YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

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YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by OmegaRockman » Fri Dec 02, 2022 3:08 am

YouTuber Ray Mona made huge waves this past year with her excellent two-part documentary about her search for the previously lost Americanized live-action/animated hybrid Sailor Moon pitch pilot made by Toonmakers and Renaissance-Atlantic (the latter of which worked with Saban on several shows including Power Rangers), which culminated in her actually finding the thing.

Recently she uploaded Part 1 of her latest documentary series covering Saint Seiya in which she discusses her search for the mysterious Starstorm live-action pitch pilot also produced by Renaissance-Atlantic, of which only a 20-second trailer survives. While Ray didn't find the Starstorm pilot, she did find some other awesome things (both Saint Seiya related and not, but you should watch the video in full to find out): of interest to us here at Kanzenshuu, Ray's conversation with former Renaissance-Atlantic employee Marlene Sharp revealed that the company had at one point considered Dragon Ball for one of their Americanized imports.

Whether this would have been an animated or live-action thing or if anything was ever created for it beyond a logo wasn't really discussed in the video (of course, considering the focus was on Saint Seiya), but the fact that this was a thing that could have existed at one point is an incredibly fascinating piece of DB history. It's also a reminder that while we got some pretty bad dubs of the show until 2010, at least we don't live in the WORST timeline when considering how the franchise could have been brought to the West. We could've gotten Dragon Ball by way of a Power Rangers-esque reimagining rather than just getting the show.

Here's hoping that Ray makes another documentary delving deeper into this Renaissance-Atlantic DB thing (and the other series that were also considered). Of course, I wouldn't expect it anytime soon since these types of video essays are incredibly time consuming, and Ray's already got her hands full with the Saint Seiya thing. Heck, maybe Mike could reach out to Ray sometime and see if she's interested in talking about some of the stuff she learned on the podcast. It might make for a good episode! Of course, this is assuming all parties are willing and have the time.

Either way, everyone should check out the Sailor Moon and Saint Seiya videos because Ray put a gargantuan amount of research into them and has done a huge service to media preservation and anime history to boot. Again, fingers crossed there's enough there to discuss the DB project as well!
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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by JulieYBM » Fri Dec 02, 2022 3:30 am

Wow, that sounds wild. I wonder if anything will turn up?
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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by Super Sayian Prime » Fri Dec 02, 2022 12:54 pm

I made a thread about this back in 2019.

Marlene Sharp has spoken about her time at RA a bunch over the years. In an interview with a Saint Seiya podcast, she said they were developing a Digimon adaptation at one point, too, but it never went beyond paper. Part of me wonders if that's the same fate this Dragon Ball project met. Unless it went under a different name, nothing submitted to the Library of Congress by RA appeared to be tied to Dragon Ball, unlike Sailor Moon/Team Angel and Starstorm/Guardians of the Cosmos. They also filed a bunch of Saint Seiya-related trademarks, but only did one for Dragon Ball. Sharp has said that not everything RA made was meant to be a TV show pitch. Sometimes they were just asked to make promotional videos for toy/TV industry trade shows.

The Dragon Ball project not going forward wouldn't really be surprising either. Unless they were late to filing that trademark, August 1994 has to be pretty close to when Gen Fukunaga had a chat with his uncle at Toei. By the spring of '95, it was public knowledge that Funimation had acquired the series.
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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by OmegaRockman » Fri Dec 02, 2022 5:40 pm

Super Saiyan Prime wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 12:54 pm I made a thread about this back in 2019.

Marlene Sharp has spoken about her time at RA a bunch over the years. In an interview with a Saint Seiya podcast, she said they were developing a Digimon adaptation at one point, too, but it never went beyond paper. Part of me wonders if that's the same fate this Dragon Ball project met. Unless it went under a different name, nothing submitted to the Library of Congress by RA appeared to be tied to Dragon Ball, unlike Sailor Moon/Team Angel and Starstorm/Guardians of the Cosmos. They also filed a bunch of Saint Seiya-related trademarks, but only did one for Dragon Ball. Sharp has said that not everything RA made was meant to be a TV show pitch. Sometimes they were just asked to make promotional videos for toy/TV industry trade shows.

