Earlier this week Fuji TV
updated their TV schedule indicating that the final episode of DragonBall Kai would be skipped and Toriko would in fact be taking over the 9:00AM time slot on 3 April 2011. As you may recall, everything had originally been thrown off an entire week due to the horrific earthquake that struck Japan the other week. Well, Toei Animation's
official website for DragonBall Kai is now noting that episode 97 is indeed the "final episode" of the series. It appears they will be entirely skipping episode 98, even though we know it has likely been completed, as its episode title was previously released, the dialogue is recorded weeks in advance, and it was originally scheduled to air on Fuji TV this week.
There is still no word whether this episode will ever be broadcast or available on a home release. It may eventually be broadcast on Fuji TV Two, a satellite only channel that will begin re-running DragonBall Kai episodes on 30 March 2011, but that is mere speculation at this point. No matter how you spin it, the end of Kai has been quite the fiasco, and certainly nothing like what any of us expected it to be.
And thus passes one really, really weird chapter in DragonBall history...
