The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Discussion regarding the entirety of the franchise in a general (meta) sense, including such aspects as: production, trends, merchandise, fan culture, and more.

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Luso Saiyan
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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by Luso Saiyan » Wed May 06, 2015 12:28 pm

dbboxkaifan wrote:Can someone confirm if this is true?
I believe Dragon Ball premiered in 1995 on SIC.

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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by TheRed259 » Wed May 06, 2015 12:34 pm

Greece

Anime: The first episode of DragonBall anime was broadcast in Greece in 1995 on ANT1. DragonBall Z came in 1998 (or late 1997 I am not so sure) and ended in early 2003. Both series aired on weekends. DragonBall GT was cancelled because of ANT1’s decision to stop broadcasting cartoons and animes. DragonBall GT came out for the first in 2008 in DVD with a new cast. Also, in 2010 all Movies & TV Specials came out in DVD for the very first time.

DragonBall came out in DVD in 2011 and DragonBall Z in 2007. There were also VHS releases for both series (not sure when the first VHS came out but it was many years ago). The company responsible for these releases was DeAgostini Hellas.

The Greek dub of DB & DBZ was performed at SPK Video Film Television studios and GT, Movies and TV Specials at AZ studios.

Manga: As far as I know there was no Greek version of the DB/DBZ manga. Only Viz's English DB/DBZ Manga releases.

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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by Eire » Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Possibly. I remember watching it with subs, since whole house had to be silent.
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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by sangofe » Wed May 06, 2015 12:52 pm

Norway:
SF Had movies 1-9 and the two tv specials sub-licensed from AB video. They never got reprinted. And not one single tv episode got broadcasted.

All the manga got released by "Schibsted". It started in march 2004 and they finished the whole run. They later started publishing the animanga, but that got cancelled somewhere down the road. The translation was horrible. I think it was "Japanese -> German, German -> Danish, Danish -> Swedish, Swedish -> Norwegian"...

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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by soulnova » Wed May 06, 2015 1:23 pm

Also, the first episode of DBZ to be aired in Mexico was on September 1st, 1997, at 7pm. It was interrupted midway by a Presidential message. I screamed and rose my fists in rage. They repeated the episode fully the next day.

:lol:
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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by dbboxkaifan » Wed May 06, 2015 1:38 pm

Luso Saiyan wrote:
dbboxkaifan wrote:Can someone confirm if this is true?
I believe Dragon Ball premiered in 1995 on SIC.
Really? Thought it was around 1992-93.
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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by DerekPadula » Wed May 06, 2015 2:03 pm

DB1984 wrote:It is my understanding that either France or Hong Kong was the first to get Dragon Ball outside of its native Japan. And that it was in 1988.
France was the first to get the anime. Spain was the first to get the manga. I know nothing about the Hong Kong version of the series. Can someone here provide that info? Taiwan, China, and Korea would be good too. Also Southeast Asian countries.

I updated the post to include a Finland section. It took several hours for me to write because I had to research the scandal in 2003 that may have banned Dragon Ball from Finland forever. I never knew that happened and thought it was extremely fascinating. Here are some great articles on the subject that I referenced in the section, which you can google translate to read.

http://www.kvaak.fi/naytaartikkeli.php?articleID=27, and http://www.kvaak.fi/naytakolumni.php?articleID=53, and http://www.kvaak.fi/naytauutinen.php?articleID=51

I don't want to derail the thread with that info, but it's so interesting (and heretofore unknown) that I felt it was worth sharing.

I updated the Poland section with the latest info.

I updated the French section with the latest info.

I added the Greece section and the Norway section.

I haven't updated the USA section yet.

This is already becoming time consuming and difficult to manage, but that's okay. Keep it coming. It's the best we can do until the Wiki arrives.
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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by DrBriefsCat » Wed May 06, 2015 2:13 pm

Additional info:

In the UK, Dragon Ball may have first premiered on ITV in the mid-1990's in the form of the Kidmark/BLT dub.

The French dub of DB and DBZ aired in Quebec, Canada around 1997. Not sure which channel.

In the US, Harmony Gold may have been the first attempt at airing the series, but the series first aired in full exclusively in Hawaii. DB aired complete in Japanese with English subtitles around 1992 and DBZ aired with subs until episode 104 on the Nippon Golden Network pay TV channel.

The Mexican Spanish dub of DBZ was also aired nationally in the US on Telemundo from 1999 to 2002. It was cancelled during the Cell saga.

