What is a Daizenshuu?

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A Daizenshyu in this case is a book. Basically a encyclopedia for DB. Nice eh? The books are also known as the "coffee table books". There are 10 DB-DBZ books. The first 7 are hardcover and very nice, the last 3 are add-ons to the original books. They are soft cover and quite a bit cheaper.

The Seven:
Well, there were originally seven books, one for each Dragon Ball (get it? 7 books for 7 Dragon Balls). Also when the books are laid out in the "magic" order, they form Shenron the Dragon. Is that something or what?

The 3 Add-Ons:
The seven Daizenshuu where published in hardcover format through 1995 and 1996. The TV Animation Part 2 guide was completed before the DBZ anime actually ended, and there was one last field of Dragonball that the guides did not cover thoroughly enough, which is why in 1998, three addendums were published. Well the 3 add-ons cant really be described as books 8-10, there really free standing. But for purposes of teaching and spelling, they will be called so on this site. The first 2 add-ons (books 8 and 9) are books on the collectible cards. The third is basically a way to spend more money, it's 'TV Animation Part 3': It has what Daizenshuu's 5 and 6 should already have.

The GT Perfect Files:
In addition to the Daizenshuus of Dragonball / Dragonball Z, there are also 2 softcover books containing information on Dragonball GT.

Translation:
Daizenshuu can be broken into 3 parts

	Dai (Large)
	Zen (Whole, Complete)
	Shuu (Gather)

Dai means large on it's own, but Zen and Shuu put together make their own word:
Zenshuu (Complete works).

So putting those together you come up with:
Large Complete Works

Which means the words "Dragonball Daizenshuu" could be translated into something like:
Dragonball: Large Complete Guide.

That would mean that it's a large book that is complete with all of Akira Toriyama's DB Work.

The French Books:
The Daizenshuu were translated into French, and as far as I know the only language a Daizenshuu has ever been translated to. They're kind of messed up, the covers are not as nice and they messed with the images. Like the image that is supposed to go with book 1 was mixed with the 3rd book.

Spellings:
Daizenshuu - this spelling is used by many webmasters including MFG.
Daizenshu - this is basically the same, this spelling is mostly seen at online stores.
Daizenshyu - used by our friend website Dragonball-Info.

How Did we Decide?
I put all three spellings into Google and Daizenshuu turned out to be the most popular. Weather it's the most correct or not, I don't know.