There's been a lot of debate over Funimation's decision to release only 39 of their dubbed episodes for the remaining 54 episodes. All of the Funi dubbed episodes "premiered" on Kazaa months before Funi pre-released anything (fansub episodes made their premier much earlier than Funi's ^_^) so we know they're good and done. In fact, I've even heard from a very trustworthy source that as early as back in May they were already having somebody work on some "new" music for dubbed GT (don't they ever learn?). So then what's the hold-up? Simple.

Funimation and Gen Fukunaga have enriched themselves greatly off of DBZ. Fukunaga's bragged that he doesn't make much money off of episodes being shown on tv but that the "real money" comes from selling VHS's and DVD's plus other products. And Funimation has milked at least 10,000,000's off of DBZ, most especially with their "pre-released" episodes for the Majin Buu saga. Pre-released episodes sell much better then say, episodes from the Freeza saga, so they're definetly in no hurry to show all of DBZ yet.

On the other hand, Cartoon Network's number one show is dubbed "cut" DBZ. It's given them a lot of money and very, very, very ironically, it's actually partly responsible for anime in America becoming more popular. The longer there's anticipation for the remaining dubbed Z episodes to finally be shown the better overall ratings Cartoon Network will have for their other shows. That's why they're only showing 4 episodes a week. At that rate, the 39th episode will be shown on November the 20th, just in time for the Christmas holidays.

So neither Funi or Cartoon Network is in any hurry to show all of these "cut" dubbed episodes anytime soon. Besides that it will also provide both of them with a "second wave" of anticipation for when the final 15 cut dubbed DBZ episodes are shown sometime in Spring, probably some time in April. So what will happen after that? Cartoon Network will begin advertising for GT to keep anticipation going. You'll be hearing stuff from they like "the sequel to the magnificent anime series that was Dragon Ball Z...DRAGON BALL GT!" Funi, on the other hand, will undoubtedly try and "pre-release" some GT episodes but will experience a great deal of pressure from Cartoon Network not to. But that's another story.

The real story is the cost of Funimation's episodes released on VHS and DVD. Once fans have seen the whole series on tv and will be able to see reruns they've missed on tv for free, VHS and DVD sales will plummet faster than an ex-dubbie fan's appreciation for Funimation after watching the real SSJ3 tranformation in subtitled Japanese. To make matters even worse for their episodes sales it's very likely that Cartoon Network will then at some point in the future show the so-called "uncut" episodes at night.

This will give Funimation a dilemma--fans will no longer be gullible or interested enough in shelling out $20-25 per 3-4 episodes of a 291 (276 for the English dubbed version) series which, compared to that much for a 26-episode anime series, is a completely redundant ripoff, especially to fans who come from poor backgrounds. By the time they're done they'll have about 88 DVD's which will come out to around $1760-2200 dollars (not counting tax) for all of their dubbed "uncut" English episodes and most of the Japanese subtitled episode versions they've come up with.

So then what? Easy. Funimation will have to drastically reduce DVD prices and will then be placing large amounts of episodes on each DVD. DVD's are actually very cheap to manufacture and can store well over 14 hours worth of material like the "Planet of the Apes" DVD, did so it won't be any trick for them to do likewise. They could easily put in 12 English episodes and 12 Japanese episodes on each DVD (and hopefully this time they'd include the previews for each version and go back and fix all the other problems with their past DVDs). In the end they'll probably re-price the whole series for well under $1000. Of course, that's assuming that Funimation will be smart enough to do so. But I wouldn't worry too much about that--Funimation can generally muster up some intelligence whenever they think it can increase their beloved "profits" which Gen Fukunaga always speaks so lovingly of.

- The Great Saiyaman