We are a little late on this, but the numbers are finally interesting to us, again!

Namco-Bandai has posted a ¥8.275 billion (approximately $101.7 million) profit for the third quarter of fiscal year 2012.

Unlike the last several quarters, the Dragon Ball franchise actually performed well enough to show up in the top five-to-six franchises to allow for more extensive figures, with net sales of ¥6.7 billion for the three quarters, up from ¥4.9 billion the same period in the prior year. The company is forecasting a full year net sales total of ¥10.5 billion for fiscal 2012, up from the ¥8.3 billion net sales total in fiscal 2011 — this is all compared to the ¥12.5 billion total net sales in fiscal 2010, and the ¥15.8 billion in fiscal 2009.

In terms of general toys and hobby merchandise (non-video games), the franchise jumped in net sales from ¥1.7 billion the same three quarters of fiscal 2011 to ¥3.2 billion this year, and the company is forecasting a total of ¥4.0 billion for the full year, compared to ¥2.7 billion in Fiscal 2011.

No individual Dragon Ball video game sales were noted in the report — the cutoff for unit sales that are reported in the top five was One Piece Gigant Battle 2 at 350,000 units in Japan, which means that Ultimate Blast/Tenkaichi sold less than this amount.

There was a bit of concern among fandom a little over a month ago when FUNimation announced that the first four “parts” of their Z Kai release (on both DVD and Blu-ray) were being discontinued in favor of “season” sets. “Part 7” was still on the books for a late March release, coming in a whopping six months after the prior two-disc set… but would it ultimately see the light of day?

Our forum member Travis Touchdown popped in today to reveal that RightStuf is already shipping out their orders for the discs (officially due out 27 March 2012), and his arrived today:

Furthermore, the release contains a teaser for “Part 8”, which will wrap up the series with episodes 89 to 98 — that also means it will include the “bonus” episode that never aired on Japanese television due to the earthquake and tsunami disaster.

We really dropped the ball on this one. Despite receiving the issue about a week ago and flipping through it briefly, we totally missed something pretty neat.

The April 2012 issue of V-Jump was set to receive a reprint of Episode of Bardock, Naho Ooishi’s spin-off sequel manga to Bardock’s TV special from back in 1990 (itself tied in with various Dragon Ball Heroes updates and other merchandise). Originally published in the August, September, and October 2011 V-Jump issues, the three chapters came, went, and led in to an anime adaptation.

What we were not expecting was the fact that the manga reprint would receive new material! An additional two pages were added to wrap things up; instead of closing almost directly with the defeat (and likely death) of Chilled and the passing-down of the Super Saiyan legend, similar to the anime adaptation, these new pages cut back over to Bardock and the residents of Planet Plant that he just saved (and, for some reason, Bardock heroically walking off into the sunset):

The April 2012 V-Jump issue is currently sold out on Play-Asia, but is still available via Amazon Japan.

We have a full review of the original version of the manga over in our “Reviews” section here on the website, and we also gave it a shake-down back on Episode #0271 of our podcast — we also reviewed the anime adaptation back on Episode #0282.

Though we mentioned this in the most recent podcast episode, we neglected to make a proper news update about it! FUNimation’s May solicitations confirm “Season 1” and “Season 2” collections of Kai from the company, which would not be strange were it not for the fact that “Season 1” has already been released.

The first set had a strange history, initially announced back in July 2011 for an October release, and then being pulled and re-stocked from online retailer shelves at least two times. It was assumed each time that such an abrupt pull and re-release would have to do with the musical score replacement, but each time it seemed to still have the original Kenji Yamamoto broadcast score. Will this (re?)re-release feature the Shunsuke Kikuchi score? It seems as though we will just have to wait and see (well, listen) once May hits.

These sets come on the heels of the first four individual sets officially being discontinued, all four of which featured the Kenji Yamamoto score before the possible-infringement scandal broke in Japan, resulting in a replacement score for all international productions of the show.

Following up on the initial report and rating board leak of an upcoming Dragon Ball Z game for the Xbox 360’s Kinect, now the British Board of Film Classification has rated a title simply called “Dragon Ball Z For Kinect” (rated for ages 12 and up), but also with a release date: 15 June 2012.

The rating notes a “special movie” with a run-time just under 20 minutes included as a part of the game.

This one is coming right up on the horizon, so we should be receiving some solid confirmations (such as more international release dates) pretty soon, it would seem.

Blistered Thumbs tossed out their own report earlier this month that Namco-Bandai was potentially working on a Dragon Ball Z game for the hands-free Kinect for Microsoft’s Xbox 360. Just this morning, Siliconera noted a rating for the simply-titled Dragon Ball Z Kinect action game on Korea’s Game Rating Board confirming the game’s existence.

No word on a time frame or locations for release, but with the dreadful response Kinect has had over in Japan, it can be pretty much guaranteed that if they are bothering to make the game we will see this one over here in North America.

Shueisha will reprint the three-chapter Episode of Bardock spin-off manga by Naho Ooishi in the upcoming April 2012 issue of V-Jump in Japan.

The short new story by Ooishi (who is also currently responsible for Dragon Ball SD in Shueisha’s Saikyō Jump magazine) was originally printed in one chapter intervals in the August, September, and October 2011 issues of V-Jump. Described as a “sequel” to Bardock’s TV special from 1990, the story follows him into the past and divulges the “legend” of the Super Saiyan. The spin-off was recently adapted into an animated version which debuted at Jump Festa last December (as well as streamed online for a short period), and was packed in with March’s Saikyō Jump on a bonus DVD just this month.

For those who missed out on picking up the individual issues last year, and if our review sounds interesting to you, Play-Asia has the April 2012 V-Jump up for pre-order. The magazine drops 21 February 2012 in Japan.

Thanks to Liam for the heads-up on the reprint.

Perhaps in light of the recent news that FUNimation has (after only six months from the original project announcement) suspended all work on their own in-house Blu-ray remaster of the Dragon Ball Z TV series, FUNimation has put up a new survey indicating they are interested in releasing additional Dragon Box versions of the franchise, and are requesting fan input on which series to go with next.

The “Dragon Box” versions of the franchise were originally released in giant DVD box sets in Japan from 2003 to 2006, and later re-released on individual DVDs — it was actually the first time the series (other than the movies) ever received a home release in Japan. Toei and Pony Canyon went back to their film masters for the franchise in cold storage and performed a meticulous remaster for the expensive products.

FUNimation released the Dragon Ball Z TV series in its Dragon Box form (spanning seven smaller boxes) in North America from 2009 to 2011 shortly after completing their cropped “season set” run. As a part of the initial press release back in July 2009, FUNimation noted (emphasis our own):

…it has acquired the original masters for the entire Dragon Ball Z anime series, episodes and films, and will release all as the Dragon Box for the first time in the U.S.

Nothing was ever stated about the movies after that point, and inquiries were always met with the (expected, of course) answer that the current focus was on the TV series.

It is worth noting that FUNimation’s blog entry for the survey has the following disclaimer:

DISCLAIMER: Now, before anyone starts to go into conniptions, this is not a guarantee that we will be releasing more Dragon Boxes. At this point, we are considering it. But, we need input from all of our fans. So, if you want to see your favorite Dragon Ball saga get the Limited Edition Dragon Box treatment, make sure you take this survey and tell all your friends to take it too. The more responses we get, the better.

So with all that being said, take the survey and let them know what you are interested in!