Goku’s Corner has a fan Q&A session all about Raging Blast 2 with Ryo Mito, the game’s producer. There is not a whole lot divulged about the game that is not already known, though there are confirmations on new modes, about 20 “new characters” (meaning characters and forms that did not appear in the first Raging Blast from last year), and a few new official screen shots.

In related news, Paikuhan, Nail, and Future Gohan have been revealed as playable characters in the game. All three have appeared in previous video games, but were not included in the first Raging Blast.

UPDATE: Namco-Bandai has released new images of the game for Comic-Con, confirming the return of Super Saiyan 3 Broli and Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta from the first Raging Blast:

There is nothing that gets Dragon Ball fans more riled up than some awesome sticker books! Luckily, there are three new sticker books coming out over the next two months. The books are being released in conjunction with three new One Piece sticker books, so it appears they are aiming for the new, and much younger, “Dream 9” audience.

Each series’ three books are divided up into a “Character Book”, “Story Book”, and “Quiz Book”. The “Story Book” is due out 23 July 2010 for ¥780 (~$8.50) and will contain character and backdrop stickers so you can recreate your favorite scenes from Kai thus far. The “Character Book” and “Quiz Book” are both due out 20 August 2010 for ¥780 (~$8.50). The “Character Book” will contain stickers of the main characters that have appeared in Kai, while the “Quiz Book” will have quizzes, puzzles, and mazes that involve stickers. All six Dragon Ball and One Piece sticker books were originally set to be released in July, but have now been awkwardly split up over two months.

Veteran voice actor and director Yūji Mitsuya will be a guest at Otakon at the end of this month down in Baltimore. Mitsuya would be best known to fans as the voice of Kaiōshin in the Dragon Ball Z TV series. Hopefully we can snag some pictures while we are there!

We are unfortunately reaching a point where these news stories are all too common, but their impact never diminishes. Tetsuo Mizutori has passed away at the age of 71. Dragon Ball fans may remember him as Zald, one of Garlic Jr.’s new henchmen in the anime-only story arc immediately prior to Mecha Freeza’s and Trunks’ arrival, though he was more widely known for roles in series such as Kinnikuman.

The Garlic Jr. story arc was skipped for the on-going Dragon Ball Kai TV series due to it being an original story and one of Kai‘s main points being that it more strictly adheres to author Akira Toriyama’s original comic. Mizutori had played no other roles in the series or movies.

One of Garlic Jr.’s other new henchman for this part of the series, Vinegar, was played by the late Daisuke Gōri, who had played a wealth of other characters in the series (Gyū-Maō, Enma-Daiō, King Cold, Mr. Satan, etc.).

Coincidentally, the other two henchmen of Garlic Jr. from this story arc were played by actors who have stepped up as replacement roles in Dragon Ball Kai. Tard was played by Masaharu Satō, who has filled in for the late Kōhei Miyauchi as the voice of Kame-Sen’nin, while Gashew was played by Hikaru Midorikawa, who has filled in for the late Hirotaka Suzuoki as Tenshinhan (in addition to his other role as #16, as well as Paikuhan in recent video games).

We have often mentioned in passing how much of an international phenomenon Dragon Ball really is — specifically the original Japanese version — but it has usually been pure speculation based on observations of the general fanbase. Besides seeing how many international visitors this and many other Japanese-oriented Dragon Ball fansites get, we now have some actual sales numbers from Toei Animation to put along with it. The first quarter of the 2011 fiscal year (FY11) ended on 30 June 2010 and a month later Toei Animation released their fiscal report detailing their top four anime properties, both domestically (in Japan) and internationally.  For the sake of this update and everyone’s sanity, I will be focusing on the fiscal year sales numbers rather than each individual quarter. To help gauge the significance of these sales I will be comparing the sales numbers between Dragon Ball and One Piece between FY04 and FY11.

Dragon Ball has been doing fairly well in Japan over the past few years, with a nice spike in sales between FY06 and FY08 when the Dragon Ball Z individual discs were being sold. Following FY08, sales began to drop off slightly, and even with Dragon Ball Kai premiering at the very beginning of FY10, the sales in Japan have continued to drop. Conversely, after slightly dropping off between FY05 and FY09, One Piece sales have rapidly been rising. In fact, One Piece made ¥669 million for the total of FY10, but has already out sold that fiscal year in just one quarter of this fiscal year, most likely due to the series’ film, Strong World. By the 2nd quarter of FY11, One Piece could conceivably make over ¥1 billion in total net sales, a feat last accomplished by Dragon Ball!

With Dragon Ball on the decline after peaking at ¥1.23 billion in FY07 and One Piece possibly heading toward ¥1 trillion in FY11, it seems One Piece has completely taken over the sales market in Japan. It seems all too clear now why Fuji TV decided to combine Dragon Ball Kai and One Piece in an anime block. The big question is, though: does Dragon Ball still hold up internationally these days, even though it is now not the largest bread winner in Japan?

