It has been announced that Tatsuya Nagamine, the director of the first Dragon Ball Super movie Broly as well as Dragon Ball Super episodes 77-131 has passed away at the age of 53.
Nagamine worked on not just other TOEI anime like One Piece, Digimon and Precure, but also the short film Dr. Slump: Dr. Mashirito Abale-chan adapted from a one-shot by Akira Toriyama in 2007.
According to current schedules on November 13th (Thursday this week) Dragon Ball Kai episode 98 will air on Junior TV in Isreal followed by episode 1. The two episodes will be broadcast at 4:44pm and 5:06pm respectively.
Dragon Ball Super’s 6-year run on UK TV should be coming to an end soon, as it has been announced Narrative Entertainment will be shutting down their linear channels and app next month.
Narrative Entertainment MD Paul Dunthorne commented:
“With commercial value across the UK kids’ TV market now just 4% of what it was 10 years ago, we’ve taken the decision to close our linear Pop channel at the end of the year. We understand the importance of offering high-quality kids’ TV, and we’ve done everything that we can to maintain Pop. But free-to-air channels for this audience are simply not commercially viable without public service broadcaster-style funding.
“We will retain our Pop presence on FAST channels in the UK on Freeview, Samsung, LG and other platforms, and internationally, as these continue to offer commercial opportunities.”
Sister channel Pop Max (which also aired Dragon Ball Super) left Freeview and Sky in December of last year, and January this year respectively. Their content was moved to Pop and Pop Player.
As it stands Dragon Ball Super remains on Pop from 7pm-8pm and 1:50am-2:38am every night. Whether it will be run until Pop’s last day broadcasting remains to be seen.
As Dragon Ball Super has lasted 6 years on Pop (although the channel removed it from their schedule at times) it is the instalment of the franchise which has been on UK TV for the longest.
Dragon Ball Z aired between 2000 and 2002 on Cartoon Network, 2002-2003 on CNX and 2003-2005 on Toonami, Dragon Ball GT ran on CNX and Toonami for the same years while original Dragon Ball only aired on Toonami and Dragon Ball Kai was shown on Kix between 2012 and 2015.
While the future of Dragon Ball on linear TV remains uncertain, although the series is still available on Crunchyroll, BBC iPlayer and home video releases from Manga UKand Crunchyroll.
Unlike the Dragon Ball Z dub, which was fully dubbed in Russian the Super dub was partly lectored with at least 5 voices, similar to the Romanian versions.
The above comment directly translates to “We are in it”, implying interest in the product.
Dragon Ball Daima is currently available across multiple platforms in Spain, namely AnimeBox, Crunchyroll and Netflix, but it is only available on all these services in Japanese audio with Spanish subtitles.
A Spanish dub exists for the series, but only for the Latin American region, no European dub has been announced, although it may happen as all Dragon Ball series thus far has had a Latino dub and a Castilian dub. Even Dragon Ball Kai received a dub in Spain last year after over a decade of only a Latin American dub being in circulation.
Dragon Ball Kai received its Castilian Spanish dub from Dasara Producciones, so they may be contracted to dub Dragon Ball Daima too.
In an interview conducted on September 16th president of Starbright Licensing Giada Paterlini discussed the longevity of the Dragon Ball brand, and how it remains an influential brand among kids and “kidults” in Italy and abroad.
In particular one notable revelation from the interview is the following:
“L’interesse per questo franchise è quindi quanto mai contemporaneo e attuale ma, nel contempo, appare sospeso nel tempo, immutabile, trasferito di generazione in generazione. Dai bambini, agli adulti, ai kidult, Dragon Ball è pronto per narrarci una nuova avventura: l’appuntamento è per il 2026 con Dragon Ball Daima e il suo pubblico affezionato…Stay tuned!”.
Which translates to:
“The interest in this franchise is therefore as contemporary and current as ever but, at the same time, it appears suspended in time, unchangeable, transferred from generation to generation. From children, to adults, to kidults, Dragon Ball is ready to tell us about a new adventure: the appointment is for 2026 with Dragon Ball Daima and its loyal audience … Stay tuned!”.
The most recent instalment of the franchise to air in Italy was Dragon Ball Super, which premiered nearly 10 years ago on December 23, 2016, so this will no doubt be exciting news for fans that have been waiting for more Dragon Ball.
This was exciting news for fans at the time as the channel had stopped airing any episodes of the show, including reruns since Christmas eve the year before.
With the exception of Battle of Gods earlier this year this was the last time any piece of content with the “Dragon Ball Z” branding was released in Finland, and when it comes to the TV series it was the last time to date.
While the aforementioned press release is no longer on SubTV (now MTVSub)’s website fans luckily quoted it on a local forum:
The above can be translated as:
“DRAGONBALL Z RETURNS TO SUB!
The super-popular anime series Dragonball Z continues on Subtv on Sun 18.9.PRESS
RELEASE 31.8.05
Subtv will make the wish of anime fans come true in September! The Japanese anime series Dragonball Z continues on Subtv on Sunday 18 September at 10:00. The series is always seen on Sundays at the same time.
Subtv has acquired 168 new episodes for the series. The episodes are spoken in English and subtitled in Finnish. Dragonball Z went on hiatus on Sub last Christmas Eve and the series now continues straight from there: it’s time for season 4 episode 124 (Unwelcome Discovery). The central role of Dragonball Z is played by Goku, who fights against the evil forces of space with his friends. What will Bulma, Vegeta, Trunks, Piccolo, Krillin and co. come up with to tame the androids while Goku is still in bad shape?”
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