The Dragon Ball project not going forward wouldn't really be surprising either. Unless they were late to filing that trademark, August 1994 has to be pretty close to when Gen Fukunaga had a chat with his uncle at Toei. By the spring of '95, it was public knowledge that Funimation had acquired the series.
Wow, thanks a bunch for the additional info! I didn't realize somebody had discovered this before. Still a super interesting subject nonetheless!
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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by dragonmagico » Fri Dec 02, 2022 6:19 pm

if it actually exists its probably just sitting on a tape at the library on congress just like all the other """lost""" media videos shes discovered. so much goes there to die :(

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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by MasenkoHA » Fri Dec 02, 2022 11:29 pm

Super Saiyan Prime wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 12:54 pm

The Dragon Ball project not going forward wouldn't really be surprising either. Unless they were late to filing that trademark, August 1994 has to be pretty close to when Gen Fukunaga had a chat with his uncle at Toei. By the spring of '95, it was public knowledge that Funimation had acquired the series.
Not only that but I'm pretty sure Funimation's pilot dub of Curse of the Blood Rubies with the Harmony Gold names was 1994.

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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by pixie_misa » Sun Dec 04, 2022 10:40 am

dragonmagico wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 6:19 pm if it actually exists its probably just sitting on a tape at the library on congress just like all the other """lost""" media videos shes discovered. so much goes there to die :(
saying things are sent to "die" in an archival library is a weird take

Also kinda blows my mind how much people just... never looked there in the first place. After all, In order to get copyright registered on a work, one of the steps involved is sending a copy of the work to the LoC. Hell I'd have figured that'd be one of the *first* places people looked for lost media.

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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by Super Sayian Prime » Sun Dec 04, 2022 5:29 pm

pixie_misa wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 10:40 amAlso kinda blows my mind how much people just... never looked there in the first place. After all, In order to get copyright registered on a work, one of the steps involved is sending a copy of the work to the LoC. Hell I'd have figured that'd be one of the *first* places people looked for lost media.
The definition of "lost media" has long since changed from "there are no known copies" to "this is not easily accessible." With that in mind, the LOC having something in their archives does little to change that (until the subject falls into public domain, which will be long after most interested in it will be deceased). As a branch of the U.S. government, they (obviously) follow U.S. copyright laws. To take anything out of their archives, you need express written consent from the company listed on the submission. It's useful for companies, but less so for the general public.

Ray lucked out that Renaissance-Atlantic registered everything under their own name and that the company's owner was happy to help. If it was under Bandai or Toei, she likely wouldn't have gotten anywhere.
"I like the money it brings in, but Dragon Ball Heroes is the worst. That's actually the real reason I decided to start working on new material. I was afraid Bandai would make something irredeemably stupid like Super Saiyan 4 Broly." - Akira Toriyama, made up interview, 2013.

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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by dragonmagico » Sun Dec 04, 2022 7:30 pm

pixie_misa wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 10:40 am
dragonmagico wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2022 6:19 pm if it actually exists its probably just sitting on a tape at the library on congress just like all the other """lost""" media videos shes discovered. so much goes there to die :(
saying things are sent to "die" in an archival library is a weird take

Also kinda blows my mind how much people just... never looked there in the first place. After all, In order to get copyright registered on a work, one of the steps involved is sending a copy of the work to the LoC. Hell I'd have figured that'd be one of the *first* places people looked for lost media.
I don't know how else to describe rotting VHS tapes that no one remembers exists other than dying:/

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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by Super Sayian Prime » Thu Nov 02, 2023 5:39 pm

Ray has done a few follow-ups to this and plans on putting out more weekly. In this week's video, she spoke with Frank Ward, the founder of Renaissance-Atlantic. The reason his company made these adaptations was because broadcasters just weren't interested in the original Japanese versions, but Bandai wanted TV show backed toylines.

