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 forty entries, this month’s January 2025 issue brings us the penultimate drawing and comment combo with Masakazu Katsura (DNA², I”s, Shadow Lady, Video Girl Ai, Wing-Man, Zetman) and their take on the series’ first collected volume cover.

Katsura commented:

I am the man that kept getting the in the way of Dragon Ball‘s writing with really dumb phone calls, ones that started late in the night and went on until the wee hours of the morning.

I mean, technically, I wasn’t really getting in the way per se, but… midway through our calls, I would just casually ask “what are you doing?” and would always be really shocked when he answered “Hmm? Oh, I’m doing the storyboards.”

He really was amazing. I wonder what kind of brains Toriyama-san had floating up there on that noggin’.

Dragon Ball was always such a positive, pure and unbelievably fun manga that it will forever be a masterpiece.

Toriyama and Katsura were long-time friends and collaborators. Toriyama brings up Katsura countless times during his various interviews over the years, and Katsura himself actually showed up during Toriyama’s interview for the “Shenlong Times” accompanying Daizenshuu 7. During one of their most notable conversations, it was actually Katsura who suggested fusing characters together as a new way to power-up characters without another transformation. Toriyama and Katsura directly collaborated together for Sachie-chan GOOD!! and Jiya, the original two entries in the Galactic Patrol series.

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 in 2021 (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.

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.