Remember those mysterious individual disc releases of the first two Dragon Ball Z movies from the “remastered” steel book double feature we reported about over a month ago? Well, thankfully they have been canceled! Mania.com (which has absorbed Anime on DVD) has posted a list of FUNimation’s new title solicitations for November, as originally released by RightStuf. The two DVDs in question were amongst the releases on the list, however with a big “CANCELED” right next to them. In addition, their listings have been pulled from both Amazon and RightStuf. It appears that FUNimation agreed with my initial thoughts about these releases and decided it was a bad idea to flood the market with so many copies of these movies, especially if they have “Dragon Box” versions coming in the future.

While we definitely have finalized cover art and a track listing for the new Dragon Ball Kai Song Collection CD coming out, CDJapan is now listing a release date of 04 November 2009, rather than the originally-listed release date of 21 October 2009. Further backing this up is the listing on Columbia’s website with the new date. The Amazon Japan listing still has the original date, however.

Still looking forward to tearing it apart giving it a fair shake, regardless.

The German Amazon listing for a “Limited Edition” version of the upcoming PS3 & Xbox 360 fighting game Raging Blast notes that it will come in a special steelbook case, a 52-page art book, the soundtrack to the game on CD, and some sort of downloadable content that grants additional abilities:

Steelcase: Das Spiel kommt in einem Steelcase mit exklusivem Dragon Ball Design inklusive transparentem Schuber.
Artbook: 52 Seiten mit “Making-of”, exklusiven Konzeptzeichnungen, Kartendesigns und Artworks des Entwicklerstudios.
Original Soundtrack: CD mit dem original Soundtrack aus dem Spiel.
DLC: Einzigartige Kampfausrüstungen, die verschiedenen Dragon Ball Spielcharakteren zusätzliche Fähigkeiten verleihen.

There has been no official word from Namco-Bandai on a “Limited Edition” version of the game, though this seems to confirm it pretty solidly. We certainly hope the North American release also gets a similar treatment!

It is technically $10, but if you are interested in picking up Dragon Ball Origins at that price, you will also need to pick up another game from Wal-Mart’s list for a combined deal of 2-for-$20. There is some good stuff on the list, though, including Final Fantasy III, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, and two Dragon Quest spin-offs.

At the end of August we learned that we would be getting another new CD, something called the Dragon Ball Kai Song Collection. The album is due out 21 October 2009 for ¥2,940 (~$30). At the time we only had a vague idea of what would be on the album, including the opening and ending themes, the insert song “Over the Star”, and new character image songs such as a theme for Kuririn, a theme for Freeza, and a theme for Super Saiyans. However, Columbia recently released the finalized track list and cover art for the album:

01 Dragon Soul / Takayoshi Tanimoto (Dragon Soul)  02 CHASER! / Shinichi Sakurai  03 Win Tough Fight! / Yō Yamazaki  04 The Invincible Aura’s Energy / Dragon Soul  05 Take the Stage!! Ginyu Special-Squad!! / Yō Yamazaki  06 Over the Star / Saki Oshitani  07 CURE ~I’ll Be Here~ / Dende (Aya Hirano)  08 Saiyan Blood / Vegeta (Ryō Horikawa)  09 An Ultra-super Dragon Soul / Takayoshi Tanimoto (Dragon Soul)  10 Only a Chilling Elegy / H.E. DEMON  11 Yeah! Break! Care! Break! / Takayoshi Tanimoto (Dragon Soul)

You will note there are quite a few newcomers to the Dragon Ball franchise, such as Shinichi Sakurai, YouYamazaki, Aya Hirano, and H.E. Demon. I know many have commented on the “stunt casting” of Aya Hirano as Dende in the series (I tend to agree with most of them), but I think H.E. Demon, or rather His Excellency Demon Kakka, is by far and away the most interesting one of the bunch. If you have a chance, I highly suggest you give his profile a read — you will not regret it!

Many of the tracks are new character image songs, but it is not very clear which one may belong to Kuririn, Freeza, and/or the Super Saiyans. However, using the process of elimination we can see they might be “CHASER!”, “Only a Chilling Elegy” and “An Ultra-Super Dragon Soul”. Besides these new image songs, the only other track that we have not seen yet is “Win Tough Fight!”, which was indeed on the first Original Soundtrack for the series, but was included there as guitar version by Kenji Yamamoto. Oddly enough, the song itself has not been used in the TV series as of yet, but already has multiple versions. Could this be a little foreshadowing of another insert song? We will just have to wait to find out.

Amazon Japan has posted the cover art for both the first Blu-ray box set and second volume of the DVD releases of Dragon Ball Kai. Both are set to be released 23 October 2009; the DVD release will contain episodes 004-006, while the Blu-ray box will contain episodes 004-015. The Blu-ray box will feature non-credit version of both the opening and ending themes, “Dragon Soul” and “Yeah! Break! Care! Break!”, respectively. It will also contain a extra spot to put the first Blu-ray volume, which is set to be released this Friday, 18 September 2009. As far as money is concerned, the high definition Blu-ray release will set you back a pretty ¥15,960 (~$160), while the the standard definition DVD release is the typical price of ¥2,940 (~$30).

Let the shenanigans continue! Toei Animation’s official Dragon Ball Kai website has updated with the new voice of Nail. Taiten Kusunoki will be taking over the role of Nail in Dragon Ball Kai, replacing Katsuji Mori who had originally voiced the character in Dragon Ball Z. He also provided the voice of the popular action star Panput in Dragon Ball during the 22nd Tenka’ichi Budōkai. Again, we are not sure why Katsuji Mori is being replaced, as he is still very active as a voice actor — he even runs his own talent agency, Office Mori.

Finally, probably the biggest blow to all of Dragon Ball fandom… the original voice of Appule has been replaced. However, it is a real slap in the face because his recasting never got an official announcement! As you may know, Appule recently appeared in Dragon Ball Kai episode 023. Unfortunately, according to the credits, Yūji Machi has been replaced by Takahiro Yoshimizu. For anyone familiar with One Piece, Yoshimizu provided the voice of Paulie, one of the five Dock One foremen of Water 7. Needless to say, he has some pretty big shoes to fill.

It has certainly been a rather slow week in terms of news! The best we have for you is that Amazon has new listings for even more “Chapter Book” volumes of the Dragon Ball story they have begun releasing under their “Viz Kids” label. We absolutely adore the cover art for the releases, but are conflicted over the actual content.

Unlike the first four volumes which came out two at a time, it looks like these are going the one-every-other-month route:

• Volume 5: 03 November 2009
• Volume 6: 05 January 2010
• Volume 7: 02 March 2010
• Volume 8: 04 May 2010

We are sad to report that the Arabic voice actor for Son Goku, Mr. Zeyad Errafae’ie, passed away on August 26th. He was involved with a car crash and apparently seemed to be getting better, but ultimately did not pull through in the end. Our condolences go out to his family and all of the Arabic dub fans that may have grown up with his performance.