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Mood:  down
I haven't posted in a while, largely because I'm so frustrated about the state of Dragonball in the US.

• Dragonball GT sucks, and they haven't released the first 16 episodes yet and that frustrates me to pieces.
  
• Dragonball Z continues to be stuck without releasing (or even announcing a date) on the last Cell Games DVDs.
  
• And I have to wait until September to get the next Dragonball boxed set in order (General Blue), and still no clue when the first set will be re-released.

So, I'm really not please as to the state of the world. Oh well.

Update
I have updated the release list on the right with some new dates. (You might have to click into the calendar.)

The hlites:

GT's Creation and Proliferation are now June 3rd. (official date) Ramifications and Preparations are now July 15th. (also official)

That leaves 43 episodes not announced yet for DVD, including the 12 that were "skipped" in the beginning of the series.

Three new Dragonball box sets are also announced: Piccolo Jr. Part 1 (July 15), Part 2 (Aug 19), and General Blue (Sep 23). The Piccolo boxed sets go to the end of the series/beginning of DBZ. After General Blue, all DB eps will have been shown on TV or DVD. (There are four "sagas" remaining to be released, but have not yet been announced: "Red", "Baba", "Tien", and "Pilaf". The Pilaf saga is the first two that Funimation may not have rights to yet.) As a side note, the date for Piccolo Box #1 is now official.

DB movie #8 is announced for Aug 26, but no other DB announcements are made. Cell Games and Saiyaman still have received no releases on DVD, but are now all released on VHS. (Actually, one Cell Games DVD was released some time ago, but no followups.)

Update Stuff
There have been no updates in a while; not much news to report.

Some updates:

• The official store has confirmed the release date for "Path to Power". I think it is more rightfully considered DB movie #4 (after "Curse of the Blood Rubies", "Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle", and "Mystical Adventure"), but it might be better considered a "TV Movie" like the DBZ "Bardock, Father of Goku" and "History of Trunks". (It also is a re-telling of the first DB sagas, so fits in the timeline for the series even less than the movies usually do.)
  
• Shonen Jump for April is out with one new issue of Sandland and several more of DBZ.
  
• Still no word on the remaining sagas between "Red Ribbon Army" and "King Piccolo" for DB.
  
• Sill also no word on release dates for DVDs of the Cell Games and Great Saiyaman.
  

And that's it.

Dragonball GT Official
The official site has confirmed an April 15th release date for the "first" two Dragonball GT DVDs (and VHS releases). That is interesting as it follows their long-stated plan to eventually do simultaneous releases. It's also interesting because they recently announced that Dragonball would no longer have VHS releases, but it appears GT still will.

The second confirmation is that the official synposis of the two volumes confirm that they skipped the first GT saga and jumped right into Baby. That's going to leave a gaping plot hole which will be filled with a hyper-edited special episode (or eposides) to quickly explain why Goku is a kid again and why he, Trunks, and Pan are off on some other planet. I really, really hope that they eventually release the missing episodes... even if they aren't the greatest in the world.

More Musings
Funimation has announced that they are no longer going to be releasing monthly Dragonball comics, instead only releasing episodes in the compilations. I never purchased the comic myself, but it seems sad.

On another negative note, the second edition volumes of DB and DBZ mangas will be in a small form factor... and so will all new releases. That means that the binding artwork won't line up anymore, unless I buy the smaller versions. Fortunately, the smaller versions are more inexpensive so it *might* be worth it to some... I think I'll put up with the covers not aligning.

I have also added a second EventGear on the right with release dates for video games, at least as long as there are a couple yet to be released.

On the dub scene, there's some speculation on the new groups about Funimation's announcement that they are redubbing the Namek and Saiyan saga. The question is whether they will stop with Ginyu #1 (where they picked up from Ocean Group), or whether they will be redubbing the first handful of Frieza episodes up to the point where the English and Japanese episodes merged. (They might just be able to get away with a handful of new lines and just re-mixing the old, if that was a direction that they wanted to go into.)

Manga Releases
Viz has updated their March release schedule to include second editions of the first 7 of both Dragonball and Dragonball Z mangas. One would assume that all of the Dragonball releases will be uncensored (as newer first-edition releases have been) and if you only have an edited copy of 1-3 this might be a good time to get the real thing.

Ain't It Cool News has also posted announcements for both DB #11 and DBZ #11 and second editions of Vols #8 through #10 of each, as well. They indicate that a release will be roughly around Shonen Jump July 2003, which will be in June. Not a lot of new information there, but at least there's an announcement of some kind that we can speculate a release date around.

(For the record DB #11 is the middle part of the 22nd Budokai leading up to the finale in the next volume. DBZ #11 is more of the Frieza vs. Goku battle.)

New Seasons on Cartoon Network
This is old news by now, but I've been away.

Cartoon Network has announced that they have picked up the final two seasons of Dragonball (52 episodes) and Dragonball Z (15 episodes) for airing this year. Dragonball will start with the Piccolo saga, but saga names after that haven't been made official. DBZ will finish the Buu saga. (Those episodes were held over from last season to stretch the life of the series a bit.)

It appears as if we won't be getting a pristine version of Dragonball GT in the US, either. In order to shake things up a bit, the first and second sagas are being remixed. The first saga (usually called the "Black Star Dragonball Saga") will be largely skipped, and they will jump more quickly into the Bebi saga. The first saga was more DB-ish and the second more like DBZ, so they wanted to jump ahead to make sure fans didn't get bored or something. I think it's sad after how much work Funimation put into giving us pristine DB and DBZ after they started doing the dubbing of both. No clue yet whether the Bebi #1 DVD will contain the first Japanese episodes in eired order or the remixed US-version order.

As a side note, I received my copy of the Red Ribbon Army DVD boxed set and noticed that there is a "3" on the side of the box. With any luck, that is a clear sign that Funimation is almost ready to be able to release the Pilaf saga on uncut DVD. (They dubbed those episodes for airing of CN, but weren't allowed to bring them to video.)