Roughly every month, Toyotarō provides a drawing of a Dragon Ball (or related…!) 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 December 2024 entry, Toyotarō has drawn Mako Maruyama (and friends!) from the Akira Toriyama manga series COWA!:

COWA!
Mako Maruyama

It’s the comic Toriyama-sensei said was his favorite.

The main character is Paifu, but it’s drawn with Makorin a.k.a. Mako Maruyama, who he actually wanted to be the lead, front and center.

Toriyama consistently called out COWA! as one of his favorite works, specifically stating in a comment for new obi included with his various works beginning in 2014 (alongside the launch of Jaco the Galactic Patrolman):

No matter what anyone says, this is the comic I like the best out of all my works.

COWA! is a fourteen-chapter post-Dragon Ball manga series by Akira Toriyama, debuting in the 1997 No. 48 issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump, originally released 28 October 1997 in Japan. The series ran through to the 1998 No. 15 issue, and a collected volume was released that May.

In America, COWA! was released as a collected print edition by Viz in July 2008.

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