We now know what Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama and Toei Animation have in mind for their next TV series. It’s been a while since Dragon Ball Super, but that show upped the ante to the point that the Dragon Balls were as large as planets, so where do you go from there? Apparently, you go smaller….a LOT smaller.
Ten years ago, Toei released Dragon Ball Z: Battle Of Gods in theaters around the world. Picking up where Dragon Ball Z left off, it introduced a new threat after Majin Buu and forced Goku to tap into power levels he’d never achieved before. Now, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, Crunchyroll and Fathom Events are re-screening the film over two nights next month.
What’s the biggest holiday in July? Independence Day, or the more important one? Bandai Namco and Toei Animation are hosting One Piece Day live from Japan next month, and thanks to the magic of Internet streaming, anyone can attend.
Dragon Ball Super isn’t over, it’s just going through a long hiatus. The manga is still ongoing, but the anime has shut down for a while with no announcement of return as of yet. To keep interest stoked, Toei is launching the “Battle of the Battles” Global Fan Event later this month.
Toei Animation seems to have joined the bandwagon of entertainment services that are offering free-to-stream content, but they’re doing things a bit differently than everyone else. The anime maker announced today they will be putting the first three seasons of one of the most iconic anime in the world, Sailor Moon, up for free viewing — but there’s a wait involved.
A pandemic is a global problem, and it affects life in Japan just as badly as it does here. Animated shows have been less affected by the shutdown of studios — when you’re creating imaginary worlds, you don’t need sets, you just need a Cintiq in a home office. It’s even possible for the actors to record the dialogue from their houses, if they have the right equipment.
If it feels like it’s been a generation since we last saw the Digimon kids, that’s because it’s literally been that long…the anime was introduced to American televisions in 1999. As we’ll see in the new follow-up film Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna, they’ve grown up a bit too, but not as much as we have…they are somehow now entering college.