Has anyone heard anything else about the Frontier Enterprises Dub?

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

For a long time the Harmony Gold episodes of the series was the most elusive piece of English Dragon Ball lost media. Now that the 5 dubbed episodes have been found and archived online, the most mysterious piece is the Frontier Enterprises Dub.

Thought to be shown on flights from Japan to the US in 1987, I find this dub to be an interesting case, because unlike the Harmony Gold dub that was long known about amongst the hardcore Dragon Ball fans I've personally only ever heard this dub referenced by actor Richard Nieskens. Apart from Niesken's claim, information about this dub is absolutely non-existent. No fans have ever claimed to have seen it. No other cast members are known to have had roles in it. Even in our own dub trading community I've never heard any of the usual hoarders claim to have a copy of this dub.

Nieskens also referred to this alleged production as 'Dragon Ball Z' despite Z not even being released in Japan at that point, so it doesn't seem unreasonable for this to be some case of the Mandela effect. As I'm not familiar with the other anime Frontier worked on I'm not sure how easy or hard it would have been for Nieskens to confuse another series with Dragon Ball, but it's likely a possibility if he wasn't familiar with the franchise.

Of course Frontier dubs have been found. Discotek managed to reconstruct the Frontier dub of Lupin the Third : The Mystery of Mamo from various sources, although the existence of an edited Italian DVD release certainly helped. Even if the masters for the Frontier dub of the first OG Dragon Ball movie lasted into the DVD era the materials probably reverted back to TOEI, and they don't have a good track record of even preserving their own broadcast audio, so I severely doubt they would still have this dub at all.

I'd like to research this dub, although I'm not sure where to start looking. Nieskens has said he doesn't remember anything about it because it's been so long. Frontier Enterprises dissolved in 2000, although if anyone knows what particular airlines they worked with, maybe that would be a starting point to uncovering information about this dub, if it did indeed exist? Perhaps we could ask a Harmony Gold rep if they recall the company ever getting the rights from Frontier?

Otherwise, has anyone ever heard anything else about it's existence? I'd love to know if there is any more evidence to point towards it.

[MrSatan2099]

I've actually read about this on the Lost Media Wiki. Really fascinating, but the general lack of information and age of the product make the search that much more difficult. Your best bet may be to turn to the lost media community on the wiki forums, or through Youtube. They've been able to find some pretty obscure things over the years. You may just look up a commercially available Frontier product from the same time period and start googling everyone in the credits to find contact info.

I'd be curious to know more about it, if there is more to know. It may be a case where nothing was ever actually released, or maybe never even completed. If that is the ultimate outcome, I'm sure we'd all still love to know.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

It may be a case where nothing was ever actually released, or maybe never even completed. If that is the ultimate outcome, I'm sure we'd all still love to know.

It's interesting you bring that up. A thought crossed my mind that maybe, like the Ocean dub of Kai the Frontier dub was produced, but for whatever reason never released, as Nieskens only recalled working on it. Thanks for the suggestion, I have thought about joining the Lost Media Discord and doing some research and connecting with others that may be familiar with Frontier that way. If this dub was completed it would be nice to see it surface one day however unlikely that may be by now.