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3,772 Posts & 2,361 Pages Documenting Dragon Ball, since 1998. We've got you covered!
Published by 05 August 2013, 11:46 AM EDTComment

A few years back, the home release of the Bakuman TV series saw a few “Limited Edition” volumes that came packed with bonus CDs. As a series all about breaking into the manga industry (and specifically a version of the Jump world!), it was no surprise to see Dragon Ball songs covered. The first three volumes saw covers of “CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA“, “Mystical Adventure!“, and “I’ll Give You Romance“.

These three cover songs — along with 15 other tracks — have been compiled onto a recent release for the Bakuman franchise entitled TV Animation “Bakuman” Character Cover Song Album UTAMAN.

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The disc (LACA-15324) was released just about two weeks ago on 24 July 2013 for ¥3,000.

It may have taken a couple years, but that is certainly an easier price to swallow than purchasing all three “Limited Edition” volumes upon their initial release! The Character Cover Song Album is available via CDJapan and Amazon Japan.

Published by 04 August 2013, 1:14 PM EDTComment

After the motion-based Xbox 360 exclusive Dragon Ball Z for Kinect jumped from physical disc to digital download, this past year’s Dragon Ball Z: Budokai HD Collection also joined the fray on the Xbox Live Games on Demand service.

Last week, the third and final of the most recent current-generation rehashes also jumped to the service: Ultimate Tenkaichi.

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The download will eat up 5.85 GB of your Xbox 360’s hard drive and will run you $34.99. The disc version will run you a little less at $27.19 on Amazon at the moment (with the PS3 version at $34.64).

Ultimate Tenkaichi swapped up the Sparking! / Raging Blast formula a bit with two attack ranges, offensive and defensive techniques relegated to simple rock/paper/scissors battles, and a new character creation mode with its own story line. Be sure to check out our review before tossing any hard-earned money anyone’s way!

Published by 03 August 2013, 2:54 PM EDTComment

Super Butōden 2, the second of a three-game fighting series on the Super Famicom, received a lot of love on our special DBZ video game music retrospective podcast episode. While the first game also had a pretty great soundtrack, the actual game itself is generally regarded as a rather below-average showing.

It is then perhaps no surprise that the first Super Butōden will be featured on the next episode of Japanese television show Game Center CX. Arino-san will attempt to conquer the game during Episode 165, which airs this coming week on 08 August 2013.

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Under the name Retro Game Challenge and/or Master, various episodes of the show have been released stateside in different capacities both online and on home video, as well as the first of two Nintendo DS games.

The Dragon Ball franchise’s first Nintendo Famicom game, Shenron no Nazo (“The Mystery of Shenlong”, actually released stateside under the title Dragon Power, and due out again soon in a Nintendo 3DS compilation), was previously featured back on Episode 70 of the show. After 14 hours of gaming, Arino was unfortunately unable to complete the game.

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Big thanks to our buddy Adamant for the heads-up!

Published by 02 August 2013, 4:44 PM EDTComment

We generally like to keep the home page feed packed with genuine content like news, guide updates, podcast episodes, etc. There are a few Kanzenshuu “meta” items that require getting the word out a little more, so please excuse the minor interruption and more conversational tone!

When we re-launched the site as the newly-combined Kanzenshuu back in April 2012, we ported over the sites themselves as the first step, and then the old Daizenshuu EX community to integrate into the larger site. The goal was to bring everything together as one entity so that your account was then a single login to allow for forum posts, sure, but also comments on news stories and eventually contributions to the still-planned wiki.

To no real surprise, Kanzenshuu grew even bigger than we expected over the last year. Our priorities were always on news and content generation, so things like account activations would occasionally get away from us into a pretty big backlog. We recently made some updates and changes to the system which will hopefully alleviate some of those problems and allow us to stay on top of it at a quicker pace.

If you registered prior to today (02 August 2013) and still have not had your account activated, you are no longer in the system and will need to re-register. We apologize for the inconvenience for the few of you that slipped through the cracks, but this will at least keep things clean and organized for us moving forward. Thanks for understanding!

We know it goes without saying for the type of visitors/readers/listeners we have here at Kanzenshuu, but we would be remiss to not mention and point to our community guidelines. In a nutshell, we expect everyone to type properly and be an awesome person. Does that sound like you? We want you to hang out with us, then!

