How Dragon Ball Almost Sunk the Biggest Anime Company in America

gamerant.com:

Funimation Productions Inc. (now part of Crunchyroll) was, for many years, the undisputed king of anime distribution in America. So massive was their presence that the first question other anime distributors asked before attempting to acquire an anime for licensing in America – before asking about the cost, length of series, or whether or not there would be a clause preventing edits for a potential TV airing– was “does Funimation want it?” The company had a wide distribution network, best-selling titles on home video, and even its own TV cable network: The Funimation Channel.

Funimation’s founder and former CEO – Gen Fukunaga – was always upfront about the fact that without the success of Dragon Ball Z, Funimation would not have gone on to become the anime powerhouse that would eventually release such hits as Tenchi Muyo, One Piece, My Hero Academia, and Makato Shinkai’s instant classic Your Name. A fact that Fukunaga rarely discussed was that while Dragon Ball Z brought the company great fame and fortunes, it’s prequel series Dragon Ball almost sunk the company before it got started. So what went wrong there?

Dragon Ball: Weak Characters With Overpowered Abilities

Early in the 1990s, Gen Fukunaga was making a living as an engineer. While it was a good job, he majored in business, which meant his current career was unsatisfying for the Japanese-born businessman. It was sometime during this period when he was approached by his uncle, Nagafumi Hori, who was a producer at Toei Animation. He was aware that Fukunaga’s real desire was to run a business and approached him with an offer: if Fukunaga could start a production company and raise enough capital, Hori would ensure that Toei Animation would license the rights to the