For the first time, the iconic anime series Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT are now available to watch on Sony’s Crunchyroll streaming service in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. According to a release, that’s more than 500 episodes of these series that until now were only available on Funimation.
Dragon Ball’s arrival on the service is part of Funimation’s migration to Crunchyroll, which was announced in early March. In a previous release, the upcoming content this spring rolling out April 1 is promised to be “the biggest on record” for Crunchyroll. About the earlier announcement, a Crunchyroll spokesperson told GameSpot that the combined teams are “working hard to ensure Crunchyroll fans can continue to enjoy robust anime offerings every season… We can confidently say a lot more each season.”
The Dragon Ball media franchise began in 1984 in Japan when the original manga created by Akira Toriyama was serialized in the Weekly Shōnen Jump anthology. It quickly became a popular series with remarkable staying power–38 years later, Dragon Ball now spawns four TV series, 20 feature films, many videogames, and a wide array of licensed merchandise.
For newcomers, Crunchyroll has included quick summaries of each series:
- Dragon Ball: Goku is a strange, bushy-tailed boy who spends his days hunting and eating–until he meets Bulma, a bossy beauty with boys on the brain.
- Dragon Ball Z: Goku–the strongest fighter on the planet–is all that stands between humanity and villains from the darkest corners of space.
- Dragon Ball GT: The Dragon Balls have been scattered to the ends of earth, and if Goku can’t gather them in a year, Earth will meet a final catastrophe.
According to the same release, the entire franchise has sold a “record of 260 million copies worldwide.”
