Dragon Ball Kai and Dragon Ball Super also aired on national TV through the channels Kix and Pop respectively. The latter is now airing on GREAT! Action.
Dragon Ball Super’s addition to Disney+ will no doubt bring the series to a much wider audience.
The series also aired on Kix between 2012 and 2015, and was released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Manga UK in 2015, albeit with the original Kenji Yamamoto score on the DVDs for episodes 1-13 and 27-39 and episodes 1-39 on the Blu-Rays.
Every other release of Dragon Ball Kai in the UK has used the replacement Shunsuke Kikuchi score due to the plagiarism scandal that occurred in 2011.
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.
On August 27th I became aware of this, as my sources at UK Anime News received emails from Crunchyroll.
Now it is official as UK retailer Anime-On-Line has announced Crunchyroll’s upcoming Dragon Ball Super and Dragon Ball Z Blu-Ray boxsets will be making their way to Britain and Ireland.
These box sets had previously been announced for North America, but Dragon Ball fans in the British Isles will only have an extra month to wait, although unlike the US and Canada it will not be a Crunchyroll Store exclusive.
The 9 Dragon Ball Z “season” sets and 10 parts for Super will all come in two collectable boxes each displaying promotional art of Goku and friends and Shenron on the side.
Bothcollections are also available from Amazon UK and likely more retailers to follow.
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