So I decided this needed its own topic, but I recently did a little digging into Fuji TV's upcoming schedule, which they've established up thru the first week of April. There will be no episode on
2/22, for
Kai or
One Piece, and the 148th episode of
Kai is scheduled to air on
4/5 (Toriyama's birthday, again!). So we know there will be at least 148 episodes. However, that only leaves 7 episodes of
Kai to cover the remaining 28 episodes of
Z, well I suppose 24 if they remove the four remaining filler episodes. Lately each
Kai episode has been covering roughly 1.5 episodes of
Z, so it isn't exactly flying along at a real fast pace right now.
At this point, to finish things out in 7 episodes, they'll pretty much have to cut out a ton of stuff so they can cover at least 3 episodes of
Z per episode. But who knows what they'll cut or keep, so really, I have no idea what the hell they're gonna do. Also, the upcoming
4th Blu-ray box set will contain episodes 135-146, so depending on how many more episodes there are Toei will either add an extra disc on 4th box set or we'll be getting a 5th box set. Although I can't really see Toei making a 5th box set unless they have at least 10 more episodes beyond the 148, and I don't see that happening either.
On top of all that, we also have to consider the ending themes. As we
learned last March, Toei decided to divide up the ending into quarters, giving us four ending themes:
- "Dear Zarathustra" (Episodes 99-111) = 13 episodes
- "Pure Heart" (Episodes 112-123) = 12 episodes
- "Oh Yeah!!!!!!!" (Episodes 124-136) = 13 episodes
- "GALAXY" (Episodes 137-ongoing)
Assuming these quarters are divided up equally, the fourth ending theme ("GALAXY") will have been used for 12 episodes with episode 148. So either they'll have to break their original plan and add another ending theme, or extend this one out, if they end up adding more episodes. So now I'm just totally confused when
Kai is going to end. The evidence is pointing all over the place. But, based on how
Kai has been handled since day once, I'm guessing they're going to rush cut it the rest of the way and end it with episode 148 on April 5th (now watch me be completely wrong).