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Earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron’s office announced that a new manga-themed park would be built outside Paris. The project, which would be mostly funded by the Saudi Arabian government as part of its usual investment in diverse pop culture fields, would see a multi-billion-dollar investment in three theme parks, one of which would be based on the iconic Dragon Ball series. However, a small problem has arisen – they reportedly haven’t secured the rights to Dragon Ball yet.

In the French President’s announcement, they only specified that the theme park would be manga-related. However, later reports by both the Japan Times and BBC confirmed that one of the three parks in question would be Dragon Ball-themed. At least, that is the current plan.

For those unfamiliar, the rights to Dragon Ball are a bit tricky to secure at the moment. The late Akira Toriyama’s studio and Japanese publisher Shueisha hold the rights to the manga, while Toei Animation holds the rights to anime-specific material. Toriyama’s death means that getting the rights to create new Dragon Ball material is complicated, but it is necessary to do anything with the franchise without getting sued into oblivion. 

Incredibly, it seems that the Saudi and French Dragon Ball Z theme park in Paris skipped that crucial step. That report comes from French outlet Le Monde, which cites its own sources, who chose to speak on the condition of anonymity, “confirmed that the proposal… has not – at least not yet – secured this essential golden ticket.”

If this report is true, it means that the plans for a Dragon Ball theme park in Paris are not nearly as far along as fans have been led to believe. Securing the rights to one of the most popular anime franchises probably should have been on the developer’s to-do list before they announced the project to the whole world.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

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