Did original Dragon Ball have a complete run on Cartoon Network Australia?

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

From what I read original Dragon Ball aired Saturday nights on Cartoon Network Australia around 2002/2003 and after the episode Krillin dies at the end of the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai the series stops and reruns the next week from the very first episode, but did they ever go beyond that point?

[GokuDaimao]

Gathering highly obscure information such as this is nothing short of a challenge, but I think I do have your answer.

As you yourself say, the roadblock of new episodes was hit between the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003.

Here is a forum thread opened on May 30, 2003 on the formative version of Madman Entertainment's former forums, the Madboards.





Now, the content of thread was not archived. But it indicates new episodes of the original series starting in June. "New episodes," would very imply picking up where the show previously left off with new episodes beforehand.

And of course, the common sense point of view for me would be, why wouldn't they have? I mean, I know a lot boneheaded decisions have been made throughout the history of television programming, with the Dragon Ball franchise alone, but you'd think fans, whether on here or one some other message board or really anywhere would have mentioned here and there that the series never fully ran on the network they relied on for it.

On top of that, the show, unlike in the United States was rotated on and off on Cartoon Network up until 2011. It was always fair to expect titles like Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, Naruto and a few other anime titles like that to be on the air every now and then pretty much until the 'Check It!' rebranding occurred locally over there towards the end of 2011.

They even once held an 8-hour marathon of the original Dragon Ball series on April 05, 2009 to promote Dragon Ball Evolution, believe it or not, which had made its way into Australian theaters 2 days prior. Coincidentally the same day that Fuji TV premiered Dragon Ball Kai in Japan, but that's a whole nother discussion.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Gathering highly obscure information such as this is nothing short of a challenge, but I think I do have your answer.

As you yourself say, the roadblock of new episodes was hit between the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003.

Here is a forum thread opened on May 30, 2003 on the formative version of Madman Entertainment's former forums, the Madboards.





Now, the content of thread was not archived. But it indicates new episodes of the original series starting in June. "New episodes," would very imply picking up where the show previously left off with new episodes beforehand.

And of course, the common sense point of view for me would be, why wouldn't they have? I mean, I know a lot boneheaded decisions have been made throughout the history of television programming, with the Dragon Ball franchise alone, but you'd think fans, whether on here or one some other message board or really anywhere would have mentioned here and there that the series never fully ran on the network they relied on for it.

On top of that, the show, unlike in the United States was rotated on and off on Cartoon Network up until 2011. It was always fair to expect titles like Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, Naruto and a few other anime titles like that to be on the air every now and then pretty much until the 'Check It!' rebranding occurred locally over there towards the end of 2011.

They even once held an 8-hour marathon of the original Dragon Ball series on April 05, 2009 to promote Dragon Ball Evolution, believe it or not, which had made its way into Australian theaters 2 days prior. Coincidentally the same day that Fuji TV premiered Dragon Ball Kai in Japan, but that's a whole nother discussion.

Thanks for the informative response, that screenshot from Madman's old forums is definitely a great find.

I'm not sure if the gap before new episodes was late 2002 or early 2003, all I know is original Dragon Ball was aired on Saturday nights on Cartoon Network around this time, but if new episodes began airing June 2003 then maybe it also aired on Sunday nights, because, after all Cartoon Network had 101 episodes to get through and if they only aired 1 a week then Funimation's inhouse dub of original Dragon Ball would have had to have began in Australia much earlier than the US, which I doubt.

Another thing is, if the Piccolo arc began in June 2003 that would mean it premiered in Australia before the US (where it made its debut in September of that year), which I'm also skeptical of.

I agree with you that if Dragon Ball was on the air until 2011 it stands to reason the whole series would have been aired at some point, because, like you said we've never heard any Australian or New Zealand fans say definitively that it stopped at episode 101 and never resumed.

Hopefully there are fans out there who caught the whole run that can confirm for us.

Interesting that so many fans seem eager to see GT too.

UPDATE : I found some partial schedules, and if they are true then episode 102 (titled Mark of the Demon in Funimation's dub) aired June 29, 2006. This was obviously a rerun, but it would suggest that the Piccolo arc did indeed air on Cartoon Network Australia, and that at some point they started showing original Dragon Ball on weekdays, not just weekends, as that was a Thursday.

[GokuDaimao]

Another thing is, if the Piccolo arc began in June 2003 that would mean it premiered in Australia before the US (where it made its debut in September of that year), which I'm also skeptical of.

Here's the thing though. Different countries pass each other in terms of new episodes of shows all the time. Even to this very day, that sometimes happens.

One easy example of this is FUNimation and Adult Swim premiering Dragon Ball Super in the United States far earlier than they initially intended to only because Turner Broadcasting in Southeast Asia announced that they were going to put an alternative English dub of Dragon Ball Super on the air because they were being held out on. So, FUNimation did that out of spite to get in front of what they were going to do and were still able to say that they were/had the first English dub of Dragon Ball Super.

