dragon Bottle
“Hikaru! Dragon Bottle Mightiest Meal S” has one Chicken Filet Sandwich, large fries, and one Dragon Bottle
While supplies last, a “Complete Pack” will be available with all eight Dragon Bottles and an exclusive box alongside 6-piece Original Chicken
Prior to that, beginning 07 February 2013, KFC will introduce plastic takeout bags with a Son Goku design on them.
In addition, seven locations around Japan will have their statue of Colonel Sanders dressed in Goku’s dōgi, with each of them also holding a different Dragon Ball, starting 15 February 2013:
Abeno Q’s Mall in Osaka
Sapporo Esta in Hokkaido
Sendai Station (changed from THE MALL Sendai Nagamachi) in Miyagi Prefecture
Ebisu Station in Tokyo
Sakae (Nagoya) in Aichi Prefecture
Tenjin Southern-dōri (changed from Canal City Hakata) (Fukuoka) in Fukuoka Prefecture
San-A Main Place in Okinawa
Starting 28 February 2013, if you “Like” KFC Japan’s Facebook page, you will have access to a “which character are you?”-style Facebook app where, by answering some basic questions, you will get one of 30 responses. You can do it as many times as you want.
Between 28 February 2013 and 24 April 2013, if you buy one of the Dragon Bottle meals or one of the Dragon Ball toy Smile Sets, you will get a stamp. Collect seven stamps, and you can be entered in a chance to win one of 777 sets that include a “Dragon Radar”-shaped detector item and seven Dragon Ball keychains that react by sounding a buzzer when the detector is brought close. At the same time, if you are one of the first 200 people to submit your seven stamps at a given KFC location, you will be given a free Battle of Gods poster — it is specifically noted as a “KFC Original Poster”, but the image provided is just of the theatrical poster.
Dragon Ball has not seen promotion like this in quite a while, with one of the last toy pushes in Japan back in 2008 at McDonald’s. We cannot wait to see what else is coming our way in 2013!
Last week we pored through all of the information from the March 2013 issue of V-Jump, or so we thought. We actually missed a single page (pointed out us by forum member omegalucas) hidden near the back of the issue that showcased “tentative” cover art for both of the upcoming Chōzenshū and “Full Color Comics” releases (scan courtesy of Nostal/Treevax). As of this morning, Shueisha has finally updated their listings with the official cover art for both releases, which appears to be unaltered from these “tentative” covers showcased in V-Jump.
The Chōzenshū are a condensed four volume collection of hardcover databooks which are being published to replace and expand upon the now out of print Daizenshuu databooks. However, although this collection is based on the contents of the original Daizenshuu, they will feature new and updated material that has come to light in the years since their original publication. The first Chōzenshū, titled “Story & World Guide”, appears to be a combination of “Daizenshuu 2: Story Guide” and “Daizenshuu 4: World Guide“, and features the latter’s original cover illustration by Akira Toriyama. This first volume of the series is due out 05 February 2013 — though V-Jump still lists the original 04 February 2013 release date — for ¥2,200 and is currently available from your favorite online retailers, such as Amazon Japan and CDJapan.
The “Full Color Comics” are a fully-colored re-release of the original Dragon Ball manga series, which at the moment are planned to cover the entirety of the “Z”-era storyline. Each volume will contain 17 chapters on 248 pages, with the first three comics covering chapters 195 to 245: Raditz’s arrival on Earth to our heroes’ departure for Planet Namek. The volumes will be the same size as the original tankōbon releases, although thicker, as each tankōbon volume typically only contained 12 to 13 chapters. The first three comics will cost a bit more than your standard tankōbon, at ¥630 each, and will be available 04 February 2013.
Dragon Ball Full Color: Saiyan Arc Vol. 01 (Amazon Japan / CDJapan) Dragon Ball Chapters 195-211
Dragon Ball Full Color: Saiyan Arc Vol. 02 (Amazon Japan / CDJapan) Dragon Ball Chapters 212-228
Dragon Ball Full Color: Saiyan Arc Vol. 03 (Amazon Japan / CDJapan) Dragon Ball Chapters 228-245
For those of you that live in the United States, you will also be able to grab these releases digitally via the North American edition of Weekly Shonen Jump starting the same day-and-date (04 February 2013) as the print edition in Japan. You can subscribe to the magazine’s North American digital edition on Viz’s official Weekly Shonen Jump website.
UPDATE: Shueisha’s official listing for “Chōzenshū 1: Story & World Guide” has been updated yet again, this time noting that the guide will include a brand new interview with original author Akira Toriyama.
The promotion for the 30 March 2013 release of the new theatrical film, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, is hitting full stride. The movie was featured on this morning’s episode of Mezamashi TV, a news/magazine show in Japan. In the short feature, Fuji TV announcer Shin’ichi Karube is revealed to have a bit part in the new movie.
