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New Translations: “Showa vs. Heisei!?” Special, “Resurrection ‘F'” Anime Comic, and “Dr. Slump” Volume 18 Akira Toriyama Comments
Published by 14 September 2017, 11:09 AM EDT

Three new translations enter our archives today: one comes courtesy of a recent television special, one is actually a stealth-addition that has been up for a little while in conjunction to some deep “Manga Guide” work, and the other is an old tidbit from the era when Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball technically co-existed!

Last month, Fuji TV aired Showa vs. Heisei!?: Anime, Tokusatsu, Manga Hero & Heroine Top 20, a special program counting down favorite characters based on a multi-generational survey.

Dragon Ball‘s own Son Goku was ultimately named the number one hero. Original author Akira Toriyama provided an original sketch featuring his character side-by-side with his namesake Sun Wukong from Journey to the West, along with a celebratory comment:

Even though I knew that battle manga went over well with readers of shōnen manga, I still stubbornly decided to do a Journey to the West adventure manga. Since it’d be a bit drab to just leave things as-is, I changed the monkey to a human with a tail and started off a modified version of Journey to the West where they search for the seven Dragon Balls.

But sure enough it didn’t get very popular, so I had no choice but to obediently change course to a battle-centric manga. Afterwards I got rid of the tail (it was in the way) and so in the end only the name “Son Goku” remained.

Thank you very much for selecting that Goku as the number one strongest hero!!

READ THE ARCHIVE PAGE

As with Battle of Gods before it and the various films and TV specials in the past, the 2015 theatrical film Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ received an “Anime Comic” later that same year. These “Anime Comic” (occasionally “Film Anime Comic”) releases arrange their respective film into comic book style with dialog bubbles. They occasionally include extra character biographies and supplemental franchise information, and even more rarely comments from original author Akira Toriyama himself.

The Resurrection ‘F’ comic ends with a brief “Message From Akira Toriyama”:

With Battle of Gods last time as well as with this Resurrection ‘F’, I wrote the story but didn’t make it into a manga, so there’s no collected edition. In other words, this anime comic is the only way you can read new Dragon Ball in book form. And it’s in glorious full color! Please enjoy reading it! I’m sure you will make new discoveries that you didn’t pick up on in the big screen.

READ THE ARCHIVE PAGE

In May of 1985, the eighteenth and final collected volume of Akira Toriyama’s Dr. Slump manga saw its release in Japan. At this point, no collected volumes of Dragon Ball existed yet (the first would hit later that year in September), and the original Weekly Shōnen Jump serialization was only just wrapping up the first arc of the series.

The final Dr. Slump volume contains two brief promotional, optimistic look-aheads to Dragon Ball, including one closing comment from Akira Toriyama himself.

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With this, Dr. Slump has come to an end. Continuing onwards, please look forward to Dragon Ball.

(Kame-sen’nin)
I reckon it’ll be coming out this year!

Thank you so much to everyone who read all the way to the end!!

I’ve drawn Arale so many times I’ve lost count, but this one is the last.

Now then, let’s meet again in the collected edition (at least I think it’ll be coming out) of Dragon Ball.

–Akira Toriyama

These messages were added for the tankōbon edition, and were not reprinted in the kanzenban and eventual digital editions of the series.

READ THE ARCHIVE PAGE

These items have all been archived in our “Translations” section.

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