The past two issues of Weekly Shōnen Jump in Japan have featured a brand new series of Q&As — “Super Long Interview!! Please Tell Us, Akira Toriyama-sensei!!” — with the original Dragon Ball author himself. The first two questions posed to Toriyama covered the plot for the upcoming film and his design for “Birusu”, and this week’s question is about Toriyama’s placement of the film within the original manga storyline.

この時代を選んだ理由は!?
「マンガ最終話では、結構みんな歳を取った状態に描いてしまったなあ」と思ったのです。ベジータにヒゲ生やしちゃったし（笑）。そこで、みんながMAXまで強くなってるこの時代を選びました。「魔人ブウ編」の数年後で、パン誕生以前ですね。

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Why did you choose this period?
The fact is, I thought, “Man, I really made everyone old in the last chapter of the manga”. I even gave Vegeta a mustache (laughs). So, I chose this period because everyone had got to maximum strength. A few years after the “Majin Boo arc”, and before Pan’s birth.

It is unclear if Toriyama is confusing his actual character designs in the last chapter of the manga with his designs for Dragon Ball GT or moving on to a separate thought with the mustache mention; in both cases, updated/older character designs were created.

We will continue to archive each of Toriyama’s answers on a new page of our “Translations” section with each release.