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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by Luso Saiyan » Wed May 06, 2015 4:27 pm

dbboxkaifan wrote:
Luso Saiyan wrote:
dbboxkaifan wrote:Can someone confirm if this is true?
I believe Dragon Ball premiered in 1995 on SIC.
Really? Thought it was around 1992-93.
No, it was definitely in 1995. I don't recall the exact month though.

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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by TheRed259 » Wed May 06, 2015 4:49 pm

DerekPadula DragonBall GT was never broadcast in Greece. It was scheduled to air on October 2003 but that time ANT1 decided to remove all cartoons and animes from his program. There might be some episodes of GT with the original Greek cast but they never aired. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by One_Instance » Wed May 06, 2015 5:07 pm

TheRed259 wrote:DerekPadula DragonBall GT was never broadcast in Greece. It was scheduled to air on October 2003 but that time ANT1 decided to remove all cartoons and animes from his program. There might be some episodes of GT with the original Greek cast but they never aired. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Do you think this could be one of the Greek lost episodes?

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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by TheRed259 » Wed May 06, 2015 5:17 pm

One_Instance wrote:Do you think this could be one of the Greek lost episodes?

No, this is from the DVDs. What makes me think that there are some episodes with the original dub is the fact that it was scheduled to premiere in October.

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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by DerekPadula » Wed May 06, 2015 5:37 pm

Okay, I updated the Greece section. And in my personal document with a footnote I added, "It’s unknown if the Dragon Ball GT episodes that were scheduled to air on ANT1 were ever dubbed. If so, they are “lost episodes,” because they have never been released."
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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Wed May 06, 2015 5:41 pm

soulnova wrote:Also, the first episode of DBZ to be aired in Mexico was on September 1st, 1997, at 7pm. It was interrupted midway by a Presidential message. I screamed and rose my fists in rage. They repeated the episode fully the next day.

:lol:

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Anyway, I have the some info on Paraguay's History with DB.

Dragon Ball premiered in a channel called Magic Kids (Even in Spanish, its in English) with DB, it used the Mexican dub(Every single Country in Latin America used it) and as far as I know the Harmony Gold dub never got here. Magic Kids was a legendary Argentinian channel that aired lots of classic anime like Saint Seiya, Sailor Moon, and Voltron. Then when Nickelodeon expanded to Paraguay, it lead to the removal of Magic Kids in some Cable Companies(Incliding the one my family used CVC). Magic Kids did manage to air ALL of DB but it got removed from CVC before airing Z and beyond. CVC users had to wait till Telefuturo (Then a new Major Broadcast Network) got DB and then started Z. Telefuturo aired the Dragon Ball Franchise till the final episode of GT. But it was Cartoon Network's adquisition of DBZ that ensured a peramanent home for the Dragon Ball franchise on Paraguay. It should be noted some regions of Paraguay did have Magic Kids because of using different Cable Companies.

EDIT:GOD! The French opening for Dragon Ball is the EXACT SAME as the Canadian opening! Who commisioned the Canadian dub? Toei?
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90sDBZ wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same. :lol:

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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by Puto » Wed May 06, 2015 6:10 pm

What you have in the Portugal section is all correct, but it's missing the fact that they reran it on SIC Radical on and off after SIC Gold stopped being a thing, and in fact it's still rerunning there to this day. They also swapped it for Kai in there for a while, subtitled (first 65 episodes were translated from the FUNimation dub but put on top of Japanese audio, episodes 66-98 were properly translated from Japanese).
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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by MCDaveG » Wed May 06, 2015 6:32 pm

Cure Dragon 255 wrote:EDIT:GOD! The French opening for Dragon Ball is the EXACT SAME as the Canadian opening! Who commisioned the Canadian dub? Toei?
AB Groupe, same as in every European Country. Only Germany took the initiative to record different theme for it, with the same footage and later they acquired the Chala Head Chala and We Gotta Power and recorded their own versions, which was later the case in Spanish countries also. Can you imagine that as a 10 year old kid, I did enjoy this opening? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egl8byQpMag
I was blown off by german Chala Head Chala later, that was so cool!
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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by garnetjester » Wed May 06, 2015 7:09 pm

I can provide some information about Colombia, I translated it from here http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Emis ... l#Colombia

Dragon Ball was first broadcasted in Colombia in Cadena Uno under the name "Zero and the magic dragon" in 1996 on tuesdays at 5:30 pm and it was on air for several episodes until it was canceled because of low ratings. In 1998, Canal Caracol started airing it starting with Dragon Ball Z (with the mexican dub) and it aired the full series followed by Dragon Ball GT from mondays to fridays between 2 and 4 pm.

