Why did Toriyama never move to a monthly format?

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Deathbringer
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Why did Toriyama never move to a monthly format?

Post by Deathbringer » Sat May 19, 2018 2:37 pm

Toriyama has always complained of how taxing it was to write 2 long-running weekly series, and when he wrote the Jaco manga he tried to write it in a weekly format which he also had trouble with at his age, so I wonder why he never moved to writing for a monthly magazine, Shueisha has a few in the Shonen demographic. I'm thinking maybe Shueisha wouldn't let him because they must have wanted Dr Slump and Dragon Ball at the front of their flagship weekly magazine? This is something I think about sometimes when Toriyama says he could never handle writing manga again because of how harsh the schedule is.

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Re: Why did Toriyama never move to a monthly format?

Post by AwesomeEliyafeth » Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:13 pm

See, remember that Shueisha was still riding high on the success of both of his major franchises. They likely wouldn't have made as much money on the franchise if they'd have switched over to a monthly serialization.

You also have to rake into account the fact that no manga magazine is NEARLY as popular in Japan as Shueisha's Jump line, which at the time was almost strictly relying on the weekly serial of Dragon Ball to boost its sales since it was suffering from a slight creative drought throughout the early 90's.

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KBABZ
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Re: Why did Toriyama never move to a monthly format?

Post by KBABZ » Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:20 pm

That would have worked right up until the anime spinned up, after which the release schedule would have been so long we probably would still be getting new issues to this day! Man, imagine what THAT reality would be like for us?

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sintzu
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Re: Why did Toriyama never move to a monthly format?

Post by sintzu » Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:39 pm

Like some have said, the weekly format was the more popular option as that was their most popular magazine. You've also got to think about the anime which was also popular, if it had trouble with keeping things in order with 4 chapters a month, how would they handle one ?
KBABZ wrote:That would have worked right up until the anime spinned up, after which the release schedule would have been so long we probably would still be getting new issues to this day! Man, imagine what THAT reality would be like for us?
Things may have played out very differently had he had time to plan things out which may have not been for the best as what made DB work was him writing on the go without much planning.
July 9th 2018 will be remembered as the day Broly became canon.

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KBABZ
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Re: Why did Toriyama never move to a monthly format?

Post by KBABZ » Fri Jul 06, 2018 8:10 pm

sintzu wrote:
KBABZ wrote:That would have worked right up until the anime spinned up, after which the release schedule would have been so long we probably would still be getting new issues to this day! Man, imagine what THAT reality would be like for us?
Things may have played out very differently had he had time to plan things out which may have not been for the best as what made DB work was him writing on the go without much planning.
I agree, the writing style means that there's a lot of momentum going on with the story.

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