Unknown minor changes in openings to Dragon Ball

[kei17]

On a Japanese forum, I recently found a post stating that there is a variation of the first opening with Fuji TV's old logo that hasn't been released on DVD yet.

I checked through the recordings of the original broadcast I have, and it turned out that there are actually two unreleased versions of the first opening animation.


Episode 1 to 5:

Spoiler:

Old Fuji TV logo (1959 - March 31, 1986)

Episode 6 only:

Spoiler:

New Fuji TV logo (April 1, 1986 - now)

Episode 7-101 (included in the DBox):

Spoiler:

Symbol + New Fuji TV logo

A rerun on Ishikawa TV, a local channel, in 1991 still had the old Fuji TV logo version, but it got replaced with the third version when Fuji themselves started a rebroadcast in the middle of the '90s. From what I know, the versions with the old logo/new logo without the eye symbol have never been broadcast on TV after that.

Spoiler:

On Ishikawa TV in 1991

Also, the Japanese version with English subs broadcast on NGN in Hawaii had the original opening on episode 6 (special thanks to Takarajima for the recording):

Spoiler:

NGN, Hawaii

In addition, I found out a fun fact about the opening song, too. At a certain point in the first half of the series, they re-edited the song for some reason and the Chinese gong sound got replaced.


Version one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fboaEjIwY2A

Version two (longer gong sound):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ9HBmG07OI


The DBox doesn't have version two and the first version is wrongly used for all the episodes. Probably, the people at Pony Canyon and Toei were unaware of the difference and failed to carefully look into the source materials. However, since the movies got the opening song left untouched, DB movie 2 and 3 have version two in the movie DBox.



So in conclusion, there are six different openings to the original DB in total:

1. First opening animation (old Fuji TV logo, shorter gong) - unreleased
2. First opening animation (current Fuji TV logo, shorter gong) - unreleased
3. First opening animation (current Fuji TV logo, eye symbol, shorter gong)
4. First opening animation (current Fuji TV logo, eye symbol, longer gong) - unreleased
5. Second opening animation (current Fuji TV logo, eye symbol, longer gong) - unreleased
6. Second opening animation (current Fuji TV logo, eye symbol, shorter gong [error: only on the DBox])


I will figure out exactly on what episode they switched to the longer gong version when I get more recordings of the original broadcast someday.

[superrayman3]

Just when you think you've seen it all something new pops up thanks for the info kei it's very interesting to see that there are at least 6 versions of the 1st DB opening sequence, now if only we could just find a clean version of the 2nd DB opening sequence.

[Brilliant_Gear_258]

About that variation from the first broadcast version of Episodes 1 - 5, that version was re-used in one of the Greek DVDs, which is the first time it had a DVD release (but only exclusive to Greece) if I recall correctly. Sadly, the Episode 6 version never made it, unless if someone found a 16mm film reel of the original episodes, which might be impossible to find.

Here's the URL, if interested: https://archive.org/details/OG-DB-Premi ... cast-Intro

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

The Canadian flag popped up on-screen during one time episode 61 of GT was aired in Canada, I think this included the OP but I'd need to sift through the broadcast rips to find out for sure.