Kanzenshuu

40th Anniversary Tribute “Dragon Ball Super Gallery” #23: Yuki Tabata

Published by VegettoEX07 June 2023, 9:36 AM EDT1 Comment40th Anniversary Super Gallery

The September 2021 issue of Shueisha’s Saikyō Jump magazine kicked off a “Dragon Ball Super Gallery” series in commemoration of the Dragon Ball franchise’s upcoming 40th anniversary. The celebration aims to have different artists all contribute their own spin on the original 42 tankōbon covers, with the images and an accompanying comment published as the magazine’s back cover.

Following the previous twenty-two entries, this month’s July 2023 issue brings us Yuki Tabata (Black Clover) and their take on the series’ 40th volume cover:

Yuki Tabata commented:

Dragon Ball was the start of my life in comics, and it will always be my Number One. That’s what the child in me says. Way back when I was in daycare, I saw Dragon Ball in a copy of Jump my friend had brought in, and I decided that when I grew up, I would be a cartoonist. That’s why to me, there could be no higher honor than having the opportunity to participate in a project like this. And Dragon Ball is still stupendously popular. Having actually managed to become a cartoonist, I’ve been able to appreciate all the more just how amazing Dragon Ball is. Thank you so much!!

Saikyō Jump is currently a monthly magazine published in Japan by Shueisha under the “Jump” line of magazines. The magazine began as a quarterly publication in 2012, went monthly in 2013, went bimonthly in late-2014, and returned to a monthly format in 2021 (including a digital release for the first time). The magazine’s focus is spin-off and supplementary manga series aimed at a young audience, while also including game promotions, news coverage, and more. The magazine currently serializes content such as Yoshitaka Nagayama’s Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultra God Mission!!!! manga series, Yūji Kasai’s Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Avatars!! manga series, and the Dragon Ball GT Anime Comic. For calendar year 2019, Shueisha reported Saikyō Jump‘s circulation down at 130,000, with readership as 58.5% upper elementary school, 28% lower middle school, 11% middle school, and 2.5% high school or older.

Podcast

Podcast Episode #0501

Published by VegettoEX24 May 2023, 9:51 AM EDTComment

Show Description

Episode #0501! Mike, Ajay, and Tyson look back at the 2013 theatrical film “Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods” with (somehow!) both a retrospective critical eye and a fresh perspective. Ten years removed and with multiple adaptations behind us, how does the original film version of the story hold up? What precedents did it set for the next decade, and what has the rest of the franchise still failed to recapture in all that time?

How to Listen

Our podcast is available via Apple Podcasts and/or Google Podcasts, or you can pop the direct RSS feed into the program of your choice. You can also listen to this episode by directly downloading the MP3 or by streaming it on Spotify, or YouTube. We invite you to discuss this episode on our forum.

Referenced Sites:

Content

Translation Update: “Special Project: Toyotarō Drew It!” Image #66

Published by VegettoEX19 May 2023, 1:22 PM EDTCommentToyotarō Drew It

Each month, Toyotarō provides a drawing of a Dragon Ball character — as well as an accompanying comment — on the official Japanese Dragon Ball website. Following up on the wealth of characters already drawn, for his May 2023 entry, Toyotarō has drawn Shallot:

Shallot

A very mysterious Saiyan that came from a bygone era. Congratulations to Dragon Ball Legends on its 5th anniversary!

Shallot was designed by Akira Toriyama for inclusion in the 2018 mobile video game Dragon Ball Legends:

It is worth noting that the exact spelling of the name シャロット (sharotto) had previously been used for an original female Saiyan character in the 2016 Nintendo 3DS video game Dragon Ball Fusions, pre-dating this Dragon Ball Legends character. In Dragon Ball Fusion‘s English localization, the name spelling of シャロット was adapted as “Shalot” (pre-emptively avoiding a direct name duplication in English… but not in Japanese!):

This drawing and comment set has been added to the respective page in our “Translations” archive.

