Anyone else have the feeling that Toriyama didn't like the Multiverse & Gods concepts?

[Rafa Fast]

I mean, not that he necessarily disliked the idea, but that at least he still doesn't want to work with these concepts yet
This can be wrong, but that's what I see most people saying, that the movies Battle of Gods, Resurrection 'F', Super Broly and Super Hero were the projects that he has had more involvement since the series' revival
And that the Champa, Zamasu and ToP arcs, while they had a hand from him, they're mostly stuff from Toei and Toyotaro's heads, now this makes me think about the following:

Toriyama
1-Battle of Gods: Movie introduces the Gods hierarchy and the Multiverse
2-Resurrection 'F': a movie about Freeza's return, stronger, defeated again.
3-DBS Broly: a movie about Broly.
4-Super Hero: a movie about RR returning again, cell returning (sorta and again), defeated again.

Toei & Toyotaro
1-Champa: Tournament between fighters from two Universes.
2-Zamasu: A Villain from a different Universe attacks our Universe.
3-ToP: Tournament between fighters from almost the entire Multiverse.

It's pretty weird, specially that the only reference to these non "Toriyama" arcs was a small mention of the ToP in DBS Broly and Super Hero,
and honestly? For me it felt like it was just made to give a context for the general audience and that arc was important because it explains why Freeza is alive so a reminder was necessary.
Plus, the whole stuff with "divine powers" was developed in the Toei/Toyotaro sagas, Ultra Instinct was introduced in ToP, and it's a important element of the "gods" storyline, it never appeared in a movie, so there isn't even reference to it in Broly or Super Hero, and I don't even need to talk about Ultra Ego.
SSJ Blue replacing SSJ God also felt more like Toriyama trying to dispatch the idea of Goku meeting the world of divine power and going back to the old formula of a transformation stronger than the previous one, Blue doesn't feel divine at all when compared to SSJ God, it lacks the background with the past surrounding the legend of a sayajin god that the red haired form had, it feels like a ordinary stronger form, truly following the golden SSJ path instead, the closest that Blue came to seeming divine conceptually was when Goku Black made parallels of mortals vs gods when using the Rose form, and guess what, that was in a Toei/Toyotaro Saga.

Then we have Beerus & Whis, we don't see them interacting with the angels & hakaishins from other universes anymore, they don't talk about it anymore, Goku and Vegeta simply go to their planet, train and have a lot of comical moments with them, as if there was nothing else for them to do with these two, what does this reminds me of? Goku's previous masters, Roshi, Karin, Kami-sama (or Popo), Kaio-Sama and Kaioshin (wasn't with Goku actually, but you got the ideia), someone Goku becomes a student, and after he "completes" the training, only serves as comic relief (the only difference is that this time they weren't surpassed haha)
Now if we go back to the manga, even though the Moro and Granolla arc aren't about the Multiverse, Toyotaro still made serious development on Goku and Vegeta's divine training with Beerus and Whis, improving Goku's Ultra Instinct, introducing Merus and even giving Vegeta his own divine form, damn, even Uub was revealed to have divine powers.
Toriyama made the two stuck on the "more ordinary/not so divine" SSJ Blue form, and made new forms for Gohan and Piccolo, both have no relation to the divine power hierarchy.

And then, after Super Hero, what comes next from Toriyama's side? The new anime that is said to have the most involvement he has ever had, Daima, which supposedly takes place before Battle of Gods and from the trailer it looks like it won't have anything related to the multiverse and divine stuff, again.

That's pretty much it, now if the info about Toriyama being much more involved in the films than in the anime/manga only sagas is indeed true, then this just can't be a coincidence.
If that's indeed the case then it makes a lot of sense for me, would be a pretty satisfactory answer as to why no interesting developments in the multiverse concept have been made since the end of the Super TV Series, why things like Vegeta going to Sadala haven't happened, why all the characters from other universes have been forgotten (except for Jiren) and why they didn't show Goku at least using or mentioning UI in the last 2 films imo.

[MasenkoHA]

A heirarchy of Gods has been a thing in the series since the Saiyan arc when Kaio was introduced as the "God amongst Gods" and the whole Kaio heirarchy itself revealed in the Boo saga with Dai Kaio over the 4 Kaios and the Kaioshin over him and Dai Kaioshin over all of them. He doesn't get too much into it but Toriyama has never been a "lore" guy and he's mostly pulling from Buddhism (and possibly other Eastern religions?) and probably doesn't feel the need to get too much into it.

As far as the multiverse thing, eh he was behind the general concept of the Champa arc and ToP arc no? They're not in his movies but I don't think it's because he's aversed to the multiverse just there hasn't been a reason. 3 of those 4 movies have basically been fan service movies (bring the most popular villain back, Toriyama ize the most popular non-Toriyama DB character, make Gohan and Piccolo "badass" again) and BoG was a Toei original that Toriyama came in to Toriyama up.

[SupremeKai25]

All the Arcs that Toriyama crafted feature the Gods and Multiverse concept in a major way.

