While not exactly Dragon Ball news in the strictest sense, it is still somewhat relevant: FUNimation has a new “Director of Sales” named Tony Vandeveerdonk, formerly the Senior National Sales Manager for Pioneer Entertainment, who was “… involved in the sale of the first 3 DBZ movies for Pioneer”.

Ft. Worth, TX — July 21, 2003 — To support its over 30% growth and expanding business model, FUNimation Productions, LTD. announces the hiring of Tony Vandeveerdonk as Director of Sales for the Home Video Division.

“We are proud to announce Tony’s arrival at FUNimation. Tony is one of the few pioneers in the placement and sales of some of the first and most successful anime videos in the industry,” states Gen Fukunaga, president of FUNimation Productions, LTD. “During the Pokémon anime phenomenon, he was responsible for the sales of Pokémon to the mass merchant channel and many other key accounts.”

Vandeveerdonk brings 14 years of home video experience to FUNimation. “It has been a great ride being part of the initial growth of the anime market,” commented Vandeveerdonk. “I have seen the category grow from a small niche business in the $40-50 million range, to almost a half billion dollar industry in a short five years. I expect this brisk growth to continue.”

Regarding his new position as the Director of FUNimation’s Home Video Sales Division, Vandeveerdonk was positive about both the opportunity and the challenge. “FUNimation has a strong position and share of the anime and kidvid categories already. We will further expand and dominate these categories with a portfolio of exciting new titles.”

Vandeveerdonk, formerly the Sr. National Sales Manager for Pioneer Entertainment USA, began his duties at the Fort Worth-based production and distribution company on July 7th. He will be attending Video Software Dealers Association’s Home Entertainment 2003 in Las Vegas with FUNimation, and will be holding meetings in their suite at the Venetian. Appointments can be made by contacting (817) 788-0627, ext. 222.

About FUNimation(TM)
Focusing on quality entertainment properties such as Dragon Ball Z(r) and Yū Yū Hakusho(tm), FUNimation Productions, LTD., is a full-service brand management company with in-house production, licensing, Internet, and home video sales and distribution divisions. FUNimation has become a leader in home video entertainment with video releases consistently in the Top 20 sales charts, several top rated series on Cartoon Network, and joint ventures with companies such as 4Kids Entertainment. Quality entertainment properties produced by FUNimation include: Dragon Ball Z(r) – the most searched for topic on the Internet for 2002 (also #1 in 2001), becoming “the first topic to ever repeat atop the Web’s Most Wanted,” according to the Lycos 50 Daily Report; Dragon Ball(r), now airing on Cartoon Network; Dragon Ball GT(r), the eagerly awaited sequel to Dragon Ball Z(r); Yū Yū Hakusho(tm), one of the top anime of all time, airing weekdays in the USA on Carton Network’s Toonami block; Movies for Lupin the 3rd(tm), one of the longest running anime classics; Fruits Basket(tm), based on the top selling manga in Japan; and Blue Gender(tm), a true sci-fi series coming to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim in August. For additional information on FUNimation and its properties contact Jeff Dronen at FUNimation at 817-788-0627 or jeff.dronen@funimation.com, or check out www.funimation.com.

For the two of you in North America that actually own a Bandai WonderSwan and have not already played the game on your NES emulators, Bandai of Japan has announced they will be releasing a new Dragon Ball game for the WonderSwan Crystal on 16 November 2003. The game, “DragonBall: Legend of Goku”, is actually a remake of the game by the same name for the Nintendo Famicom. It is a card-battle game, similar to many of the other Dragon Ball games released in Japan.

The game was actually the third NES game released for the Dragon Ball franchise. To read more about it, check out SuperPope’s review of the game in its original Famicom format.

Thanks to The Magic-Box for the news blurb.

There has been lots of information floating around about the supposedly-upcoming Nintendo GameBoy Advance game entitled “Taiketsu”, but nothing particularly concrete. Well, it apparently exists, it is coming out soon (October), and gamerankings.com has some screenshots!

