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Akira Toriyama with his pet cat, Koge (1987)

Viz Media 2017 logo

Viz Media logo

Viz Media, LLC is an anime, manga and Japanese entertainment company.

History[]

800px-Viz Media HQ

Viz Media's San Francisco headquarters

Viz Media, LLC is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. The company was founded in 1986 as Viz, LLC.

Starting in 1998, Viz Media translated and localized the Dragon Ball manga from start to finish. However, the series was split in two; volume 17 of Dragon Ball became volume 1 of Dragon Ball Z for the consideration of the American anime viewers who might not have been familiar with the original Dragon Ball series. In 2002, an English version of the Shonen Jump magazine was created, and Dragon Ball Z, which had been published in a monthly comics format up until then, was moved there, running until 2005, when the rest of the series would only be published in manga volumes. Much later, starting in June 2016, Viz Media translated and localized the Dragon Ball Super manga. They have also published a number of other popular Japanese manga, such as Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece, Death Note, Full Metal Alchemist, Inuyasha, Rurouni Kenshin, YuYu Hakusho, and Bleach.

In 2005, Viz LLC. and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current Viz Media, LLC which is jointly owned by Japanese publishers Shogakukan Shogakukan, Shueisha Shueisha (which purchased half of Viz in 2002), and Shogakukan's licensing division Shogakukan Shogakukan Productions (ShoPro Japan).

Editing[]

Viz Media has released all the volumes of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z; however, they edited and changed a few scenes to make it more child-friendly (volumes 1-16 of Dragon Ball were given a Teen rating, while Dragon Ball Z was rated All-Ages). For example, Viz, while keeping some nude pictures in (such as Bulma in the shower, and Goku nude in volume 1), put a bra over a nude Bulma in Volume 9. Viz also edited out a gun that Android 17 is holding up to a man.

The manga's entire 42-volume run is perhaps the only manga where Viz actually translated taglines on the title pages of almost every chapter, either accurately, or using something completely different; in all of Viz's other manga (including Dragon Ball Super), taglines are completely erased. Also, Viz's Dragon Ball Super logo is strangely different from the logo shown in all other official English (and Japanese) media; the only difference is, for the manga's English release, the kanji for "super (超)" is removed, the English word "super" that's under the kanji is moved under the word "Dragon Ball", and the word "Ball" is slightly stretched.

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