FUNimation’s more-formal “season” set releases of the refreshed Dragon Ball Z Kai series officially begins 22 May 2012, but as per the norm, RightStuf is shipping out orders early… which gives us all a chance to confirm things equally nice and early!

After the announcement of possible infringing works in Kenji Yamamoto’s musical score to the series, FUNimation’s two-disc “Part” releases of Kai shifted to the Shunsuke Kikuchi replacement score (Parts 1-4: Yamamoto, Parts 5-8: Kikuchi).

It was way back in July 2011 that FUNimation first announced “season” releases for Kai, essentially combining two “Part” releases (each 13ish episodes) into one larger “season” release (26ish episodes). When the first set eventually made its way out for its 18 October 2011 release, it was assumed that, since all of the other subsequent releases had shifted over by then, this newly-packaged release would contain the Kikuchi replacement score; instead, it still had the original Yamamoto broadcast score. The set was strangely pulled from online listings shortly after its release, leading many fans to assume the Yamamoto inclusion was a mistake; however, when the set popped back up again, those purchasing it still found the Yamamoto score on the discs.

This past February, FUNimation’s solicitations noted upcoming releases of “Season One” and “Season Two” for Kai — this left “Season One” in an odd spot, since it had technically already been released, but was now a part of what appeared to be a more-consistent, well-planned “Season” release series.

Well, it has been confirmed — this new (re?)re-release of “Season One” does indeed contain the Shunsuke Kikuchi replacement score, as does the new “Season Two” release (repackaging Kai episodes 27-52 in North America for the first time, which come from “Part 3” and “Part 4” that have now been discontinued). The whole Kai release history can be incredibly confusing even for fans like us who live and breathe this stuff — check out the “Dragon Ball Z Kai TV Series” page of our “Home Video Guide” for a nice breakdown of all the different releases and which options are available on them.

Originally announced back in August 2009, France finally received a proper home release of the first Dragon Ball series spread across two giant collector’s edition DVD box sets, with the second set seeing its release back in May 2010.

Taking a card from FUNimation’s play book, it seems AB Video will be re-releasing the series in smaller, lower-priced sets. All three sets will be released 07 May 2012 and retail for 29,99 €, compared to the 149,90 € each the original two collector’s edition sets went for. As with the original two sets, the Japanese version is included with French subtitles, though since an uncut French dub was never produced, that particular track switches to the original version where it had been edited in the French dub.

Despite Dragon Ball Kai airing in three different incarnations over there (original Japanese + subtitles, uncut dub, edited dub), there are still no hints about a home release for the “refreshed” Dragon Ball Z TV series.

Thanks to our buddy sangofe for the heads-up.

Originally announced back in late 2010 and more formally launched almost a year ago in May 2011, the Japanese, arcade-only, multiplayer fighter Zenkai Battle Royale has still been getting consistent updates, including the most recent revision which includes two new playable characters: Mr. Satan and Majin Boo.

Mr. Satan participates, believing all the fancy energy attacks and such to be a trick (much as he did in the original series). Amazingly (and heading into even more gag-character territory), ki attacks and energy beams have no effect on him. His attacks include high-powered guided missiles, a remote-controlled bomb, “I just remembered some urgent business!”, and “Number One!” — this last one allows him to recover his strength from the cheers of his fans.

Boo’s special ability is to replicate others’ attacks just by watching. The only special technique he starts out with is “chocolate beam”, which turns the opponent into chocolate and allows him to regain strength by punching it (if other players hit the chocolate, it also recovers his health). However, after seeing an opponent’s long-distance energy attack, he can use “Kamehameha” to replicate it, and seeing a close-range physical technique, can replicate it using “Boo Rush”. Additionally, if his health goes below a certain point, “Angry Explosion” activates, causing the people around him to be engulfed in an explosion.

This is still no word on a possible home release of the game, and with Dragon Ball Z for Kinect looking to be this year’s exclusive home console game, Zenkai Battle Royale may be sitting another year out.

Thanks to Super Saiyan Prime for the heads-up.

While the larger story is more relevant to the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, 4Kids’ proposed assets sale to (what appears to be) Saban-owned KidsCo Media Ventures LLC includes a couple interesting tidbits relating to Dragon Ball, and more specifically the North American TV broadcast of Kai.

(…) all of Seller’s rights under the Dragon Ball Term Sheet dated March 15, 2010 between 4Kids Entertainment, Inc. and Toei Animation Inc., represented by Funimation Productions, Ltd, as amended by a letter agreement dated February 16, 2011 (“DBZ Agreement”), relating to the Dragon Ball Z Kai series

…

(ddd) “Library Assets” means (i) 26 episodes of Cubix; (ii) 52 episodes of Viva Pinata; and (iii) 52 episodes of Dragon Ball Z, each episode of which is listed on Schedule 2.1(p).

Fans had noted how the CW4Kids/Toonzai broadcast of Dragon Ball Z Kai recently went back to the beginning of the series after concluding the second “season” at 52 episodes; it appears that this is all that 4Kids had licensed of the show thus far, as opposed to Nickelodeon and Nicktoons who had licensed and broadcast the entire run through the end of the Cell arc.

The situation somewhat brings things around full-circle for this portion of the series in North America, however — it was Saban that handled TV syndication for FUNimation back in 1996-1998 with the first two “seasons” of the English-dubbed Dragon Ball Z TV series, which consisted of approximately 68 episodes edited down to 53 episodes. It gets complicated with the “alternate” English dub in the 2000s created primarily for the European market, but what is often referred to as “the Ocean dub” was always just FUNimation themselves in charge, albeit out-sourcing voice, music, and distribution talent at the time to various other companies (Ocean Studios, Shuki Levy, Saban, Pioneer, etc.).

If this assets sale/transfer goes through according to plan, Saban will be in control of the same portion of the series (as well as a little further than before) they originally handled with FUNimation sixteen years ago, and with a similar overall situation: FUNimation in charge of actually producing the show, but working with other television networks and providers to get the show on the air.

To be clear, this is all sub-license talk for the TV broadcast of Kai — FUNimation themselves has primary control of the overall franchise (via Toei) in North America up through at least 2015.

A commercial for a Portuguese-subtitled broadcast of the Japanese version of Dragon Ball Kai has made its way online courtesy of our buddy Puto:

The commercial is quite an odd one — it is a subtitle parody (a la our 2004 Dragon Ball AF prank commercial) with the original Japanese audio intact, but with the Portuguese subtitles reading as a conversation between Goku and Raditz about what the series is and what to expect from it.

An English translation of the “conversation” has also popped up on our forum. It seems as if the TV station SIC Radical over in Portugal will be airing the show, and the video masters appear to be coming through France.

The press embargo for the upcoming Dragon Ball Z for Kinect lifted yesterday, so in addition to its debut trailer, many news outlets are pushing out their hands-on impressions and such.

As expected, the game will contain over 50 characters and over 100 unique moves. It will also include one “never-before-seen” character — plenty of guesses and speculations are running rampant already, but we can probably guess that said character will likely tie in with the “exclusive anime content” we know to be included with the game, which Enos noted as debuting in the US and Europe for the first time.

The game will of course be played primarily in first-person, but as shown in the trailer, will shift to third-person for certain attacks. There are two different modes of play coming in the game: a standard story mode (where you progress through opponents and story line elements), as well as a score attack mode, which was the one shown off to press last week at Namco-Bandai’s Global Gamers Day. There is no multiplayer currently planned for the game.

Thanks to Super Saiyan Prime for the heads-up.