Big thanks to Clayton Reynolds over on alt.fan.dragonball for the link.

Anime News Network has updated with some more coverage from Anime Expo. At FUNimation’s panel, among other things, it was announced that “Budokai 2” (which is set for an August 15th release date for the PS2), will be using “Toriyama Shading”. We have all seen images which show the game will be cel-shaded, but I find it interesting they are calling it “Toriyama Shading” as a specific type of branding.

The Magic Box has posted some new screen shots from “Budokai”, which is slated for release on the GameCube in October. In an interesting move, the GameCube version will be released with cel-shaded graphics similar to the upcoming “Budokai 2” for the PlayStation 2. It is otherwise the exact same game as before, but with a different style of graphics.

August 31st is a day many folks from today’s generation of fans will remember back in 1998 — it was the day that Dragon Ball Z began airing on Cartoon Network.

However, August 31st of 2003 is a day of much brighter prospects. According to Anime Nation, Pioneer has announced that their distribution license to Dragon Ball Z will expire on this day.

Pioneer has officially alerted retailers that their distribution license to Dragonball Z will expire on August 31st. As of August 31, the first 3 Dragonball Z movies on DVD, and the first 17 Dragonball Z TV series DVDs will go out of print. FUNimation has already announced plans to remaster and re-release uncut, uncensored DVD versions of the first 17 TV series DVDs probably next year, but there’s been no word yet on the status of the first 3 movies.

So there we are — there is finally an official date that Pioneer’s license runs out. Now, if we could only get an expiration date on KidMark’s distribution license for the original Dragon Ball…

Folks have been speculating for a bit now, and there have been tons of rumors thrown around on fansites, but up until now there had been no official word on the fate of Dragon Ball GT episodes 1-15 from FUNimation.

Fans can rest assured that they will see the light of day, thankfully. At Anime Central this weekend, FUNimation announced (among other things) that GT episodes 1-15 will indeed be released. Unfortunately for those interested in watching chronologically, this will happen after 16-64 have been fully released.

FUNimation went on to say that all Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z episodes will see an American DVD release eventually, so if you do want to watch it all in a row, you will simply have to kick back and wait for it all to trickle out.

Thanks to Anime Nation for the news tip.

The Magic Box reports that Infogrames (now going under the name of Atari) has announced “Budokai 2” for the Sony PlayStation 2 video game console. No other consoles are mentioned, but it is likely that we will see a GameCube release a la the first “Budokai” if it goes over well. What is neat is that they are keeping the original 23 characters and adding another 11 on top of this (three of which will be forms of Majin Boo). If we had to guess, we would assume that we will also see Goten, Trunks, Gotenks, and a slew of other fun Boo-era characters.

Reports are coming in that FUNimation’s release of the franchise’s 10th anniversary movie (“The Path to Power”) does indeed use the original Japanese score on the English dub track.

Despite changing its theme music, FUNimation’s release of the second Dragon Ball movie (“Sleeping Princess in Devil’s Castle”) also used the original Japanese score, as did their release of the third movie (“Mystical Adventure”). When the company picked up again with producing the first TV series, it also contained the original Japanese score.

This is all in opposition to their production of the Dragon Ball Z TV series and movies, all of which have had replaced musical scores (with the exception of their work with Pioneer on the first three Dragon Ball Z movies back in 1997 and 1998), as well as their upcoming work on Dragon Ball GT.

Interestingly, the music in the 10th anniversary movie, composed by Akihito Tokunaga, is actually also used in the Dragon Ball GT TV series.

The Magic Box has a great new post with tons of images from the newly announced “Legacy of Goku 2” for Nintendo’s GameBoy Advance portable video game system. Everyone looks so cute, but in our opinion, this second game will have to bring a lot more to the table than its predecessor, which seemed to have been the very definition of “boredom” to fans.