Funimation Productions has announced that the original Dragon Ball TV series will begin airing on the Cartoon Network's Toonami block on June 25th in a one hour block with Dragonball Z. A few episodes of the original Dragon Ball series were broadcast on U.S. TV during the 1990s, but Funimation has completely redone the episodes so they are much closer to the Japanese Dragon Ball series.

Inside.com, the media-watching website, has reported that Radio Disney, a children's-oriented radio network has told its affiliates not to 'align ourselves promotionally with this new release' ( Shrek ). Shrek is a computer-animated comedy film produced by Dreamworks, which features the vocal talents of Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz.

Paramount, which is mounting a major advertising and promotional push for the Tomb Raider movie has pulled out all the stops in creating a new website for the summer blockbuster which opens this June 15th. The new site includes IPIX technology which allows visitors to explore 360-degree panoramas of fifty of the film's sets and locations.

ICv2 has obtained a photograph of the Deluxe Collector's Edition of the Akira DVD. The simple, but elegant design features the Japanese characters for the title scrawled over the English title. The vibrant red color and the dynamism of the rendering of the Japanese characters demonstrates how the art of calligraphy allows the artist to express emotion.

As more products became available in March stores reported positive sales trends to ICv2. In anime, DVDs took five of the ten spots including the first two, which were occupied by high ticket boxed and collector's set editions. Note that the videos in the top ten were all new releases from very popular series, Gundam Wing, Dragonball Z , and Martian Successor Nadesico.

Nelvana, the Canadian-based company that packaged Cardcaptors for American (and Canadian) television, has just announced that its latest anime import, Medabot will appear this fall on the Fox Kids network Like Cardcaptors, the Medabot anime series comes from NAS/Kodansha, Japan's largest multi-media company. Nelvana has acquired worldwide distribution and merchandising rights.

AIA, a new game company, is preparing an Akira videogame for the Sony Playstation 2. The Akira game will be out in August, just a few weeks after the release of the remastered Akira video and DVD. Other Akira merchandise includes the McFarlane Toys second series of Anime toys, shipping in September, and the Dark Horse manga series.

The latest word from Pioneer about the release of the newly remastered Akira on DVD and VHS concerns the collector's edition of the DVD, which will come in a super cool collector's tin. Only 75,000 tins will be produced. After they are gone, Pioneer will go back to conventional jewel box packaging.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer , the most critically acclaimed show on the WB network, will be heading to archrival UPN next fall. Buffy is important to specialty retailers since the show represents one of the strongest TV licenses of the past five years

List of the many makers of POTA merchandise in conjunction with the Tim Burton movie.