Peruvian company Navarrete published several sticker albums (I don't know what's the proper word in english for this, but it's those sticker albums you'd have to purchase an envelope with random stickers and try to complete the whole thing) including 2 of Dragon Ball, 6 Dragon Ball Z and 1 Dragon Ball GT. These albums were very popular with fans confirming the great success of Dragon Ball among colombians. This was also reflected in the sales of merchandising such as toys, T-shirts and others.

It's important to note that many colombian fans watched Dragon Ball in Mexico's Canal 5 or América Televisión (Canal 4 of Peru) in satellital TV, where the series were aired in full for Latin America for the first time.

In 2007 Citytv channel started airing Dragon Ball, DBZ and DBGT mondays to fridays at 11:00 am to 12:00 m, 1:30 pm and 7:00 pm. The whole series including DB, DBZ and DBGT was aired in Cartoon Network in 2006 and 2007.

Dragon Ball Z is currently being broadcasted in CityTV channel mondays to fridays at 3:00 pm.

In july 30 of 2012, Dragon Ball Z Kai was premiered, but it was cancelled and replaced with Naruto because of low ratings.

*************************
I watched a lot of peruvian and mexican TV when I was a kid, and that's how I got into Dragon Ball first and then Z and GT. Many colombians had already seen the whole thing already when it started airing in Canal Caracol, but there was a real boom in the popularity of the anime when it was aired in the local channels in 1999.

Here's a link to one of Colombia's most important newspapers and a special Dragon Ball feature they ran last week link . Dragon Ball was the only anime that managed to transcend to the general public and not only children, but grown ups were big fans of the series. I remember how my mom (who is a doctor) used to be annoyed that all her male co-workers would postpone meetings and change shifts to be able to watch the end of the battle against Freeza.

One of the things I like about being a DB fan is that I can enjoy it with a lot of people, even those who aren't fans of anime in general, if they are around my age, they will certainly have heard about Dragon Ball and I honestly haven't found anyone in my generation yet who doesn't remember it fondly as the coolest thing ever.
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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by NitroEX » Wed May 06, 2015 7:09 pm

You might want to add South Africa to this list. I visited the country sometime during 2003 and I remember seeing the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball Z airing on television there, the Funimation movie singles were also available in stores on VHS and DVD (this was where I purchased movie 8 as a child).

I returned to the country in mid 2004 and my memory is shaky but I remember sometime in 2005 they were airing the Funimation dub of DBGT on a kids block called SABC Tube (DBZ also aired there I believe) which to my knowledge was on the SABC 2 channel. Sorry I can't be more helpful with the exact dates, all I know is they got the shows later than the UK which is where I predominantly watched the series.

I feel as though the UK situation has been well documented online with the various dub switches (Ocean/Westwood, Funimation, Blue Water and Big Green) as well as the brief DVD and VHS movie releases of the first couple Big Green movies. I'm sure someone can provide the accurate dates of all the broadcasts and releases, the only information I could dig up was this: http://web.archive.org/web/200212081635 ... ched.shtml.

Edit: http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/88/t542 ... k-toonami/
Last edited by NitroEX on Wed May 06, 2015 7:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by Adamant » Wed May 06, 2015 7:18 pm

sangofe wrote:Norway:
SF Had movies 1-9 and the two tv specials sub-licensed from AB video. They never got reprinted. And not one single tv episode got broadcasted.

All the manga got released by "Schibsted". It started in march 2004 and they finished the whole run. They later started publishing the animanga, but that got cancelled somewhere down the road. The translation was horrible. I think it was "Japanese -> German, German -> Danish, Danish -> Swedish, Swedish -> Norwegian"...
Also, Outland sold the (much better) Danish translation of the manga for years before that, which is how many here got into the franchise.
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Re: The History of Dragon Ball in Every Country

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Wed May 06, 2015 7:23 pm

Ok me voy a tomar un poco de tiempo para saludar a todos mis hermanos y hermanas de Hispano America (Hola Garnet, Danielsan y otros que me olvido). Tambien saludo a los primos lejanos de España como UltimateHammerBro.

Also I say thanks to every member of every country .I only know English and Spanish, but I want to say hi to every single member and thank them for loving Dragon Ball so much!
Marz wrote: Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:27 pm "Well, the chapter was good, the story was good and so were the fights. But a new transformation, in Dragon Ball? And one that's ugly? This is where we draw the line!!! Jump the Shark moment!!"

This forum is so over-dramatic that it's not even funny.
90sDBZ wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same. :lol:

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