On what appears to have been the same day as the “open recording” with Shōko Nakagawa and Kaori Matsumoto, Karube went in and met with director Masahiro Hosoda, who showed him his character (not vetted by Toriyama, apparently). As they get set to record, he follows the director back into the control booth, where Hosoda comments on him being a “complete amateur”. His line, in the clip, is simply, “it’s called ‘sushi'”. Similar to Matsumoto, his character is based on his own appearance, and the knot on his headband looks like a bow tie. Afterwards, he has a Kamehameha-off with Matsumoto to see who can produce the greater ki — Matsumoto wins. He asks her how she would win if she were fighting against Goku, and she says that in the instant he fired a Kamehameha, she would dodge it and then do a one-armed shoulder throw (ippon-zeoi)… though Goku would be disqualified by using an outside object (that being the Kamehameha).
The spotlight also gives us a quick glimpse at some other scenes in the movie with animatics of Vegeta being hit, a fully-animated shot of Matumoto’s police officer character, and more.
Big thanks to our buddy kei17 for providing us with full coverage of the spotlight.
With the constant influx of news (and evenmore-so since we recorded this particular episode just yesterday), we decided to take a week and focus on some of the minor-but-wonderful content we have recently brought to Kanzenshuu. We dove into the rest of the voice actor interviews from the 2004 Dragon Ball TV guide book Tenka’ichi Densetsu and also took a trip back in time to discuss “Super Saiyan Grade V“.
Things are only going to heat up from here until the end of March, so stay with us to keep up with every single shred of information!
SHOW DESCRIPTION:
Episode #0322! VegettoEX and Hujio catch up on a little news before diving into some fun content recently brought to the website. A wealth of trends and stories from the voice actor interviews in the 2004 Dragon Ball TV guide book “Tenka’ichi Densetsu” are discussed, as well as “Super Saiyan Grade V”, the name temporarily given to Gohan back in 1993 for what we now know as “Super Saiyan 2”.
The new “Full Color Comics” for the Dragon Ball manga are set to hit Japan next week, and it turns out that North America is not far behind! Revealed in this week’s North American edition of Weekly Shonen Jump is the great news that the series will pick up in the next issue — hitting 04 February 2013, day-and-date with the print edition in Japan — for us fans across the ocean.
Single-volume weekly issues of Viz’s Weekly Shonen Jump are available for $0.99 a pop, while a yearly subscription is also available for $25.99. Purchases have recently shifted to download-to-own, meaning that — as long as Viz exists and the service is provided — you can continue to enjoy and read your purchases, even if you let a subscription lapse.
In Japan, the first three volumes for the Saiyan Arc of the “Full Color Comics” hit store shelves 04 February 2013. While these particular volumes will be released print-only, Shueisha has announced potential plans to go back and do the first (non-“Z”, if you will) portion of the series as digital-only while they continue onward to the Freeza, Cell, and Majin Boo arcs in print.
A recent “open recording” event for press was held in Japan promoting the voice performances of Olympic gold-medalist jūdō-kaKaori Matsumoto and voice actress/singer/TV-personality Shōko Nakagawa with some of their lines from the upcoming theatrical presentation, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, set to debut in Japan 30 March 2013. The two were announced to be playing bit parts in the movie earlier this month.
Mainichi Shimbun Digital posted an abbreviated version of the session:
At the beginning of this particular clip, Nakagawa says that she is so happy she is in tears, but she will do her best anyway. They play back her lines (opposite “Birusu”), then she does them a few times. What appears to be the voice director (at least in this example video) tells her to do it one more time, then again, but cuter.
A similar video was posted by Movie Collection with more material:
Matsumoto’s line is, “Again? Are they setting off extra-large fireworks or something at Capsule Corporation?” The voice director (or whoever it is that is in charge and talking to her) asks her to do it again with more energy. Nakagawa’s advice to her is, “like you’ve raised your Battle Power to the max”. Next up is Nakagawa, and here (as in the other video), she says she is so happy she is in tears, but she will do her best as-is. The exact exchange of dialog, pulling from the two video sources above, comes out to:
BIRUSU: “Oracle Fish! Oracle Fish, are you here?” ORACLE FISH: “[lots of weird warbling] … I was out for a stroll. What is it?” BIRUSU: “39 years ago, you said that, 39 years hence, a strong enemy would appear before me.” ORACLE FISH: “Did I say that?” BIRUSU: “You did, didn’t you?” ORACLE FISH: “Hmm… then, I said it!”