Season 03 of Yu-Gi-Oh! in particular, YTV leaped ahead of Kids' WB pretty efficiently simply by running more episodes at once often enough.

There was also the time that Cartoon Network did their Naruto Hundo marathon where they ran the first 100 episodes of the series consecutively (excluding Adult Swim hours). But only #100 was a new episode. The rest were repeats. YTV, on the same day, August 17, 2007 responded to this simply by running 5 new episodes in a row. This put them ahead for at least a few weeks until Cartoon Network finally caught the lead with #109.


YTV's schedule, showcasing 5 new episodes in a row, spanning from 7pm-9:30pm - August 17, 2007


Cartoon Network's Schedule - August 19, 2007, airing episode #100 for the first time at 9:30pm and not going any further than that.


And you can see how #101 is a labelled as a new episode the following Saturday.



But my point is, it was fair to expect other countries to take the lead over others in certain instances. It didn't happen too often with Dragon Ball because FUNimation was the primary license holder and everyone else was either sourcing their copies of the show directly from them or you had the alternative dub which worked off of their template so they were still relied upon in some capacity.

However, Australia would be the one region where they could maybe just possibly happen since FUNimation had as good of a working relationship with Cartoon Network Australia and Madman Entertainment than they did with Cartoon Network's flagship Atlanta-based network.

I'm not saying this is automatically the case, but I wouldn't rule it out either. Especially in 2003 when people weren't constantly putting everything that aired on TV in some part of the world directly onto the internet. And that would eventually happen regardless with the Madman DVDs of FUNimation's dub of Dragon Ball being the de facto source of people seeing Dragon Ball via download or stream up until the Blue Bricks became a thing, which was a good 4-5 year stretch.

[MasenkoHA]

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Another thing is, if the Piccolo arc began in June 2003 that would mean it premiered in Australia before the US (where it made its debut in September of that year), which I'm also skeptical of.

That’s not unheard of. I remember the 2003 Teen Titans cartoons the last 4 episodes of season 2 aired in the UK months before they aired in the US where Cartoon Network decided to hold those episodes off until the end of the summer and treat them as the beginning of season 3 for some reason.

The King Piccolo saga set DVDS had also been released in March and June 2003 so they would have definitely exist for Australian networks to run. The decision to save those episodes for the fall schedule was a Cartoon Network USA one and not a lack of availability

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I'm aware that its not unusual for other English-speaking countries to pass the US in their runs of a particular show.

The entirety of the Blue Water dub of Dragon Ball GT aired on CNX in the UK before GT ever premiered in the US, but obviously that was an alternate dub independent of Funimation (in terms of footage and scripts) so that's understandable.

Speaking of Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters as I recall the final episodes of the last few seasons of the 4Kids dub aired on RTÉ2 in Ireland before anywhere else. Said channel also featured the world premier of the Capsule Monsters mini-series, but I think that was a known fact. If Australia really passed Cartoon Network US for original Dragon Ball this seemed to have slipped under the radar.

I just thought because Dragon Ball is more popular than Yu-Gi-Oh and Australia is a bigger country than Ireland that the Piccolo arc's TV debut would have been more widely known, but that's fascinating if it did indeed premier on Cartoon Network Australia.

[Doctor Seaweed Roll]

Gathering highly obscure information such as this is nothing short of a challenge, but I think I do have your answer.

As you yourself say, the roadblock of new episodes was hit between the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003.

Here is a forum thread opened on May 30, 2003 on the formative version of Madman Entertainment's former forums, the Madboards.





Now, the content of thread was not archived. But it indicates new episodes of the original series starting in June. "New episodes," would very imply picking up where the show previously left off with new episodes beforehand.

And of course, the common sense point of view for me would be, why wouldn't they have? I mean, I know a lot boneheaded decisions have been made throughout the history of television programming, with the Dragon Ball franchise alone, but you'd think fans, whether on here or one some other message board or really anywhere would have mentioned here and there that the series never fully ran on the network they relied on for it.

On top of that, the show, unlike in the United States was rotated on and off on Cartoon Network up until 2011. It was always fair to expect titles like Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, Naruto and a few other anime titles like that to be on the air every now and then pretty much until the 'Check It!' rebranding occurred locally over there towards the end of 2011.

They even once held an 8-hour marathon of the original Dragon Ball series on April 05, 2009 to promote Dragon Ball Evolution, believe it or not, which had made its way into Australian theaters 2 days prior. Coincidentally the same day that Fuji TV premiered Dragon Ball Kai in Japan, but that's a whole nother discussion.

Any chance you can link the old forum post? just wanting to check out that forum for fun