The long-in-production Dragon Ball Daima series has finally received a concrete debut date and time: Friday, 11 October 2024, at 11:40 PM JST on Fuji TV. The first episode is slated to have an additional 10 minutes of content.
The announcement was made Sept. 2 during the program lineup revision presentation held at Fuji TV headquarters in Minato-ku, Tokyo.
Regarding the production of Dragon Ball Daima, Programming Director Yūichi Nakajima revealed, “all the episodes are ready.” With regards to the timeslot, he explained, “Since it’s a brand-new work, we want fans to see it on a nationwide broadcast. Up till now we’d broadcast on Sunday mornings as well, but it’s not nationwide. We also have the aim of making it easy for our target demographic of Dragon Ball fans to watch.” With high expectations for this work, he stated, “I hope we can really spread the notion that ‘Dragon Ball just has to be on Fuji TV’.”
The “it’s not nationwide” comment refers to the fact that each local affiliate varies in its exact lineup and schedule.
Dragon Ball originally debuted on Fuji TV back in February 1986, airing Wednesdays at 7:00 PM, inheriting its timeslot from an adaptation of Toriyama’s own former series, Dr. Slump. This timeslot was further inherited by Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, and finally the 1997 reboot of Dr. Slump.
Following the Dr. Slump reboot, the TV series adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece took over the timeslot, but was later shifted to a Sunday morning timeslot in 2006. When Dragon Ball returned to the airwaves for Dragon Ball Kai in 2009, it ran alongside One Piece on Sunday mornings (in the so-called “Dream 9” block, referring to its 9:00 AM start time). After the “refreshed” versions of Kai‘s first three story arcs, the Toriko TV series ran alongside One Piece until Kai‘s return for the Boo arc in 2014, which then ran directly into the full Dragon Ball Super television series from 2015 to 2018.
Dragon Ball Daima was first revealed at New York Comic Con in October 2023 by way of a trailer and comment from original franchise creator Akira Toriyama. The “Daima” in the series’ title is a made-up term, though the individual kanji that make up its spelling would be 大魔; in Toriyama’s own words, …”in English would be something like ‘Evil.'” The forthcoming series will feature an original story by series creator Akira Toriyama, character designs by Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru, script/composition by Yūko Kakihara, and series co-direction by Yoshitaka Yashima and Aya Komaki.