What triggered this Dragon Ball resurgence?

[JamesOwnz]

So we all know Dragon Ball was a huge hit and then Dragon Ball GT ended in 1997 in Japan. It was shortly after this that Dragon Ball Z blew up in the West however even with this we received no new material.

Finally DBZ ended its run in America in April of 2003 and then GT shortly after finally in the next year Dragon Ball fans were finally thrown a bone when Toriyama changed the ending to the manga slightly however the ending itself was kind of a tease in that it hinted in new chapters down the line.

Then in 2008 we got the little reunion OVA that seemed to be a one off.

Now finally in 2013 we get a new movie written by Toriyama himself the movie is a huge hit and shortly after we get another movie written by Toriyama again and then out of nowhere a brand new series and manga all written by Toriyama!

So has there been any word how this all came together? That saw Toriyama's return to the franchise in such a big way when it seemed like he was content with being done?

[dae428]

I'm not necessarily a reliable or particularly knowledgeable person of the production of Dragon Ball, but I've always seen it as this.

Toei people are like "Hey remember Dragon Ball? I think it's whatever whatever anniversary is coming up. Let's make a movie!" Toei people get grant money from some random association because Dragon Ball is a worldwide cultural phenomenon.

During production, a bitter Toriyama who still remembers the Dragon Ball Evolution fiasco is given a script by Toei. Toriyama's all like, "Yo! This is my territory!" and makes whatever changes he wants because he isn't dealing with Hollywood executives.

The Dragon Ball movie while not reaching the expected box office, does make a noticeable amount of money and is received well. Toriyama is chilling and remembering how fun Dragon Ball was and that one time he went to a heavy metal concert. Toei comes in and says, "Yo T-Dawg! We're making another movie bro! You in?" Toriyama says, "sure why not?" and makes a simple script and a few character designs. Toei says, "cool" and proceeds to pretty much copy the script verbatim with having one or two inconsistencies revolving around Freeza being fixed. Tadayoshi Yamamuro after recently establishing himself as the Dictator Kaiser of Dragon Ball animation from the Battle of Gods production war is given the role of director and creates a story board in like a month or two or whatever.

The movie does better than Battle of Gods in terms of sales due to decent marketing and whatnot and Toei's just chillaxing and all like, "All right we need to continue milking this for all we've got! Uhhh... Dragon Ball Kai is ending and we've still got some character sheets and models from that special OVA thing? Great we'll use that! It's going to be called... Dragon Ball Special... NO! Dragon Ball Super! Alright let's add the Super symbol next to the Dragon Ball sign from Dragon Ball Z. Remember guys we also shouldn't put in a ton of resources in it either because it's not like there's a worldwide audience out there." The End.

[WittyUsername]

It seems that it started with the 2008 Jump Special. Since then there's been more and more new Dragon Ball related content outside of the video games.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

It tends to happen when a franchise has a critical failure, with the exception of one-off segments it goes dormant for a few years until someone wants to resurrect the franchise and their attempt becomes successful milking turns out to be a financially smart move.

Take an infamously poorly received film like Batman & Robin, after that was released in 1997 Hollywood stopped investing so much time and money in comic book movies, then comes Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (beginning in 2005 with Batman Begins), which was well thought out and had good writing.

The same can be said for Dragon Ball. There were no new instalments between 1997 and 2008, at least from TOEI because GT had left a bad taste in people's mouths. Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return might, as you say have been intended as a one-off but after its release Dragonball Evolution premiered and appeared to have hurt the franchise even more, then Yusuke Watanabe came along, wrote the original screenplay for Battle of Gods, and after reading that screenplay Toriyama (as if he didn't have enough contempt for Evolution) decided he didn't want anyone else writing new Dragon Ball stories without his assistance, and the rest is history.

It was a very logical/natural progression in hindsight, and you can probably theorize similar patterns will happen to other popular franchises in future.

[LightBing]

It part of the remake trend were seeing all around. A well established product, know by the current money spending age group. Sure Dragon Ball is for kids but there's a huge bulk of fans that were there from the beginning(when we were kids) and now have money to spend.

Battle of Gods was the test to see if the franchise still gathered interest. Mr. Toriyama participation is just the cherry on top, he must have cold-off from the hectic weekly schedule; now in his relaxing way he can give life to his ideas. He never truly got tired of the series, I think, he got tired of the deadlines and other obligations.

[LuckyCat]

Take an infamously poorly received film like Batman & Robin, after that was released in 1997 Hollywood stopped investing so much time and money in comic book movies, then comes Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (beginning in 2005 with Batman Begins), which was well thought out and had good writing.