After the recording is a joint interview with Masako Nozawa. Someone asks Nakagawa how it was, and she says “I can’t stop crying today, I’m just too happy. The greatest miracle in my life has occurred.” The actress goes into a long spiel about how she has always gained courage and strength from the series, and how becoming an adult, and leafing through the pages of Jump, and seeing the announcement, and then to think she was called upon, etc. — the basic amount of incredible joy one might expect. Nakagawa continues (mirroring her official statement from earlier in the month):
Just to think I’d be in the same universe as Trunks, Goku, and Vegeta, breathing the same air, I really couldn’t sleep, so I did the recording without getting any sleep, but it’s a dream come true, I thought it was a fantasy, but today, I actually got to meet you, Nozawa-san, and I’m so happy, I… [incoherent blubbering]
As for the Oracle Fish, she did not want her voice to be recognizable:
… as far as Dragon Ball is concerned, I felt that a voice recognizable as “Shoko-tan” would be something fans would really dislike, so I tried a bunch of different voices in order not to give a “Shoko-tan” feeling, and finally I got the director’s OK, so I’m really looking forward to the movie.
Nozawa says it is her second time performing together with Nakagawa; the previous time was all right, but this time, with the power in her voice, and the way she broke into a cute voice, was good and not at all Shoko-tan-like.
A reporter asks how Matsumoto feels about having participated in recording, since she likes Goku:
MATSUMOTO: “I’m incredibly happy, but I don’t show much emotion, apart from matches…” NOZAWA: “That’s fine, as long as you show it then.” NAKAGAWA: “The moment you won the medal, did you use the Kaiō-ken? Like, times 20, or 30?” MATSUMOTO: “I did it with the power of this world.”
Nakagawa was then asked if she had any special requests for Masako Nozawa:
NAKAGAWA: “Re- request? Um… well, could you say, ‘Heya, Shoko-tan!’ and then something like Goku would say?” NOZAWA: “All right. ‘Heya, Shoko-tan! Wanna go get some grub with me?'” NAKAGAWA: “YES I WILL! I can’t believe it! I’m terribly sorry, making such an extravagant request in front of all of you… and I think I’ve peed myself.”
The event wraps up with a triple-Kamehameha and a final remark from Nakagawa of, “Uwaa! My scouter just broke! That was the greatest…”
UPDATE: In addition to the above videos, a new article on the Japanese website “CinemaToday” contains a small gallery of promotional photographs from the recording session. In the last few photos Matsumoto is holding a cutout of the police office modeled after herself, while Nakagawa is holding a scepter-like figure of the “Oracle Fish”, giving us a first glimpse at their respective characters.
One of the old Daizenshuu EX guides that many of you really seemed to love was the “Transformation Guide”. In it, we broke down all of the different Super Saiyan forms, movie character forms, and so on and so forth. It was one of the sections we intentionally left by the wayside when we fused into Kanzenshuu — as one of the earlier guides that we did in our post-2003 relaunch, it deserved a whole lot more attention and care than we gave it back then. There has also been a deluge of more guidebooks released since we first launched it, so there is even more information to toss in there.
There is also older information to toss in there, too, believe it or not! One of the recent discussion threads that has popped up on our forum questioned what exactly Japanese fans called Gohan’s transformation after #16 was killed during the battle with Cell. In the series, it is not given a proper name. We of course refer to it as “Super Saiyan 2” nowadays without even thinking of it, but it is important to note that the stage was never given a name in the series until much later — in manga chapter 474, Goku displays the various transformations to Majin Boo, and along the way to Super Saiyan 3, supposed aloud that you could call the stage in the middle “Super Saiyan 2”.
So the question remains: what did people call Gohan after he transformed? Some digging around Japanese Wikipedia led us to a book that we have owned for a while and never bothered to really put some time into: the “Anime Comic” release of the Trunks TV Special.
The book was released 31 May 1993. Over in the manga, the Majin Boo story arc was only just getting started — that same week would have been manga chapter 424, around the time that Gohan begins high school, meets Videl, etc. Over in the TV series, Gohan would have transformed against Cell a mere two weeks earlier. This truly was “fresh” information.
What does this “Anime Comic” release have to do with anything? The back of the book details the various Super Saiyan transformations seen up to that point. Along with the standard “Super Saiyan” and even “Super Saiyan Grade II (two)” and “Super Saiyan Grade III (three)” — the bulkier forms shown off by the likes of Vegeta, Trunks, and Goku — it goes on to talk about what is later called “Full Power Super Saiyan” and then what Gohan becomes. Interestingly, the book keeps the naming consistency going strong, referring to them as “Super Saiyan Grade IV (four)” and “Super Saiyan Grade V (five)”.
So there you have it — “Super Saiyan 2”, before Goku ever gave it a proper name in the series, could have and would be referred to as “Super Saiyan Grade V“.
Until the “Transformation Guide” can return in a bigger-and-better format, please enjoy these tidbits of information! As you might expect, our own Herms has a nice breakdown over on our forum for even more information and context.