With no surprise, Dragon Ball is still the best selling anime series internationally, far and away surpassing One Piece and almost every other anime series. In fact, the profit share for most anime series between domestic and overseas sales is 80:20, whereas Dragon Ball itself is approximately 30:70, meaning on average Dragon Ball has made 70% of all its net profit over the last seven fiscal years from international sales. In the last fiscal year alone, Dragon Ball netted ¥1.62 billion internationally, but only grabbed ¥598 million domestically in Japan. I know everyone loves looking at the graphs and numbers, but what is the real point to all this? Well, simply, the funding of Dragon Ball Kai.

This year, veteran voice actor and director Yūji Mitsuya held a Q&A panel at Otakon. Most Dragon Ball fans will recognize him as the voice of Kaiōshin in Dragon Ball Z. After telling some hilarious stories, and having a fire alarm pulled on us, we ended up in the nearby Sheraton hotel where Mitsuya began to take questions from us fans. VegettoEX managed to get in the last question, asking him if he would be returning to reprise his role as Kaiōshin in Kai. His answer confirmed a lot of our mutual speculation about the series’ production.

Mitsuya admitted that he had already expressed his interest in returning to voice Kaiōshin in Kai to the series director, Yasuhiro Nowatari, who he is friends with. He then recounted Nowatari telling him in return that he was not sure if they could afford to hire Mitsuya, as he’s a veteran voice actor, and he was not even sure if the series would still be around that far down the road. Mitsuya even mentioned that he had told Nowatari he would be willing to take the job at a reduced rate just to play the role again!

With all of the original series’ cast and staff now working at quite expensive rates due to their experience, it seems Kai may actually be much more expensive to produce than any of us had originally imagined. Many minor roles have been recast with younger and cheaper talent, and almost none of the original staff was brought back. We have seen stunt casting with J-Pop artist Aya Hirano voicing Dende and then singing an image song about the character, and we now have members of the idol group AKB48 performing Kai‘s second ending theme. On top of that, many have noted that Kai seemed to be rushed over to North America. Knowing now how much better Dragon Ball sells internationally, it seems all too obvious that this was indeed done to raise some much needed funds to continue the production of Kai in Japan. The question is, just how expensive is Kai?

At the moment nothing has been officially stated, but all indications point toward Kai being much more expensive than anyone had originally thought, even though no new significant footage is really being animated for the series. How ironic would it be to find out later that after all this time of fans calling Kai a “cash grab” by Toei Animation, that it is really an expensive venture with very little profit? My guess is, if that is the case, we will never find out. If Kai really is relying so much on “Dragon Ball Z Kai” and you love the series, then you really need to buy it!

Nevertheless, without a shadow of a doubt, we can say Dragon Ball has swept the globe and is not willing to let it go anytime soon. However, some day, it may have to share it with One Piece.

If you have ever heard me talk about my video game purchasing habits, you know just how much I love a good deal. We try to share the best DragonBall deals when we can here on the website whenever we can, too!

Amazon recently had a great deal on Dragon Box sets, but Box 3 quickly went back up to ~$50. Well, Amazon is rocking the amazing prices on all sorts of box sets again (including the first TV series, as Ryan pointed out to us over on Facebook), though they are strictly limited to currently-available items. Pre-order prices for things like Dragon Box 4, Z Kai volume 2, and Dragon Ball season five are still not the best you can find online (you are probably better off at RightStuf for those). In terms of deals on Amazon, the best ones seem to be:

• Dragon Ball Z Dragon Box 1: $26.99
• Dragon Ball Z Dragon Box 2: $25.99
• Dragon Ball Z Dragon Box 3: $26.49
• Dragon Ball Z Kai (DVD) Vol. 1: $21.49
• Dragon Ball Z Kai (Blu-ray) Vol. 1: $24.99
• Dragon Ball Season 1: $21.99
• Dragon Ball Season 2: $21.99
• Dragon Ball Season 3: $21.49
• Dragon Ball Season 4: $22.49

The best deal for Dragon Box 3 right now appears to be at Best Buy, who has it for $22.99… though the other boxes are more expensive.

On top of all that, Ian wrote in to let us know that Toys”R”Us has Revenge of King Piccolo for the Nintendo Wii down at an awesome $15.98, and some stores may even have it at 25% off that price for their clearance sale.

That is definitely the right price range for that game. Seen any other genuinely amazing deals? Let us know!

This was more of a curiosity piece than anything else, but I figured it was worth tossing out there. Those of you who keep up with technology news to an insane degree have probably heard about the apparent “hacking” of the iTunes Store and compromise of some user accounts. What a few reports have glossed over is that many of the compromised accounts have been purchasing apps from the “Book” category labeled with Dragon Ball images:

You can read the full story over on Engadget. Dragon Ball fans and otherwise should all take a look at their iTunes Store e-mail receipts and make sure no extra purchases are listed…!