Finally, our “Donate” page has been updated — up through last month — with all the fine folks that have contributed recently to keep the site afloat. Those of you that have been following along since the 2012 re-launch probably remember some of the database errors and timeouts we were experiencing, particularly around the lead-up to Battle of Gods. That is no longer an issue thanks to some incredible coding clean-up work by our own Hujio, but also your donations that let us throw the necessary resources at the entire site as a whole. If you have donated since last month, thanks! Your name will be included in the next month or so’s listing. If not, and we don’t like to ask this often and especially as in-your-face at this, please consider the value that you get from Kanzenshuu with timely news, accurate translations, archived guides, our podcast, community, and so on and so forth. Your help makes a world of difference.

With that we’ll get back out of your face and let you enjoy the plethora of content coming your way! Please look forward to a ton of guide enhancements and updates. We will also be back on schedule with the podcast this week, so if your ears have felt a little lonely lately, we have you covered coming up soon!

Published by 31 July 2013, 9:38 AM EDTComment

Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission (on the Japanese Nintendo 3DS) last placed on the Media Create sales list a few weeks back after dipping away again for one week, but has not been able to hang in there since then.

The Famitsu sales list has still been keeping track of the game, however. For the game’s 20th week since release (the period of 08 July 2013 to 14 July 2013), Famitsu pegged the game at another 2,743 copies. For the game’s 21st week since release (the period of 15 July 2013 to 21 July 2013), Famitsu pegged the game at another 2,873 copies.

For this most recent week (the period of 22 July 2013 to 28 July 2013), the game remains absent from the Media Create list, and has now also completely fallen off the Famitsu list. To date, the game has sold upward of 232,000 total copies.

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Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission for the Japanese Nintendo 3DS is available for purchase at CDJapan and Play-Asia. As we feel compelled to note each time, however, the Nintendo 3DS is region-locked and Ultimate Mission will require a Japanese system for play. There is currently no word on an international release of the game.

Published by 29 July 2013, 11:20 AM EDT3 Comments

Beyond a few screen shots and tidbits of information coming to us via the pages of Weekly and V-Jump, the only substantial look we have received at the team-based crossover fighting game J-Stars Victory Vs was the first short commercial aired back in April.

Namco-Bandai recently unveiled the first full-length promotional video for the game, giving fans a much closer look what what is in store:

The musical-only video showcases all of the characters that have been announced so far (Goku, Toriko, Luffy, Naruto, Ichigo, Kenshin, Ryo-san, and Gintoki) with their special moves and techniques fighting across stages from the various franchises.

J-Stars Victory Vs, which was initially unveiled as Project Versus J, is tied in with the 45th Anniversary celebration of Jump and will be available for the PlayStation 3 and Vita at some unspecified point in the future.

Published by 25 July 2013, 1:35 PM EDTComment

The motion-based Xbox 360 exclusive Dragon Ball Z for Kinect jumped from physical disc to digital download two months ago, and its cousin release from last year is joining in on the fun: Dragon Ball Z: Budokai HD Collection is now available on the Xbox Live Games on Demand service.

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The download will eat up 3.60 GB of your Xbox 360’s hard drive and will run you $34.99. The disc version will run you a comparable $35.99 on Amazon at the moment (with the PS3 version down slightly at $33.28).

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai HD Collection collects the first and third (excluding the second) installments from the 2002-2004 trilogy of fighting games developed by Dimps primarily released on the PlayStation 2. The HD versions have had their soundtracks completely replaced and, depending on where in the world you live, contain instances of censorship that you may or may not have originally had in your original release.

Published by 25 July 2013, 10:45 AM EDTComment

Namco-Bandai recently unveiled a new teaser site for an upcoming video game announcement, and it appeared to be Dragon Ball-related in a tangential way: all signs pointed to it counting down to an announcement for a Japanese Nintendo 3DS compilation of older games based on various Jump franchises.

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The site was updated on Monday to formally reveal the game as J Legend Retsuden (Jレジェンド列伝 or “J Legend Biography/History”).