His memory of this stuff seems a little hazy (he appears to have completely forgotten about their animated Saint Seiya pilot) but the implication I got was that the Dragon Ball project never got off the ground. The problem was that Renaissance-Atlantic was working on the behalf of Bandai, without the co-operation of Toei. This effectively killed the Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon and Saint Seiya projects because the latter held the TV rights to those properties. Toei greatly preferred simply dubbing their existing productions over creating Americanized remakes. With Dragon Ball, it sounds like Funimation had acquired the rights to the series before Renaissance-Atlantic could produce anything. Ward appears to hold some resentment towards Gen Fukunaga over this, but also seems unaware of how successful Funimation later became through Dragon Ball.

The Dragon Ball project fizzling out led to the creation of WMAC Masters, though that link seems to just be on a conceptual level (toy-backed, live-action martial arts kids show) than outright copy/paste with the names filed off. I find it pretty interesting that Renaissance-Atlantic intersected with so many major players in anime localization back in the day. You had the obvious ties to Saban and Bandai, the clash with DIC and Funimation, and even a co-production with a then unknown 4Kids.

Ward gave Ray the permission to take everything Renaissance-Atlantic submitted to the Library of Congress and she plans on releasing videos tied to this stuff. It's possible she has might have some pre-production work from Dragon Ball.
"I like the money it brings in, but Dragon Ball Heroes is the worst. That's actually the real reason I decided to start working on new material. I was afraid Bandai would make something irredeemably stupid like Super Saiyan 4 Broly." - Akira Toriyama, made up interview, 2013.

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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by eledoremassis02 » Thu Nov 02, 2023 11:17 pm

Super Saiyan Prime wrote: Thu Nov 02, 2023 5:39 pm Ray has done a few follow-ups to this and plans on putting out more weekly. In this week's video, she spoke with Frank Ward, the founder of Renaissance-Atlantic. The reason his company made these adaptations was because broadcasters just weren't interested in the original Japanese versions, but Bandai wanted TV show backed toylines.

His memory of this stuff seems a little hazy (he appears to have completely forgotten about their animated Saint Seiya pilot) but the implication I got was that the Dragon Ball project never got off the ground. The problem was that Renaissance-Atlantic was working on the behalf of Bandai, without the co-operation of Toei. This effectively killed the Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon and Saint Seiya projects because the latter held the TV rights to those properties. Toei greatly preferred simply dubbing their existing productions over creating Americanized remakes. With Dragon Ball, it sounds like Funimation had acquired the rights to the series before Renaissance-Atlantic could produce anything. Ward appears to hold some resentment towards Gen Fukunaga over this, but also seems unaware of how successful Funimation later became through Dragon Ball.

The Dragon Ball project fizzling out led to the creation of WMAC Masters, though that link seems to just be on a conceptual level (toy-backed, live-action martial arts kids show) than outright copy/paste with the names filed off. I find it pretty interesting that Renaissance-Atlantic intersected with so many major players in anime localization back in the day. You had the obvious ties to Saban and Bandai, the clash with DIC and Funimation, and even a co-production with a then unknown 4Kids.

Ward gave Ray the permission to take everything Renaissance-Atlantic submitted to the Library of Congress and she plans on releasing videos tied to this stuff. It's possible she has might have some pre-production work from Dragon Ball.
Thank you for the update! Will be cool to see what she can find, even if its not Dragon Ball related. Also really cool of Mr. Ray!

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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Tue Nov 14, 2023 2:59 pm

Ray Mona is female.
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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by eledoremassis02 » Tue Nov 14, 2023 3:10 pm

Cure Dragon 255 wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2023 2:59 pm Ray Mona is female.
It was a mistake, I meant Mr. Ward.

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Re: YouTuber Ray Mona Discovers Possible Renaissance-Atlantic American Dragon Ball Pitch

Post by Saiya6Cit » Wed Nov 15, 2023 11:20 pm

Well first of all thank you. I found this post interesting and something I would not come across on my own.

That saint seiya live action clip looks as if coming from a porn parody. I am not sure if I would want to watch or support the hunt for a dragon ball one.. but if it would happen to be out there... I mean... I have watched worse things... yeah ...


The video part about the toy prototypes... well I follow one guy on twitter who has one of the biggest DB collections and he has some prototypes and California is very well connected with Mexico so I am sure they are legit.

Lost media means there are no copies and the originals are destroyed/lost. Rare to find media is when you think there might be copies but the location in unkown. In my opinion.

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