At the beginning of the month the first “Dragon Ball Full Color” volumes hit bookstores across Japan, along with the first Chōzenshū volume, and we are finally getting around to really digging through them in more depth. While each “Full Color” volume contains a brief “Enter the DRAGON BALL” recap giving new readers a look back at the beginning of the series, they each also contain a short Q&A section covering seven different questions about the Saiyan arc. The first six questions of each section are answered by Shueisha, but original author Akira Toriyama was brought in to answer the seventh and final question of each volume.
Shueisha’s questions are for the most part very simple, covering some of the basic aspects of the story arc, but Toriyama seems to expand a bit more with his answers. In fact, he even delves a bit into some interesting Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods background information with the answer to his final question:
Q7: Why is Kaiō’s planet so small?
A: The fact is, it was destroyed by the God of Destruction!!
It used to be so big that its diameter was about 100 times that of Kaiō’s current planet. Apart from the size it was completely the same as it is now, with nothing but grassy fields and roads. Kaiō-sama enjoyed his hobby, driving, but then one day Birusu, the God of Destruction, stopped by and they played a video game together (it was a car racing one). Birusu lost, and so the planet was destroyed by the peeved God of Destruction. Kaiō then took a large leftover fragment, whittled it down to a sphere, and built a road on it so that he could have fun driving there. This became Kaiō’s current planet.
You can read the entirely of these Q&As in our “Translations” section, and find more information about this release in the appropriate section of our “Manga Guide”.
17 Comments
This is simply genius.
This was WELL worth the wait.
Toriyama is such a funny guy. Half the time in interviews and the like, it feels like he’s such a normal person that just stumbled into manga fame, so it’s totally understandable when he forgets minor details in the series every once in a while. Then there’s moments like these where he’s able to give full-on backstories that are interesting as all hell and still maintain the feel of the DB universe. This guy!
WOW! 😯
Toriyama is great at coming up with answers to these simple questions on the spot, haha. I’m sure the fact that this answer is for a full color manga interview will add something to canon debates.
This is fantastic. X3
Too bad he doesn’t explain why the planet is back after being blown up by Cell XD
So him having driving his car as a hobby made sense at some point! good to know 😆
This is just awesome haha
But what about the other three Kaios’ planets? Did Birusu also visited them, got into the competition and lost, destroying the planets? That is really interesting. I mean, isn’t this kind of a plot hole or something?
^ We never saw the other planets.
^ I’m almost 100% sure that we didn’t in the manga.
However, during the Otherworld Tournament Saga, one of the fighters described to Goku how the hierarchy of Kaios and Dai Kaio works. We saw then 4 small Kaio planets. One would say it was just a filler and all. But still, it doesn’t give the concrete answer.
But with the new infos from Akira Toriyama, it seems it is now inconsistency in the anime.
Dude, the anime isn’t canon.
I think we’re now moving away from most of the anime-only stuff, what with Kai “replacing” Z, this new movie being part of the manga canon and probably undoing GT…
Also, Toriyama is amazing.
Then the other Kaio planets were retconned, or Birusu likes playing video games with all the Kaio. 😈
I know the anime isn’t canon. The movie itself is. And since it is animated, it ads to the anime canon. With that done, it makes another contradiction in the anime continuity. And it might end with everyone thinking the movie is like the previous ones, not fitting into what we know.
And I hope the movie won’t discard GT. If it does, the sense of making GT will be under question mark. So far we don’t know if the movie will put GT into trash. I strongly believe it will answer some questions that were raised in GT.
Birusu is extremely evil being 😈
Birusu reminds me of my brother. Whenever he looses in video games, he becomes uncontrollable, especially if someone is trolling him after his defeat. 😆
On the topic of Dragon Ball Full Color, this is a bit off-topic, but when the manga premiered in the English Weekly Shonen Jump, I know myself and others complained that the lettering looked really unprofessional.
Turns out Shueisha was responsible for the lettering, not Viz Media. They simply replaced the Japanese text with Lillian Olson’s original translation. This was included in the staff credits page at the end of the issue, but for some reason I never noticed.