Tournament of Destroyers arc:

- Main antagonist: The Destroyer God Champa and his Team from Universe 6.

- Main setting: A neutral ground between the two Universes.

Future Trunks arc:

- Main antagonist: Zamasu, the Supreme Kai gone rogue from Universe 10.

- Important setting: the World of the Kais of Universe 10.

Tournament of Power arc:

- Main antagonist: 70 fighters from 7 other Universes.

- Main setting: the World of Void, a neutral dimension between all Universes.


As you can see, all the storylines crafted by Toriyama involve the Gods and Multiverse in major way.

These are the 3 storylines that Toriyama truly wanted to tell (hence why BOTH Toei and Toyotaro adapted them), and they all involve Gods/Multiverse.

[Dbzfan94]

The gods, nah I think he’s still into them. As for the the 12 universes, I legitimately feel they bit off more than they could chew with that idea and possibly found the other universes not interesting enough. Because after the ToP we haven’t left U7 with only minor mentions of the other universe characters scattered throughout.

[Zephyr]

It seems like Toriyama was in a position to change just about whatever he wanted about Battle of Gods while it was in production. It's true that we don't know if Beerus' line at the end of the film about there being a multiverse was a Toriyama addition or a Watanabe beat that Toriyama simply didn't care to change. But either way, I think that if he didn't like the concept of the multiverse, it wouldn't be in the final film.

[Yuji]

I don't think he has an interest to explore the concepts to their fullest extent. His stories are largely character-focused, with a limited focus on a few characters despite the seemingly wide scope premises. He uses the multiverse as a backdrop to write competent and concise character arcs. It doesn't seem like he's necessarily interested in world building or expanding the lore, which, in all fairness, he's never really been interested in - even in the original run, the locations and mythology both on Earth and in space were excuses to dig up another strong opponent and draw a nice action scene. If anything has changed, it seems the previous emphasis on drawing action has morphed into a larger concern over writing a tight and concise script, which is probably due to Toriyama's nature now as an accomplished scriptwriter with time to finish and flesh out his ideas as opposed to a struggling artist just drawing whatever he found cool that week.

But the cynic in me can't help but think the inclusion of the multiverse was more corporate in nature as a gateway to give Toei and Bandai an avenue they can explore for their own stories.

[Magnificent Ponta]

If Toriyama has no further intentions for Multiverse stuff in Super, I can hardly blame him. Whenever I think of demand for more Multiverse concept stuff, I just shrug.

It's fine that it's there, but in terms of its conceptual richness for sustaining compelling narrative in future arcs, there's really nothing much left there that can't be done just as well in Universe 7 (it seems Daima is going to eloquently underscore the fact that there's unexplored stuff in "our" universe as it is, with the Demon Realm), unless you're specifically advocating for an arc with a Super Dragon Ball hunt (as SupremeKai25 notes, we've already done inter-universe combat and inter-universe God stuff in previous Toriyama-penned story arcs). Otherwise, the only difference in siting another story in other universes would just be effectively for the sake of putting a badge on everyone that says "This is a totally different place you guys, how fresh and new". What's the point?

I also have no desire to support the ubiquitous fan "Angel War/Coup From Literally Nowhere For Literally No Reason", "Universes 13 Through 18 Come Back And Something Something Something", or "Picnic and Saiyan Lore Dump on Universe 6 Planet Sadla" non-story suggestions that get trotted out like they're legitimately interesting multiverse arc concepts, either. I imagine if they ever came up in the writers' room, they got pretty short shrift.

[GokuHater]

I don't think he doesn't like it per se but rather unfortunately he doesn't have enough creativity to do something major with the idea.
And I know it's a kind of a hot take but the idea of there being so many universes and so many gods means you can write almost anything.

But the only major reason, it seems, tthe idea was introduced was to built another wall, which Goku and the others must climb.
They did Earth. They did other planets. The did the Universe. What's left?
Another Universes!
And the idea is fun, it's just not treated as it should have in my opinion. In ToP for example we are getting a look of what the other Universes are like. And in my opinion this doesn't feel that way. It just feels as we are fighting some random guys from random planets.

At least Universe 6 and Zamasu Arc are having an idea which is creative but still too little is shown.

The manga actually goes in opposite direction and builds on the lore, planet, people from our universe which I think I like a bit more.

[GreatSaiyaman123]

U6, Zamasu and ToP all came from his head, they were his ideas and Toyotaro and Toei just polished them. RoF feels like a weird stopgag between BoG (Introducing multiverse) and Super (Exploring multiverse), but he was all in with it from 2015 to 2018.

Zamasu and ToP were pretty high stakes (One had them call the king of everything to destroy a timeline, the other was a tournament with almost every universe), but there's some open threads he could explore if he felt like it (Planet Sadla trip, Zalama, multiversal war, the universes that weren't in the ToP, U12's time travelers), but he just doesn't feel like it anymore.

Toriyama still acknowledges the concept (Goku reminisces about the ToP in DBSB and mentions Jiren and the GoDs in SH), but he's not gonna force himself to do something if his heart is not into it.