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3,753 Posts & 2,349 Pages Documenting Dragon Ball, since 1998. We've got you covered!
Published by 18 May 2023, 11:23 AM EDT1 Comment

Following up on previous chapters, Shueisha and Viz have added the official English translation of the Dragon Ball Super manga’s ninety-third chapter to their respective Manga Plus and Shonen Jump services, continuing onward into the brand-new “Super Hero arc”, now adapting the contents of the recent theatrical film following three chapters worth of original prologue material. Alongside other initiatives including free chapters and a larger archive for paid subscribers, this release continues the companies’ schedule of not simply simultaneously publishing the series’ chapter alongside its Japanese debut to the release date, but to its local time in Japan alongside its serialization in today’s July 2023 issue of Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine.

The Dragon Ball Super “comicalization” began in June 2015, initially just ahead of the television series, and running both ahead and behind the series at various points. The manga runs in Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine, with the series’ ninety-third chapter hitting today in the magazine’s July 2023 issue.

Illustrated by “Toyotarō” (in all likelihood, a second pen-name used by Dragon Ball AF fan manga author and illustrator “Toyble”), the Dragon Ball Super manga covered the Battle of Gods re-telling, skipped the Resurrection ‘F’ re-telling, and “charged ahead” to the Champa arc, “speeding up the excitement of the TV anime even more”. Though the television series has completed its run, the manga continues onward, moving into its own original “Galactic Patrol Prisoner”, “Granolla the Survivor”, and now “Super Hero” arcs.

Viz is currently releasing free digital chapters of the series, and began their own collected print edition back in 2017. The company’s eighteenth collected volume will be released this June.

The Dragon Ball Super television series concluded in March 2018 with 131 total episodes. Crunchyroll (by way of the merger with FUNimation) owns the American distribution license for the series, with the English dub having wrapped its broadcast on Cartoon Network, and the home video release reaching its tenth and final box set in 2020. A complete steelbook “Limited Edition” was released by Crunchyroll this past September.

Published by 12 May 2023, 11:56 AM EDTComment

Bandai Namco Holdings has posted a ¥90.345 billion profit for the full fiscal year of 2023, down slightly from a ¥92.752 billion profit last year.

namco_bandai_logo_resaved

Dragon Ball came in as the company’s best-performing franchise for the year, pulling in ¥144.5 billion, up from last year’s ¥127.6 billion and ahead of the projected ¥133.5 billion. The company is projecting a decrease to ¥130 billion for fiscal year 2024.

In terms of general toys and hobby merchandise (non-video games) for Japan, the franchise also jumped from ¥19.7 billion last fiscal year to ¥22.5 billion this year. The company is projecting a drop to ¥20 billion for fiscal year 2024.

Published by 04 May 2023, 9:11 AM EDTComment

The September 2021 issue of Shueisha’s Saikyō Jump magazine kicked off a “Dragon Ball Super Gallery” series in commemoration of the Dragon Ball franchise’s upcoming 40th anniversary. The celebration aims to have different artists all contribute their own spin on the original 42 tankōbon covers, with the images and an accompanying comment published as the magazine’s back cover.

Following the previous twenty-one entries, this month’s June 2023 issue brings us Shun Saeki (Food Wars) and their take on the series’ 10th volume cover:

Shun Saeki commented:

It’s the ultimate honor to be associated with such a legendary series. The cover of this volume has a very peculiar design, and after pondering about how to recreate it, I decided on a setting where Goku and Bulma come to look for a Dragon Ball on some ruins that just so happened to have objects shaped like the patterns from the original cover, but now I’m wondering if it was maybe a bit forced. Anyway, I gladly drew it and had a lot of fun doing it! Thank you so very much.

Saikyō Jump is currently a monthly magazine published in Japan by Shueisha under the “Jump” line of magazines. The magazine began as a quarterly publication in 2012, went monthly in 2013, went bimonthly in late-2014, and returned to a monthly format in 2021 (including a digital release for the first time). The magazine’s focus is spin-off and supplementary manga series aimed at a young audience, while also including game promotions, news coverage, and more. The magazine currently serializes content such as Yoshitaka Nagayama’s Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultra God Mission!!!! manga series, Yūji Kasai’s Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Avatars!! manga series, and the Dragon Ball GT Anime Comic. For calendar year 2019, Shueisha reported Saikyō Jump‘s circulation down at 130,000, with readership as 58.5% upper elementary school, 28% lower middle school, 11% middle school, and 2.5% high school or older.

