The September 2021 issue of Shueisha’s Saikyō Jump magazine kicked off a “Dragon Ball Super Gallery” series in commemoration of the Dragon Ball franchise’s upcoming 40th anniversary. The celebration aims to have different artists all contribute their own spin on the original 42 tankōbon covers, with the images and an accompanying comment published as the magazine’s back cover.

Following the previous seven entries, this month’s April 2022 issue brings us Tatsuya Endō (Spy x Family) and their take on the series’ 15th volume cover:

Endō commented:

Dragon Ball is my origin of origins. I first started drawing manga because I admired Toriyama so much. I’d copy his character art, copy whole chapters, and drew a ton of manga that were basically rip-offs of his. I also played Super Butōden like an idiot. I love the colorization and mechanical structures Toriyama employs on his title pages and frontispieces, and often have them in mind even now as I work. His fully-proportioned and super-deformed styles are both so cute I can’t stand it. I’m truly, truly honored to be able to take part in a project like this. Dragon Ball, congratulations on 40 years!

Saikyō Jump is currently a monthly magazine published in Japan by Shueisha under the “Jump” line of magazines. The magazine began as a quarterly publication in 2012, went monthly in 2013, went bimonthly in late-2014, and returned to a monthly format last fall (including a digital release for the first time). The magazine’s focus is spin-off and supplementary manga series aimed at a young audience, while also including game promotions, news coverage, and more. The magazine currently serializes content such as Yoshitaka Nagayama’s various ongoing Super Dragon Ball Heroes manga series and the Dragon Ball GT Anime Comic. For calendar year 2019, Shueisha reported Saikyō Jump‘s circulation down at 130,000, with readership as 58.5% upper elementary school, 28% lower middle school, 11% middle school, and 2.5% high school or older.