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 fifteen entries, this month’s December 2022 issue brings us Tadatoshi Fujimaki (Kuroko’s Basketball, Robot × LaserBeam) and their take on the series’ 14th volume cover:
Fujimaki commented:
When I was in elementary school, meaning, right in the middle of the Dragon Ball serialization, everyone in my class was reading it. From those simple beginnings where I enjoyed copying the Dragon Ball drawings, to buying Jump every week, to deciding I want to draw my own comics, to submitting my own manuscripts, to working as an assistant, and then to finally having my own serialization, who would have thought the day would come when I would be able to draw for a project like this. It is truly an honor. Congratulations to Dragon Ball on its 40th anniversary!
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 year (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 Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultra God Mission!!!! manga series, Yūji Kasai’s Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Avatars!! 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.