I like this comparison and I use it too. Franchises run cyclically, and experience lows either because the product is perceived as oversaturated or a major production was a failure in some dramatic sense. Other recent examples include X-men, Star Trek, and if we want to stick with anime, Death Note and Sailor Moon.

[ABED]

Take an infamously poorly received film like Batman & Robin, after that was released in 1997 Hollywood stopped investing so much time and money in comic book movies, then comes Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (beginning in 2005 with Batman Begins), which was well thought out and had good writing.

Yes and no, it took time, but WB was still investing in Batman. They kept trying to get Batman films made between Batman and Robin's failure and Batman Begins was greenlit. As for CBM's at large, the movie industry never stopped investing money in it. Blade came out a year after Batman and Robin, and proved you could make money with obscure character and not long after that the first X-Men movie came out and those more than anything else began the wave of comic book movies.

[DBZAOTA482]

The late 2000's when nostalgia became extremely predominate in the media.

[precita]

I'm still shocked they didn't make anything new in the early 2000's. Think about it, that was already years after GT ended so Japanese fans would have been nostalgic. Likewise DBZ was huge in the west at the time. We got videogames and toys sure from Japan, but nothing else.

The special in 2008 was more than 10 years after the GT special aired. Crazy. And then from 2008 to 2013 when Battle of Gods came out was another big gap.

[LuckyCat]

I'm still shocked they didn't make anything new in the early 2000's. Think about it, that was already years after GT ended so Japanese fans would have been nostalgic. Likewise DBZ was huge in the west at the time. We got videogames and toys sure from Japan, but nothing else.

Perhaps Toei was busy trying to break into the more lucrative live action film format. 20th Century Fox seemed to be interested as early as 2006.

[FoolsGil]

Well, the series has always been strong in the West, you could literally say we are the reason Kai got the Buu Saga. And Toriyama started caring about this series again when Evolution humiliated him

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Take an infamously poorly received film like Batman & Robin, after that was released in 1997 Hollywood stopped investing so much time and money in comic book movies, then comes Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (beginning in 2005 with Batman Begins), which was well thought out and had good writing.

Yes and no, it took time, but WB was still investing in Batman. They kept trying to get Batman films made between Batman and Robin's failure and Batman Begins was greenlit. As for CBM's at large, the movie industry never stopped investing money in it. Blade came out a year after Batman and Robin, and proved you could make money with obscure character and not long after that the first X-Men movie came out and those more than anything else began the wave of comic book movies.

Fair enough.

I'm still shocked they didn't make anything new in the early 2000's. Think about it, that was already years after GT ended so Japanese fans would have been nostalgic. Likewise DBZ was huge in the west at the time. We got videogames and toys sure from Japan, but nothing else.

The special in 2008 was more than 10 years after the GT special aired. Crazy. And then from 2008 to 2013 when Battle of Gods came out was another big gap.

There was no reason to do any more Dragon Ball back then. Toriyama worked like a dog until the series ended and he understandably had to take a few years off doing anything Dragon Ball-related (even something as small as the character designs and concept art he did for GT) and GT had shown a new series being handled almost completely by TOEI was not working for the fans.

The gap between Yo! Son Goku and his Friends Return and Battle of Gods was probably down to the fact Kai was TOEI's biggest priority during that time. I think Kai itself had a lot to do with the resurgence seen as how it didn't do the business TOEI hoped for, after Battle of Gods it became clear that new content is more profitable than old, hence that became the new priority.

Perhaps Toei was busy trying to break into the more lucrative live action film format. 20th Century Fox seemed to be interested as early as 2006.

Evolution was in production since 2002.

[LuckyCat]

Perhaps Toei was busy trying to break into the more lucrative live action film format. 20th Century Fox seemed to be interested as early as 2006.

Evolution was in production since 2002.

I couldn't find any press release that early, unless you mean ideas were being thrown around offices, which may well be true.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Perhaps Toei was busy trying to break into the more lucrative live action film format. 20th Century Fox seemed to be interested as early as 2006.

Evolution was in production since 2002.

I couldn't find any press release that early, unless you mean ideas were being thrown around offices, which may well be true.

There were several reports in March of that year claiming FOX acquired the rights to make a film based off the franchise:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/20 ... dragonball
http://www.screendaily.com/20th-century ... 12.article
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/news/f ... ights-2745
http://ie.ign.com/articles/2002/03/13/d ... -the-movie
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Fox+Acqui ... a083703968

It may have been 2006 that production started though, as I haven't seen anything to suggest pre-production was already in place during those 4 years. It happens all the time with movies, nearly a year and a half ago the CEO of DreamWorks said a fifth Shrek will be made but I haven't heard anything more since.

