Each month, Toyotarō provides a drawing of a Dragon Ball character — as well as an accompanying comment — on the official Japanese Dragon Ball website. Following up on the wealth of characters already drawn, for his March 2022 entry, Toyotarō has contributed a drawing of Artificial Human No. 14:

Artificial Human No. 14

I’m also looking forward to the new artificial humans, Gamma 1 & 2, in the new movie, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero!

* Incidentally, I’ve also drawn a brand-new illustration of Gamma 1 & 2 in the back of Dragon Ball Super vol. 18, which goes on sale Monday, April 4, so please check out the collected release, too!

No. 14 originates in the Dragon Ball Z series’ seventh theatrical film (“Extreme Battle!! The Three Great Super Saiyans”), originally debuting at the Toei Anime Fair in July 1992. While not contributing to the movie’s story development, original author Akira Toriyama provided original character designs for the three artificial humans (No. 13, 14, and 15), which were later printed in the “Gallery of Akira Toriyama” section of Daizenshuu 6. The section notes that at the time of Akira Toriyama’s designs the names of Nos. 14 and 15 were reversed; however, the two names were later swapped.

The “new movie” that Toyotarō refers to is the forthcoming Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero theatrical film. Though the film was originally slated to premiere 22 April 2022 in Japan, the film was just recently indefinitely delayed due to a Toei network hack/intrusion.

This drawing and comment set has been added to the respective page in our “Translations” archive.