Fans of the “Dragon Ball” franchise are set to see a number of product launches within the coming weeks, together with a brand new online game and animated sequence, regardless of the sequence creator having died this 12 months.
Japanese manga artist Akira Toriyama, who died in March, launched “Dragon Ball” in 1984 and it has since grow to be one of many best-selling manga franchises of all time, spawning numerous anime sequence, movies and video video games.
“Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO” shall be launched on Friday with a file 182 characters doing battle.
“It’s a very important launch for us, we hope it will work,” Maurice Fontaine, product supervisor in France for Bandai Namco, the sport’s writer, advised AFP.
A brand new animated sequence, “Dragon Ball Daima”, may also be launched to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the franchise.
In an announcement final 12 months, the studio behind the sequence credited Toriyama with dreaming up the title.
He can also be named as a author on the present and the assertion quotes him as saying daima, an invented phrase roughly that means “evil” in English.
Fans of the franchise are nervously ready to see if the brand new merchandise can stick with it Toriyama’s legacy.
“My first contact with the series was video games,” Tsutomu Tanaka, a 19-year-old Japanese scholar, advised AFP, stressing the “simplicity” of the story and the characters.
Initially printed in 1984 in Japan’s Shonen Jump, {a magazine} beloved by Japanese boys, it advised the adventures of a monkey-tailed boy known as Son Goku via a number of fantastical universes.
Part comedy, half absurdist journey, the sequence fused martial arts motion with a narrative influenced by the traditional Chinese story “Journey to the West”.
Over greater than 500 chapters, the hero with spiky black hair fights otherworldly enemies in his quest to search out seven mystical dragon balls.
“My father’s generation loved Dragon Ball, we watched them as a family,” stated Ayase, a Japanese girl in her thirties, including that the franchise was “part of our lives”.
Translated all around the world, “Dragon Ball” spawned numerous anime cartoons, movies, video video games, buying and selling playing cards and collectible collectible figurines that made it an immense money-spinner.
Saudi Arabia introduced earlier this 12 months it meant to create the world’s first theme park impressed by Dragon Ball.
The comics have offered greater than 260 million copies worldwide, in line with writer Shueisha.
There have been greater than 100 video video games since 1986, promoting tens of tens of millions of copies, and 5 animated sequence.
But whereas the short-term way forward for the franchise as a cash spinner appears assured, the long term is much less clear, in line with Tadashi Sudo, journalist and cartoon specialist.
“The commercial machinery is in place,” stated Sudo, however “the challenge ahead will be to see if the creativity can be maintained without Toriyama”.
“If new ideas stop emerging, everything could become repetitive, and it could be difficult to appeal to the new generations,” he added.
© 2024 AFP