To quote myself from May 2009 (still about three years away from the Kanzenshuu fusion):
Personally, I find the idea of adding a Wiki onto/into/alongside the site frightening beyond belief.
After being in various phases of theoretical planning, active production, and passive doldrums for about 17 years… well, April 1st this year seems as good a date as any. Kanzenshuu‘s wiki is here!
Why?
This new wiki is an extension of Kanzenshuu, this website right here that you’re reading right now, a Dragon Ball fansite that dates back to 1998. We believe information online should be free, readily available, well curated, and maintained by an independent group of people who care, looking ahead to the future and ensuring long-term preservation. It’s perhaps no surprise to learn that we also believe text is the best format to achieve this goal.
Everything we do is based on cited, vetted information — focused on the original Japanese version of series — by a combination of people who: (1) actually own the material (and strive to acquire what they somehow don’t already own), and (2) can both read and understand it in its original language. As a fan of the series yourself, you almost certainly have found the information and citations elsewhere across the Internet to be… let’s say “dubious” at best…?
Why a wiki specifically, and not just more of the main website built out? We certainly have a vision for what more the “main website” can be (beyond just raw listings of information) — look no further than things like our FAQs, Rumor Guide, and especially our podcast — but there’s so much more we can do, particularly when it comes to data hierarchy, organization, and project management. The wiki is one more tool in our kit to help accomplish this.
Development
This wiki is maintained, supported, and produced in full by a small, ragtag group of editors working their collective butts off, completely unpaid and unsupported in any way, because we’re very silly and we believe in old-school projects like this. Everything you read on the wiki (just as with the main site) has been written by someone with their own fingers, having picked up an actual book to reference, popped in an actual DVD, etc. etc. etc.
No “AI” has been used in any way, shape, or form to develop any written content, and we vehemently denounce and condemn its use. We are doing everything in our power to fight back against the “Dead Internet.”
What to Expect From Articles
We’re launching today, but that doesn’t mean the wiki is “complete”; it’s impossible for this to ever truly be finished, so keep that in mind as you click and tap around. Some articles may be unfinished, have placeholder text leftover, etc. It’s a work-in-progress as it’s always been.
You’re also going to find more articles about esoteric topics and materials than more mainstream ones. For example, there’s no article for “Big Bang Attack” right now, but we sure do have articles for the various manga compilations given away at recent Jump Festa events!
Just like we’ve always done with the main website, we want to do what no-one else is doing, what no-one else seems to care about, and to cover what has been seemingly lost to time.
An Expanded Focus
You’ll also discover far broader coverage and reach around the expanded world of Akira Toriyama than ever before. Looking for a complete list of Dr. Slump chapters (in actual publication order) — including the accompanying weekly comments from Toriyama? How about release dates and documentation for his uncompiled one-shots? How about spin-off manga for other properties based on his character designs?
This has been our dumping ground for all this kind of information, and we couldn’t be more excited to finally share it with you.
User Experience
You’ll roughly get the same experience in our wiki that you do on the main website, which is one of the biggest differentiators we have: no ads.
We’re not a company, we’re under no obligation to shareholders or investors, and we’re just as frustrated with the larger internet browsing experience as you are. When you load a page, you’re loading a web page, and that’s basically it. There’s a little bit of analytics running under the hood just for us to broadly be aware of what pages are getting traffic, but that’s it.
If that sounds awesome to you, we wouldn’t be opposed to a little help keeping the lights on each month.
Access
While everyone in the general public now has access to read the wiki, our small group of existing editors will remain in charge of actually developing it further. We have no plans for open registration access — this is the only way that we can maintain the quality of the project, which is what sets it apart from other documentation sources in the first place. While we do not plan on actively recruiting, we do hope we can learn about and meet others out there who have extremely niche, specialized knowledge in certain areas, and have either already worked on their own independent documentation project(s), and/or would like to discuss how they could perhaps get involved with ours.
Suggested Articles
With all of that in mind, you’re probably ready to get reading, but maybe a little overwhelmed and unsure where to begin. If you want to dive in and see some interesting stuff, here are a few things to get you started:
- “Real World Timeline“: A chronology of events in the real world that would lead to the creation of the Dragon Ball franchise, as well as the chronology of the development, production, and release of works within and related to it.
- “Dragon World Timeline“: A walkthrough of the “Age” structure within the Dragon Ball narrative, including official documentation processes, contradictions, and much more.
- “Dragon Ball (Viz Monthly Comics)“: A comprehensive, chronological listing of every monthly “floppy” comic book-style release of the Dragon Ball manga from Viz before the switchover to “Graphic Novel” and “Shonen Jump” magazine serialization.
- “Dragon Ball Z: The Return of Cooler“: A solid example of a wiki page for an individual DVD that allows us to go deeper and more comprehensively beyond a static listing we already provide here on the main website, noting all of the video extras (including transcriptions of any interview text), and much more.
- “Dragon Ball Z: Legendary Super Warriors“: An example of a video game page that is fairly fleshed out with all of its game modes, characters, story beats, credits, etc.
- “S.H.Figuarts“: A comprehensive, chronological listing of every S.H.Figuarts release for the Dragon Ball franchise, including release type notes (overseas exclusive, event-specific, etc.), original MSRP, and more.
- “The Brief Return of Dr. Slump“: A complete listing of all chapters of this Dr. Slump sequel manga by Takao Koyama and Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru, including all issue and release dates citations — this page goes above and beyond any other English-language resource for this series (and most Japanese ones, too)!
- “Time Adventure Numamonger (Manga)“: A complete listing of all chapters from this Chrono Trigger spin-off manga by Hiroshi Izawa and Akihiro Kikuchi. No other complete listing seems to exist online, and the series’ official English title translation also doesn’t seem to have ever been noticed by anyone else!
But really: just poke around and go nuts. Use the search bar to look for specific things you’re interested in, but also use the navigation bar on the main wiki page to see what kinds of broader categories we have.
ICYMI: We also have a new podcast episode launching today chatting with several of our editors — enjoy!