News

“Dragon Ball Super” Manga Chapter 93 Released

Published by VegettoEX18 May 2023, 11:23 AM EDT1 CommentDragon Ball Super

Following up on previous chapters, Shueisha and Viz have added the official English translation of the Dragon Ball Super manga’s ninety-third chapter to their respective Manga Plus and Shonen Jump services, continuing onward into the brand-new “Super Hero arc”, now adapting the contents of the recent theatrical film following three chapters worth of original prologue material. Alongside other initiatives including free chapters and a larger archive for paid subscribers, this release continues the companies’ schedule of not simply simultaneously publishing the series’ chapter alongside its Japanese debut to the release date, but to its local time in Japan alongside its serialization in today’s July 2023 issue of Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine.

The Dragon Ball Super “comicalization” began in June 2015, initially just ahead of the television series, and running both ahead and behind the series at various points. The manga runs in Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine, with the series’ ninety-third chapter hitting today in the magazine’s July 2023 issue.

Illustrated by “Toyotarō” (in all likelihood, a second pen-name used by Dragon Ball AF fan manga author and illustrator “Toyble”), the Dragon Ball Super manga covered the Battle of Gods re-telling, skipped the Resurrection ‘F’ re-telling, and “charged ahead” to the Champa arc, “speeding up the excitement of the TV anime even more”. Though the television series has completed its run, the manga continues onward, moving into its own original “Galactic Patrol Prisoner”, “Granolla the Survivor”, and now “Super Hero” arcs.

Viz is currently releasing free digital chapters of the series, and began their own collected print edition back in 2017. The company’s eighteenth collected volume will be released this June.

The Dragon Ball Super television series concluded in March 2018 with 131 total episodes. Crunchyroll (by way of the merger with FUNimation) owns the American distribution license for the series, with the English dub having wrapped its broadcast on Cartoon Network, and the home video release reaching its tenth and final box set in 2020. A complete steelbook “Limited Edition” was released by Crunchyroll this past September.

News

Bandai Namco Holdings Fiscal 2023 Figures

Published by VegettoEX12 May 2023, 11:56 AM EDTCommentFinancial

Bandai Namco Holdings has posted a ¥90.345 billion profit for the full fiscal year of 2023, down slightly from a ¥92.752 billion profit last year.

Dragon Ball came in as the company’s best-performing franchise for the year, pulling in ¥144.5 billion, up from last year’s ¥127.6 billion and ahead of the projected ¥133.5 billion. The company is projecting a decrease to ¥130 billion for fiscal year 2024.

In terms of general toys and hobby merchandise (non-video games) for Japan, the franchise also jumped from ¥19.7 billion last fiscal year to ¥22.5 billion this year. The company is projecting a drop to ¥20 billion for fiscal year 2024.

News

40th Anniversary Tribute “Dragon Ball Super Gallery” #22: Shun Saeki

Published by VegettoEX04 May 2023, 9:11 AM EDTComment40th Anniversary Super Gallery

Following the previous twenty-one entries, this month’s June 2023 issue brings us Shun Saeki (Food Wars) and their take on the series’ 10th volume cover:

Shun Saeki commented:

It’s the ultimate honor to be associated with such a legendary series. The cover of this volume has a very peculiar design, and after pondering about how to recreate it, I decided on a setting where Goku and Bulma come to look for a Dragon Ball on some ruins that just so happened to have objects shaped like the patterns from the original cover, but now I’m wondering if it was maybe a bit forced. Anyway, I gladly drew it and had a lot of fun doing it! Thank you so very much.

Content

Translation Update: “Special Project: Toyotarō Drew It!” Image #65

Published by VegettoEX03 May 2023, 4:40 PM EDTCommentToyotarō Drew It

Tullece

I wonder how he survived the destruction of Planet Vegeta…? I hope that can get cleared up someday.