Published by 03 May 2023, 4:40 PM EDTComment

Each month, Toyotarō provides a drawing of a Dragon Ball character — as well as an accompanying comment — on the official Japanese Dragon Ball website. Following up on the wealth of characters already drawn, for his (coming in late!) April 2023 entry, Toyotarō has drawn Tullece:

Tullece

I wonder how he survived the destruction of Planet Vegeta…? I hope that can get cleared up someday.

Tullece debuted as the main antagonist in the third Dragon Ball Z film back in 1990. He reappeared as a “Ghost Warrior” in the 1993-1994 multimedia blitz Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, and has been a regular video game inclusion in the post-serialization era.

This drawing and comment set has been added to the respective page in our “Translations” archive.

Published by 25 April 2023, 1:59 PM EDTComment

A new wiki preview page is available… and it’s one we’re requesting your early support and community research on!

Beyond all of the common misinformation around “seasons” for the North American broadcast (largely due to FUNimation’s later home video releases which ignored their previously-established cable broadcast “season” delineations), lots of the standard episode guides you see out there online are just flat out wrong.

Perhaps you’ve read one of the latest features on our site — “The Dragon Ball Z American Debut Date” — which covers the fact that local syndication affiliates played the same episode on different dates, meaning there is no real single “debut” date for FUNimation’s English dub of Dragon Ball Z in September 1996.

You would think that once things moved to the Toonami block on Cartoon Network (a single cable network channel), having verifiable/confirmed debut dates would be easier, but that’s not true! Plans changed at the last minute all the time, leading to shifted debut dates. Of particular note, the events of September 11th in 2001 obviously impacted broadcast plans across the board. In this case, Mobile Suit Gundam was removed from its block and replaced with an extra episode of Dragon Ball, which sped up its intended broadcast.

The 2003 timeframe is also notable for seeing the initial wrap-up for both Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z on Toonami. This was directly before the current install of our own forum in 2004, which in turn means we’re missing lots of key contemporary confirmations due to other notable fansites and forums of the day long since being lost to time.

It’s important to recognize we don’t know what we don’t know. This is where you come in! Maybe YOU are aware of other ancient, still-online little forums or sites we somehow overlooked that can provide contemporary confirmations for some of these dates.

With all of the aforementioned information in mind, and checking out what we already have established and cited on the “Season” wiki preview page, would love help finding contemporary confirmations (not hearsay/uncited/undated lists!) for:

  • Dragon Ball episode 28 on Toonami
  • Dragon Ball episode 153 on Toonami
  • Dragon Ball Z edited dub episode 276 (JP 291) on Toonami

Enjoy the additional wiki preview, please share this article and/or our tweet thread far and wide across your various fandom circles, and get in touch with us with any confirmations you may see out there!

Published by 20 April 2023, 11:04 AM EDTComment

Following up on previous chapters, Shueisha and Viz have added the official English translation of the Dragon Ball Super manga’s ninety-second chapter to their respective Manga Plus and Shonen Jump services, continuing onward into the brand-new “Super Hero arc”, now adapting the contents of the recent theatrical film following three chapters worth of original prologue material. Alongside other initiatives including free chapters and a larger archive for paid subscribers, this release continues the companies’ schedule of not simply simultaneously publishing the series’ chapter alongside its Japanese debut to the release date, but to its local time in Japan alongside its serialization in today’s June 2023 issue of Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine.

The Dragon Ball Super “comicalization” began in June 2015, initially just ahead of the television series, and running both ahead and behind the series at various points. The manga runs in Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine, with the series’ ninety-second chapter hitting today in the magazine’s June 2023 issue.

Illustrated by “Toyotarō” (in all likelihood, a second pen-name used by Dragon Ball AF fan manga author and illustrator “Toyble”), the Dragon Ball Super manga covered the Battle of Gods re-telling, skipped the Resurrection ‘F’ re-telling, and “charged ahead” to the Champa arc, “speeding up the excitement of the TV anime even more”. Though the television series has completed its run, the manga continues onward, moving into its own original “Galactic Patrol Prisoner”, “Granolla the Survivor”, and now “Super Hero” arcs.

