Dragon Ball AF / Dragon Ball Hoshi

About

Dragon Ball AF (also referred to as Dragon Ball Hoshi ) is the title of a rumored anime series once widely speculated to be the fourth installment in the Dragon Ball anime series. While neither titles were ever officially confirmed by Toei Animation, purported rumors about a planned production for the fourth anime series became a common discussion topic among the Dragon Ball fans online during the latter half of the 2000s, which was in part also driven by a lengthy production hiatus following the finale of the third anime series Dragon Ball GT in November 1997 in Japan and in North America in April 2005. The fan speculations were effectively debunked as a hoax following the premiere of Dragon Ball Super, the official fourth installment in the Dragon Ball anime series, in July 2015.

Origin

The origin of Dragon Ball AF was contested for many years, until on February 14th, 2012, when a thread was created on Kanzenshuu in which the original poster, Raykugen, posted images from the May 1999 issue of Spanish video game "Hobby Consolas" that revealed the origin of the Dragon Ball AF name as well as the original Dragon Ball AF image (shown below). It was also revealed that the name of the artist was Daniel Montiel Franco.^[1]

In a series of e-mail correspondences with Dragon Ball fan and author Derek Padula for his 2012 book Dao of Dragon Ball, Franco stated that the character in the image was not a depiction of the Dragon Ball protagonist Son Goku, as many fans speculated, but rather an original character named Tablos.^[2]

“Hello Derek, I am the author of all of these pictures (Tablos picture included.) In my DBAF Gokuh is dead, he does not appear anywhere. You will find the beginning of the DBAF story on my blog soon. Regards. David.”

Spread

On April 1, 2004, the Dragon Ball fansite Kanzenshuu (then known as Daizenshuu EX) created an elaborate hoax centered around Dragon Ball AF. The initial post featured both an image which appeared to be taken from a promotional poster for the series as well as a logo for the series. (both shown below).

Also featured in the post were links to an "official" trailer which featured several Japanese voice overs, as well as Japanese text. When translated the text was revealed to be satirical lines such as "'What the hell is this crap!?' – Akira Toriyama" and "Don't sue us!!!" (shown below). The following day the website revealed that the original post was a hoax.^[3] Sometime later the Kanzenshuu released a detailed account of how they created the hoax.^[4] Following the initial post several forums were discussing whether the images and video featured within were real or fake.^[5][6]

Dragon Ball AF and Dragon Ball Hoshi have been used by some YouTubers and trolls as a clickbait title to solicit viewership by tricking people into believing they are watching clips from a never-seen-before Dragon Ball series, when in fact, they are merely viewing footage taken from the lesser known Dragon Ball properties, such as cutscenes from several Dragon Ball video games released in Japan.

YouTube

On YouTube, there are around 74,300 results for Dragon Ball AF and approximately 20,100 results for Dragon Ball Hoshi.^[7][8] The earliest known YouTube video to use the title as a clickbait was a clip titled "Dragon Ball AF Opening," uploaded by YouTuber superkakarotto on August 23rd, 2006 (shown below, left). Since then, a number of other YouTubers have adopted similar tactics, with the most viewed instance having garnered over 17 million views, as of July 2015 (shown below, right).

Tumblr

On Tumblr, there are various results for Dragon Ball AF and Dragon Ball Hoshi under various tags.^{[9][10][11][12][13]} There are also various fan blogs which use the series' names as their own, such as Dragon Ball AF Webcomic^[14] and Offical DBAF.^[15]

Fan Art

On DeviantArt,^[16] there are over 5,500 results for Dragon Ball AF, and around 100 relevant images can be found on the Japanese art site Pixiv.^[17]

In addition, several YouTube artists have adopted the name Dragon Ball AF as the title of their fan-made animation videos. The two most viewed instances both have more than nine million views as of July 2015. The earlier of these two was uploaded on June 24th, 2010 by YouTuber SuperDBAF and mixes clips from other Dragon Ball series and the uploader's own original content (shown below, left). The latter instance was uploaded on May 11th, 2011 by YouTuber Canal de pameliitahv, which entirely consists of original fan art illustrations (shown below, right).

On November 30th, 2012, YouTuber Mellavelli uploaded the first episode in his fan series Dragon Ball Absalon which takes many of the concepts and characters from other Dragon Ball AF series (shown below).

Related Memes

OC Super Saiyan Levels

OC Super Saiyan levels refer to the fanmade Super Saiyan levels after Super Saiyan 4 from Dragon Ball GT. The trend originated from the original Dragon Ball AF image which featured the first use of the Super Saiyan 5.

Xicor

Xicor (also known as Zaiko) is a fanmade character whom appears in many of the various fan interpretations of Dragon Ball AF. Throughout most of his interpretations Xicor is the child of Goku and the Western Supreme Kai and was conceived during his time off-world in between the Namek and Android sagas.

Search Interest

External References