The official Dragon Ball website’s seventy-ninth entry in “The Nearly Complete Works of Akira Toriyama” — an on-going series highlighting rare and important pieces of the author’s work over the years — is his illustration for the ’89 Jump Anime Carnival special Kosuke-sama Rikimaru-sama –Konpeitō no Ryū– (“Kosuke and Rikimaru: The Dragon of Konpei Island”), screened on tour beginning in 1988 and later released on home video:

Originally screened as a part of Jump‘s 20th anniversary celebration, The Dragon of Konpei Island tells the story of orphaned brothers Kosuke and Rikimaru protecting the world’s last dragon, Pochi, from having the “dragon stone” in his head stolen. Toriyama worked on all aspects of the film, which was directed by Toyo’o Ashida; Toriyama touches on Ashida’s influence in his first Daizenshuu interview:

The way that you paint colors has also changed quite a bit.

Yeah. For example, in the old days I shaded off the light portions on hair, but shading it off took a lot of time. When I made an anime called Kosuke-same Rikimaru-sama (screened at the ’89 Jump Anime Carnival, and later became a Jump Video), I looked at the pictures of the animator Toyo’o Ashida-san, and I thought that the anime-style way of applying light and shadow wasn’t bad. I made my pictures like that from then on.

The truth is, Ashida-san is someone that I’ve always respected.

In his weekly author comments accompanying Dragon Ball‘s serialization, Toriyama first mentions The Dragon of Konpei Island alongside chapter 184:

In his comment published alongside chapter 192, Toriyama announces his intention to view the film in Kagoshima later that month:

Two weeks later alongside chapter 194, Toriyama reports on the screening and urges fans to check other the forthcoming screening in Oita:

Another two weeks later alongside chapter 196, Toriyama continues to relish in the special’s success:

In his comment alongside chapter 231, Toriyama continues to urge fans to check out the special:

Finally, in his comment alongside chapter 239, Toriyama asks fans into the Kanto area to check out an upcoming television screening of the special:

Konpeitō is a kind of hard Japanese candy; the original Gundam series made a similar pun.