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Of the five games being noted for inclusion so far, one is the first Dragon Ball game on the Nintendo Famicom (NES) from 1986, Shenron no Nazo (“The Mystery of Shenlong”). The game was actually released by Bandai in North America under the title Dragon Power with a few key name and content changes. The game was also included as a bonus within Dragon Ball DS 2: Charge! Red Ribbon Army in 2010, though the Famicom game was removed for its international release as Dragon Ball Origins 2.

Other Famicom games marked for inclusion within J Legend Retsuden are Saint Seiya: Gold Legend, Saint Seiya: Gold Legend Finale, and Charge! Men’s Private School. Go! Go! Ackman 3 for the Super Famicom is also set to be included.

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No release date or price have been set as-of-yet.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of Weekly Shōnen Jump. Other special projects include the upcoming video game J-Stars Victory Vs for the PlayStation 3 and Vita, a team-battle crossover game featuring Dragon Ball and other popular Jump franchises.

Published by 16 July 2013, 6:28 PM EDT7 Comments

In our most recent episode of the Kanzenshuu podcast, a possible tie-in was discussed between Akira Toriyama’s new series Jaco the Galactic Patrolman and the classic Dragon Ball manga. While there were apparent hints being dropped throughout the first chapter, which was recently published in this year’s 33rd issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump, we were left with nothing more than “fan theories” as to what, or even if this could tie in with Dragon Ball. Akira Toriyama went so far as to even mention in his author’s comment that some of the nostalgia would become clear as the story progressed:

ちょっと古臭い感じの内容ですが最後まで読んでいただければなぜかわかりますよ<明>

The content seems a bit dated, but if you read to the end, you’ll understand why. (Akira)

While Toriyama merely hints at such connections and tie-ins, Shueisha has yanked the veil off the mystery and confirms what we suspected — Jaco the Galactic Patrolman is indeed tied to the legendary Dragon Ball franchise. A few key promotional lines on the digital and print announcement pages for issue 33 on Weekly Shōnen Jump’s official website lay it out pretty clearly.

全世界待望の「伝説」がここに帰還!!


The whole world’s long-awaited return of a “legend” is here!!

And to leave no lingering skepticism as to what they mean, they simply spell it out for us.

「ドラゴンボール」の衝撃が甦る!!


The shocking revival of “Dragon Ball”!!

There are also a few Japanese sites whose listings for this issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump contain what appears to be an official description of the series from Shueisha:

<鳥山明先生による13年ぶりの新連載『銀河パトロール ジャコ』とは>
『ドラゴンボール』の衝撃が甦る!創刊45周年を祝して巨星再来!
銀河の彼方よりやってきたナゾの宇宙人、ジャコ!!その正体とは!?


Akira Toriyama-sensei’s First New Series in 13 Years is “Jaco the Galactic Patrolman”
The shocking revival of “Dragon Ball”! In celebration of the 45th anniversary, the superstar returns!
Jaco, a mysterious space alien comes from a far-off galaxy!! What’s his true identity?!

So if you’ve been holding off on reading the first chapter, which is currently available for free via Viz’s latest starter pack, now is your chance to start from the very beginning and follow along. Once you’re all caught up, join our on-going forum discussion and let us know how you think this all ties into the Dragon Ball universe. What are your theories, impressions, or general thoughts on the new series? Let us know!

Published by 15 July 2013, 6:38 PM EDTComment

Akira Toriyama launched a new comic this week, and even better than that fact in and of itself, it is available simultaneously in English! Jaco the Galactic Patrolman officially hit Japanese shelves via Weekly Shōnen Jump a couple days early on Saturday (courtesy of today being “Marine Day” pushing WJ out ahead of its normal Monday release), but it also hits digital shelves today from Viz. In fact, the first chapter is available for free via their latest starter pack, so there are no excuses!

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What does this have to do with Dragon Ball, though, and why are we covering it on the podcast?

Various hints have been dropped that Jaco may have something to do with our favorite series. This week on our show, we dive into these hints and look for hidden connections of our own.

SHOW DESCRIPTION:
Episode #0339! VegettoEX and Julian dive into Akira Toriyama’s new comic, “Jaco the Galactic Patrolman”. Various hits have been dropped that it might have some connection with “Dragon Ball”, so we examine all of the currently-available evidence. News from across the world wraps it all up into one neat package!

REFERENCED SITES:

Enjoy! Discuss this episode on the Kanzenshuu forum.