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The story
On August 24, French President Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman agreed to build a “Dragon Ball” theme park in the suburbs of Paris. The investment is expected to total around ¥1.113 trillion over several years, and on 5ch, skepticism about whether it could really work poured in: “The only era of Dragon Ball with a world rich enough for a theme park was back in the early Dragon Ball-hunting days,” and “Aren’t fight scenes all foreigners actually want to see?”
The discussion spread to cover how the late Toriyama Akira reportedly used tax havens to manage his profit distribution while he was alive, and even to data showing Dragon Ball now outranks Gundam and One Piece in Bandai’s IP-by-IP sales rankings.
French President Macron and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, agreed on the 24th to build a theme park based on the globally popular Japanese anime “Dragon Ball” in the suburbs of Paris. Reuters reported the news, citing the French presidential office. Construction is expected to take several years, with total investment estimated at around 6 billion euros (roughly ¥1.113 trillion).
[Photo] Who’s stronger? Striking the Kamehameha pose — PM Takaichi and French President Macron
Mohammed bin Salman visited France on the 23rd and 24th. In talks with Macron, the two discussed the Middle East situation, destabilized by the US-Iran conflict, as well as economic cooperation between France and Saudi Arabia.
Source: mainichi.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
[Tax Haven] Dragon Ball's Toriyama Akira invested in US real estate — 12 Japanese nationals total, revealed by Paradise Papers analysis – Sankei News
https://www.sankei.com/article/20171106-MTY736I7HFJKLGVGNOBY3DSU3Y/
He got doorstepped by the weekly tabloids around this time
And then he passed away not long after that
Seems like a lot of women are into Vegeta
Something like a hihōkan would do (those kitschy erotic-curiosity museums).
The visuals are just too filthy for that
Nobody draws a nasty old hag better than him
Even hardcore Dragon Ball fans have no idea what they'd actually go there for
I can't picture attractions and Dragon Ball fitting together at all
Even if they had a Nimbus Cloud ride, what would that even be…?
You'll probably get to stay in a Capsule Corp cottage
and get greeted by Toriyama-style Parisiennes
Spend a whole day collecting Dragon Balls, that kind of thing
I dropped off around volume 1 of the manga because it got boring for me,
so I honestly don't care about Dragon Ball itself, but I do want to see Toriyama's world
If there's ever a TV show where Nozawa Masako (Goku's voice actress) visits, I'd watch that
All foreigners want out of Dragon Ball is the fighting
They probably don't even know there was an adventure era
I also stopped reading Dragon Ball once the Tenkaichi Budokai (World Martial Arts Tournament) arc ended
Got sick of the whole friendship-hard work-victory formula
Once it turned into a straight-up battle manga around the Piccolo arc, building out the world in the background got pretty neglected
I wish Toriyama had stuck to his guns
like he did with Dr. Slump or Sand Land
Though, going by Ghibli's example, Aichi/Nagoya has zero sense of taste for that kind of thing.
Well Kiyosu means Kiyosu Castle, after all
Bird Studio (Toriyama's studio) is right there though
It'd be interesting if some rich YouTuber (an Arab royal would work too) hid Dragon Balls all over the world and granted whatever wish they could to whoever collected all seven. Though I bet someone would end up dead.
Hurry up and build a One Piece park lol
Japan means samurai and ninja, so NARUTO works just fine
That's just forced with nothing behind it
People would think we're dumb
If it's going in France, shouldn't it be The Rose of Versailles or A Little Princess Sara?
Maybe Macron and Mohammed's tastes just happened to line up lol
The Rose of Versailles already has the real Versailles as its "hometown,"
and Marie Antoinette is remembered in France as the foolish queen who helped bring down the monarchy.
The Rose of Versailles isn't held in that high regard over there.
France appreciates it more for making Japanese people interested in France in the first place.
A new TV broadcast is starting up again
Bandai sales, FY ending March 2025:
DB: ¥190.6 billion
Gundam: ¥153.5 billion
One Piece: ¥139.5 billion
Kamen Rider: ¥30.7 billion
Naruto: ¥26.9 billion
Ultraman: ¥14.0 billion
Anpanman: ¥11.4 billion
Precure: ¥7.9 billion
Sentai: ¥6.4 billion
Background and Key Points
Dragon Ball is a nearly 40-year-old Toriyama Akira manga/anime that began in 1984 as an adventure story loosely built around collecting seven wish-granting orbs before evolving, from the Piccolo arc onward, into the fight-tournament format most non-Japanese fans actually know. Toriyama died in March 2024; the 2017 Paradise Papers leak had already shown he used offshore vehicles, including US real-estate holdings, to manage his royalties, which is why posters reflexively joke about him “watching from a tax haven.” The ¥1.113 trillion (~€6bn) Paris-suburb park was announced alongside a Macron–Mohammed bin Salman summit that was primarily about Saudi-French economic cooperation and the US-Iran-destabilized Middle East, meaning the park is one line item in a much larger bilateral investment package, not a stand-alone entertainment bet. It fits Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 pattern of PIF-linked money diversifying into global tourism and IP, similar to its other Western entertainment stakes, a point the thread never raises.
The thread’s actual fault line is whether Dragon Ball’s world is even “theme-parkable”: one camp says only the original Dragon-Ball-hunting era had the whimsical geography (villages, deserts, Capsule Corp gadgets) that translates into rides, while the long tournament/battle era that made the franchise a global hit abroad left almost no explorable setting behind, just characters fighting in generic wastelands.
What’s easy to misread is any claim about location: the “Kiyosu near Nagoya” and “Bird Studio” connections are posters’ own speculation, not confirmed park details, and Bandai’s ¥190.6bn FY2025 Dragon Ball sales figure reflects merchandise revenue, not evidence the IP alone can sustain a physical park’s attendance economics.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “[Topic] France and Saudi Leaders Agree to Build “Dragon Ball” Theme Park.”
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