Yesterday we reported about some very early rumblings of a new fully-colored manga re-release and something being called a “Chōzenshū” (超全集). Fortunately, our very own Julian rushed out to grab the February 2013 issue of V-Jump and snapped a quick photo of the page containing the essential details we had been missing!
As of now, the “Full Color Comics” will cover both the Saiyan and Freeza arcs of the original manga storyline. The three Saiyan arc volumes will be released 04 February 2013 and the five Freeza arc volumes will be released 04 April 2013, although there is still no price point listed.
The page also specifies that the “Chōzenshū” will be a four volume set of illustrated reference books that “tell everything about Dragon Ball“. The four volumes are listed to come out next year on February 4th, March 4th, April 4th, and May 9th, respectively.
At the moment these releases have not popped up for pre-order on any online retailers, but we will of course be sure to let you know as soon as they do, along with any additional details we can find!
The on-going promotional mini-manga for the Dragon Ball Heroes arcade game (and upcoming Nintendo 3DS port) returns for a fourth chapter in the February 2013 issue of V-Jump released today in Japan. In this latest, seven-page chapter of Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission, “A Rival Appears?!” (ライバル出現!? Raibaru Shutsugen!?), a tournament arc begins, and a potential rival, “Erito” (エリト — possibly a play on “Elite”) makes his debut. The story is “to be continued” as usual, indicating that the manga will be going on for at least the foreseeable future.
The mini-manga by the mysterious author “Toyotarō” ran for only two pages each in its first firsttwo chapters in the December 2012 and January 2013 issues of V-Jump respectively, while the third chapter last month was expanded to nine pages.
A new fully-colored version of the Dragon Ball manga — at least covering the early part of the “Z” era events — has been announced in the February 2013 issue of V-Jump released today in Japan. As opposed to the “TV Animation Comics”, which utilized screen shots of the TV series, these volumes will be colored-in versions of the original manga drawn by Akira Toriyama. New listings for the first three “Full Color Comics” volumes, which will cover the Saiyan arc of the series, have already been posted on Shueisha’s S-MANGA website with a scheduled release date of 04 February 2013. So far no retail price has been announced.
In addition to this fully-colored re-release of the manga, another listing has been posted for the first volume of what is being called a “Chōzenshū” (超全集). This term was last tossed around back in 2008 for the 13-disc music compilation which was eventually retitled under a simple “Dragon Ball Z Complete Song Collection Box”. As of right now we are unsure if this is a new line of guide books, a la the “Daizenshuu”, or something else entirely. We will be sure to let you know as soon as we have clarification.
These new releases are tied in with a new traveling Dragon Ball-themed exhibition being held in three different cities, obviously itself tying in with the impending release of the upcoming “Battle of Gods” film due out 30 March 2013.
映画公開記念イベント
鳥山明 “The World of DRAGONBALL” 大開催！！
連載原稿・カラー原画展示をはじめ「DB」の魅力満載の超企画！！
A Public Movie Celebration Event
Akira Toriyama “The World of Dragon Ball” Grand Exhibition!!
A super project filled with the charm of “Dragon Ball ” such as serialization manuscripts and color illustration exhibits!!
The exhibition will be held in Tokyo from March 27th to April 15th, in Ōsaka from April 17th to April 23rd, and in Nagoya from July 27th to September 1st. It does note that the next issue of V-Jump (the March 2013 issue) will contain additional information about the exhibitions.
With only three months left until “Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods” hits theaters across Japan on 30 March 2013, Toei has released a packet of promotional images to various media outlets. The packet includes the film’s official poster, a piece of promotional artwork, and five screen shots from the film, all from scenes previously shown in the film’s first theatrical trailer.
When we first caught a glimpse of the film’s poster “in-the-works” it featured the troublesome trio of Pilaf, Shuu, and Mai, who were thought to have apparently been removed from the poster as seen printed in Weekly Shōnen Jump and on the official website artwork. Well, as it turns out, they are again present on this final version of the movie poster (as seen above) in the exact same spot as we saw them before, although now their original placement on the poster makes much more sense. Also now featured are two new taglines near the top of the poster, the first of which is only slightly different than what’s previously been used:
最強、激突。
The strongest, clash.
フリーザ、セル、魔人ブウ。すべてを超越する存在がいた。
Freeza, Cell, and Majin Boo. There is a being that transcends them all.
It is anticipated that the film’s theatrical trailer will be shown this weekend at Jump Festa ’13 in Tokyo, and will subsequently be posted on the official “Battle of Gods” website, but we’ve yet to receive official confirmation of this. In addition to selling advance movie tickets, Toei Animation will also be handing out small promotional pamphlets for the film at their goods booth, which of course has already begun circulating the internet thanks to this 2ch post. The pamphlet contains all of the information originally posted in the official website’s “Introduction” section along with short character descriptions, most notably the ones for the two new characters, but also a few old friends:
“Birusu”
A god who governs destruction, maintaining the world’s balance. Once his wrath is incurred, he’ll destroy nearby planets and life, and is a being feared even by the Kaiō and Kaiōshin.
“Uisu”
A mysterious man working in league with “Birusu”.
Pilaf, Shu, Mai
Small-time villains who plot to use the dragon balls to take over the world, but their plans are thwarted by Goku and co.
A few screen shots are also included with the package:
And now, the marketing push for the film has truly begun!