Viz is currently releasing free digital chapters of the series, and began their own collected print edition back in 2017. The company’s eighteenth collected volume will be released this June.

The Dragon Ball Super television series concluded in March 2018 with 131 total episodes. Crunchyroll (by way of the merger with FUNimation) owns the American distribution license for the series, with the English dub having wrapped its broadcast on Cartoon Network, and the home video release reaching its tenth and final box set in 2020. A complete steelbook “Limited Edition” was released by Crunchyroll this past September.

Published by 14 April 2023, 11:24 AM EDTComment

Following up on the first, second, third, and fourth interviews in this series, our latest translation addition continues with material from 2016’s 30th anniversary Super History Book. Here in the fifth in a five-part series of video game-related interviews, we travel back to somewhat recent history with Dragon Ball Xenoverse producer Masayuki Hirano.

Published by 06 April 2023, 11:48 AM EDTComment

The September 2021 issue of Shueisha’s Saikyō Jump magazine kicked off a “Dragon Ball Super Gallery” series in commemoration of the Dragon Ball franchise’s upcoming 40th anniversary. The celebration aims to have different artists all contribute their own spin on the original 42 tankōbon covers, with the images and an accompanying comment published as the magazine’s back cover.

Following the previous twenty entries, this month’s May 2023 issue brings us Boichi (Dr. Stone, etc.) and their take on the series’ 26th volume cover:

Boichi commented:

It’s an absolute honor to be able to draw a Dragon Ball cover. That’s all there is to it.

Saikyō Jump is currently a monthly magazine published in Japan by Shueisha under the “Jump” line of magazines. The magazine began as a quarterly publication in 2012, went monthly in 2013, went bimonthly in late-2014, and returned to a monthly format in 2021 (including a digital release for the first time). The magazine’s focus is spin-off and supplementary manga series aimed at a young audience, while also including game promotions, news coverage, and more. The magazine currently serializes content such as Yoshitaka Nagayama’s Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultra God Mission!!!! manga series, Yūji Kasai’s Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Avatars!! manga series, and the Dragon Ball GT Anime Comic. For calendar year 2019, Shueisha reported Saikyō Jump‘s circulation down at 130,000, with readership as 58.5% upper elementary school, 28% lower middle school, 11% middle school, and 2.5% high school or older.

Published by 01 April 2023, 1:30 PM EDTComment

Show Description

Episode #0500! We are celebrating five hundred podcast episodes! Join us for a journey from the first episode back in 2005 through today’s shenanigans. All the best in-jokes, all the best discussions… and a lot more. Also: we occasionally talk about Dragon Ball.

How to Listen

Our podcast is available via Apple Podcasts and/or Google Podcasts, or you can pop the direct RSS feed into the program of your choice. You can also listen to this episode by directly downloading the MP3 or by streaming it on Spotify, or YouTube. We invite you to discuss this episode on our forum.

 

Contest! Giveaway! Autographs!

We are giving away a copy of Dragon Ball Z Kai: Season One on DVD signed by Masako Nozawa, Toshio Furukawa, Yuko Minaguchi, and more! This contest is open through the end of April, so start exploring all of the ways you can check out Kanzenshuu‘s resources here and on other various platforms, and get those entries in!

A Winner Has Been Decided!

We are excited to announce that Eric has won our podcast episode 500 celebration contest! Eric has been contacted and will receive this Dragon Ball Z: Kai – Season One DVD set signed by tons of Japanese and American voice actors, which friend of the site Albert graciously arranged back at Animazement 2013!

Published by 30 March 2023, 9:09 AM EDTComment

Each month, Toyotarō provides a drawing of a Dragon Ball character — as well as an accompanying comment — on the official Japanese Dragon Ball website. Following up on the wealth of characters already drawn, for his March 2023 entry, Toyotarō has contributed a drawing of Garlic Jr.:

Garlic Jr.

A character from the movies who later made the jump to the TV anime. I’d like to try drawing his transformed state sometime, too!

Garlic Jr. debuted in the first Dragon Ball Z film back in 1989 (a film that doesn’t have a title beyond just “Dragon Ball Z”…!), and appeared as the main antagonist again in a “filler arc” exclusive to the Dragon Ball Z television series.

This drawing and comment set has been added to the respective page in our “Translations” archive.