Tullece debuted as the main antagonist in the third Dragon Ball Z film back in 1990. He reappeared as a “Ghost Warrior” in the 1993-1994 multimedia blitz Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, and has been a regular video game inclusion in the post-serialization era.

This drawing and comment set has been added to the respective page in our “Translations” archive.

Site Meta

New Wiki Preview Page + Call For Community Research Collaboration: “Season”

Published by VegettoEX25 April 2023, 1:59 PM EDTComment

A new wiki preview page is available… and it’s one we’re requesting your early support and community research on!

Preview the “Season” wiki page

Beyond all of the common misinformation around “seasons” for the North American broadcast (largely due to FUNimation’s later home video releases which ignored their previously-established cable broadcast “season” delineations), lots of the standard episode guides you see out there online are just flat out wrong.

Perhaps you’ve read one of the latest features on our site — “The Dragon Ball Z American Debut Date” — which covers the fact that local syndication affiliates played the same episode on different dates, meaning there is no real single “debut” date for FUNimation’s English dub of Dragon Ball Z in September 1996.

You would think that once things moved to the Toonami block on Cartoon Network (a single cable network channel), having verifiable/confirmed debut dates would be easier, but that’s not true! Plans changed at the last minute all the time, leading to shifted debut dates. Of particular note, the events of September 11th in 2001 obviously impacted broadcast plans across the board. In this case, Mobile Suit Gundam was removed from its block and replaced with an extra episode of Dragon Ball, which sped up its intended broadcast.

The 2003 timeframe is also notable for seeing the initial wrap-up for both Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z on Toonami. This was directly before the current install of our own forum in 2004, which in turn means we’re missing lots of key contemporary confirmations due to other notable fansites and forums of the day long since being lost to time.

It’s important to recognize we don’t know what we don’t know. This is where you come in! Maybe YOU are aware of other ancient, still-online little forums or sites we somehow overlooked that can provide contemporary confirmations for some of these dates.

With all of the aforementioned information in mind, and checking out what we already have established and cited on the “Season” wiki preview page, would love help finding contemporary confirmations (not hearsay/uncited/undated lists!) for:

Dragon Ball episode 28 on Toonami
Dragon Ball episode 153 on Toonami
Dragon Ball Z edited dub episode 276 (JP 291) on Toonami

Enjoy the additional wiki preview, please share this article and/or our tweet thread far and wide across your various fandom circles, and get in touch with us with any confirmations you may see out there!

News

“Dragon Ball Super” Manga Chapter 92 Released

Published by VegettoEX20 April 2023, 11:04 AM EDTCommentDragon Ball Super

Following up on previous chapters, Shueisha and Viz have added the official English translation of the Dragon Ball Super manga’s ninety-second chapter to their respective Manga Plus and Shonen Jump services, continuing onward into the brand-new “Super Hero arc”, now adapting the contents of the recent theatrical film following three chapters worth of original prologue material. Alongside other initiatives including free chapters and a larger archive for paid subscribers, this release continues the companies’ schedule of not simply simultaneously publishing the series’ chapter alongside its Japanese debut to the release date, but to its local time in Japan alongside its serialization in today’s June 2023 issue of Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine.

The Dragon Ball Super “comicalization” began in June 2015, initially just ahead of the television series, and running both ahead and behind the series at various points. The manga runs in Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine, with the series’ ninety-second chapter hitting today in the magazine’s June 2023 issue.

Viz is currently releasing free digital chapters of the series, and began their own collected print edition back in 2017. The company’s eighteenth collected volume will be released this June.

Content

New Translation: 30th Anniversary Super History Book Video Game Interview #5: Xenoverse with Masayuki Hirano

Published by VegettoEX14 April 2023, 11:24 AM EDTComment

Following up on the first, second, third, and fourth interviews in this series, our latest translation addition continues with material from 2016’s 30th anniversary Super History Book. Here in the fifth in a five-part series of video game-related interviews, we travel back to somewhat recent history with Dragon Ball Xenoverse producer Masayuki Hirano.

Read the Full Translation