We tend not to cover every single fan production out there — sites like DragonNews already do a fantastic job in that regard, so we usually stick to what we are the best at, which is covering official news and providing an unprecedented wealth of documented information about the Dragon Ball franchise.
A few months ago, however, we were contacted by ScrewAttack to take part in providing the base of research for one of their upcoming “DEATH BATTLE!” videos, a series where characters from separate universes are pitted against each other in (what else?) a battle to the death. What would that fight be? The end-all, be-all of fanboy/girl-tacular raging: Goku vs. Superman.
Along with some hand-picked members of our community, we at Kanzenshuu provided countless (literally — we lost track once we got past 50 on the first round alone) pages of research, translations, and documentation. The “DEATH BATTLE!” video series relies on specific facts about techniques, weapons, items, feats of strength, and so on and so forth — it was up to us to provide a flawless knowledge base to work from. As you would expect from us, every single tidbit was meticulously translated and fact-checked against the original Japanese source material. As ScrewAttack wanted to go with everything in terms of canonicity, this extended to the TV adaptation, movies, guide books, interviews, and more.
After tossing out a couple short teasers, the first full preview video was made available this month.
A video spotlight for Goku was later released detailing some of the personality traits, techniques, and more that went into the fight considerations:
A great deal of the information we provided is already available on Kanzenshuu, while a fair amount more is on its way — do not worry about any amount of work not seeing the light of day!
An incredible amount of thanks goes out to ScrewAttack (and many of the folks that recommended us) for considering Kanzenshuu in this project. You already know that we are the first, best, last, and only source you ever need for anything about the series when it comes to news, information, and educated opinions — we are so happy to bring in an even larger audience thanks to this project.
In terms of the final video itself, while we certainly love Goku, we really have no horse in this race. We are just as excited as the rest of you to see how ScrewAttack takes our information, analyzes it, breaks it down, perhaps even tosses it all out completely, combines it with their separate Superman research, and comes together with an exciting product.
Toshio Furukawa (Piccolo) has announced via his personal website that he will be attending Jump Festa ’13 on 22 December 2012 to take part in a 30 minute “Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods” discussion panel on the “Jump Super Stage” at 11:20 AM. The panel had previously been announced as part of the “Jump Super Stage” line-up, but at the time only Masako Nozawa (Son Goku) was announced to be involved. However, Furukawa has revealed that in addition to Nozawa and himself, Mayumi Tanaka (Kuririn), Masahiro Hosoda (the film’s director), Akio Iyoku (editor-in-chief of V-Jump and Saikyō Jump), and Gyarmath Bogdan (Toei Animation producer) will all be in attendance as well. The discussion panel will be overseen by former YBS TV announcer Mariko Nakagomi. The panel is free for convention attendees, but seating is limited. We’ll be sure to keep our ears to ground for any earth-shattering news that may come from this, although it’s somewhat unlikely based on previous “Jump Super Stage” discussions.
Jump Festa, an annual anime and manga convention hosted by Shueisha, will be held on December 22-23 in Tokyo, Japan this year. Toei’s Jump Festa news website recently announced that the Toei Animation goods booth at the convention will be selling a limited number of advance tickets to the upcoming Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods movie. Single tickets for adults and university students will run ¥1,300 each and single tickets for younger students and children are set at ¥800 a piece. However, if you’d like to share the experience with your kid, you could grab a parent and child paired ticket for ¥2,000. On top of that, those that buy advance tickets at the convention will also receive two “original postcards”.
So if you’re in Japan, attending Jump Festa ’13, and haven’t already gotten the special “Collaboration Ticket” to both One Piece Film Z and Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, then be sure to grab one of these!
Things are really heating up with Battle of Gods news, so we figured it would be a great opportunity to dive back into the world of ye’ olden movie villains. With “Birusu” being this “God of Destruction” (which sounds rather impressive!), did we ever have any other one-shot movie villains who were “complex”…? Did the length of the older movies even provide an opportunity for depth? Listen in and find out!
SHOW DESCRIPTION:
Episode #0318! VegettoEX and Hujio dive into DBZ movie history in an attempt to find complex and interesting villains. Did the relatively short running time of the movies even provide an opportunity for character development to this degree? We found a few great examples, and so did you all! Tons of “Battle of Gods” and video game news, your questions, and more wraps up the episode.
Our translating machine in Japan (also known as “Julian”) continues his madman march toward world domination with another two voice actor interview translations, this time coming from the 2004 TV anime guide book, Tenka’ichi Densetsu.
The first interview is with Masako Nozawa herself, diving in to topics such as being cast in the roles of characters like Son Goku and Tullece, the overall appeal of the series, and character name puns.
The second interview is with voice actor Toshio Furukawa regarding his portrayal of Piccolo. They go on to discuss the differences between his character and Takeshi Aono’s original Piccolo Daimaō, differences from other characters Furukawa had played up to that point, and more.
Check them all out over on the “Translations” page, and remember that there are still more to come! Tenka’ichi Densetsu is chock full of additional voice actor interviews, and we plan on bringing you every last tidbit we can.
It’s been a while, but we’re fianlly back with yet another new animator to highlight in the “Animation Styles Guide”. This week we detail the work of Toei Animation’s talented Akira Inagami, who joined the staff of Dragon Ball Z in late 1991 as a key animator and would later become an animation supervisor in GT. Following the conclusion of GT, Inagami moved on to mainly work on the Pretty Cure! series, and unfortunately has never returned to the Dragon Ball franchise.