[B]

It should be noted that Toriyama didn't just draw a new ending; the Kanzenban were slowly coming out one by one. And then, the Dragon Boxes started coming out near-simultaneously.

I don't think we're in a "resurgence" because I don't think DB ever really went away. There's more or less been one game a year since DBZ 1/Buodkai 1. Why did we get a movie that led to another movie that led to a TV show? Hard to say. My best guess is the failure of Kai woke Toei and Shueisha up to reality: if they want people to buy shit, you're going to have to actually create something as opposed to recycling and regurgitating. It's nice to think of BoG as Toriyama's "take that!" against Evolution, but I think it's pretty clear that isn't how production started(in fact, we have the whole "lizard infects evil into people" scrapped storyline telling us it was in the works before Toriyama got involved).

So, yeah, the official companies involved were scared DB might go the way of Sailor Moon and really, truly take a break. BoG was the thing created to avoid the thing that would require a resurgence.

[Lord Beerus]

I think the success of Dragon Ball Heroes played a huge part in the franchise gaining momentum again. I mean, Kai bombed in terms of merchandise sales in Japan, then out of nowhere came Dragon Ball Heroes with crazy new content to drag the franchise out the slump it was in.

[Araki]

I think the success of Dragon Ball Heroes played a huge part in the franchise gaining momentum again. I mean, Kai bombed in terms of merchandise sales in Japan, then out of nowhere came Dragon Ball Heroes with crazy new content to drag the franchise out the slump it was in.

It wasn't until BoG that the brand saw a big sales boost, though. Then F came out and bang, another boost this year - Bandai is projecting a new one for 2016, definitely thanks to Super. That would be impossible for an arcade game by itself.
I think Heroes maybe helped them realize that original content would surely sell better than Kai, which was introducing nothing new, and every merchandise based on it could've been done 20 years ago. They were just plastering the Kai above a Z.

[Bullza]

The fanboy was always there, the show had finished years prior in US and most other countries but it still remained very popular and was still discussed no end. I remember seeing how Dragon Ball was being searched for more than Batman or Spider-man or many other popular franchises.

It's just that now there's something actually worthwhile for people to really get into rather than the usual random game or 20 minute OVA.

So I don't see it as it losing popularity and now it's suddenly getting it back. Toei finally decided to really do something with the franchise again and people are like "finally!".

[Araki]

The fanboy was always there, the show had finished years prior in US and most other countries but it still remained very popular and was still discussed no end. I remember seeing how Dragon Ball was being searched for more than Batman or Spider-man or many other popular franchises.

It's just that now there's something actually worthwhile for people to really get into rather than the usual random game or 20 minute OVA.

So I don't see it as it losing popularity and now it's suddenly getting it back. Toei finally decided to really do something with the franchise again and people are like "finally!".

Oh, the fanbase was definitely there, it always was. Kai had high ratings, too. It was just merchandising sales in general that was either stalling or dropping. New movies and series introduce new characters, outfits, transformations etc, so licensing started moving forward in a big way again.

I think Kai, at least, worked in a way: it introduced Dragon Ball for new audiences. A new series probably wouldn't be possible without that. Kind of like Gundam has been often trying to renew its fanbase since the 90s - the older a fanbase gets, presumably the less it's gonna sell. So Dragon Ball needed Kai.

[Lord Beerus]

I think the success of Dragon Ball Heroes played a huge part in the franchise gaining momentum again. I mean, Kai bombed in terms of merchandise sales in Japan, then out of nowhere came Dragon Ball Heroes with crazy new content to drag the franchise out the slump it was in.

It wasn't until BoG that the brand saw a big sales boost, though. Then F came out and bang, another boost this year - Bandai is projecting a new one for 2016, definitely thanks to Super. That would be impossible for an arcade game by itself.
I think Heroes maybe helped them realize that original content would surely sell better than Kai, which was introducing nothing new, and every merchandise based on it could've been done 20 years ago. They were just plastering the Kai above a Z.

But at the end of the day, Dragon Ball Heroes revolves around kids buying the cards so that they can play them in the arcade system in the first place. Judging from the merchandise sales from when Dragon Ball Heroes was introduced in 2010, kids were buying a lot of cards. Dragon Ball Heroes, at the very least, helped the franchise regain stability in Japan. Then BOG came in and the franchise started to make comeback.