The Dragon Ball Series That Never Was...?

[The Monkey King]

Apparently around 2008 Toei approached Toriyama to help write/direct a new Dragon Ball anime series but Toriyama refused.
Because of this Toei decided to create Dragon Ball Kai instead.

I have heard this story multiple times but despite my best efforts I cannot find a single source on this happening.

Like in this Geekdom101 video 2:30 minutes in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80EfQwN ... Geekdom101

Is it even true?

EDIT: Found the interview with Torishima, 6:30 in. Shame I couldn't find this information on the Kanzenshuu website proper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd0ocHD ... ngofeSango

viewtopic.php?t=29086

[WittyUsername]

It’s so weird to think that we wouldn’t have had the Dragon Ball renaissance of the 2010’s if DBE hadn’t rubbed Toriyama the wrong way.

[Demon Prince Piccolo]

It’s so weird to think that we wouldn’t have had the Dragon Ball renaissance of the 2010’s if DBE hadn’t rubbed Toriyama the wrong way.

Some don't feel that's a good thing. Personally, I'll say the highs outweigh the lows for me with current Dragon Ball. So, thanks, Dragon Ball Evolution

[MasenkoHA]

Even without Evolution we would have still gotten Battle of Gods and potentially a sequel and follow up series

[Demon Prince Piccolo]

Seems like it's just speculation that Toriyama got more involved in Battle of Gods because of Evolution, but I don't think that's been confirmed.

[ABED]

We don't know for absolute certain but given how prevalent revivals have been for the past decade, DB's manga/anime revival was all but inevitable.

[MasenkoHA]

We don't know for absolute certain but given how prevalent revivals have been for the past decade, DB's manga/anime revival was all but inevitable.

It does seem like Toei/Shueisha was gaging interest in a revival as early 2008. Battle of Gods was just the big push.

Even Kai feels like a dry run intended to get kids who weren’t alive when Dragon Ball GT ended excited at the prospect of more Dragon Ball

[WittyUsername]

BoG would’ve been a very different movie without Toriyama’s involvement, and it seems like it was intended to be a one-off thing. I can’t imagine we would’ve gotten a new series without Toriyama.

[MasenkoHA]

BoG would’ve been a very different movie without Toriyama’s involvement, and it seems like it was intended to be a one-off thing. I can’t imagine we would’ve gotten a new series without Toriyama.

If the Toriyama-less version had bombed? Sure. But if it was a success there was no way in hell Toei and Shueisha and Bandai would have left it at that.

[WittyUsername]

BoG would’ve been a very different movie without Toriyama’s involvement, and it seems like it was intended to be a one-off thing. I can’t imagine we would’ve gotten a new series without Toriyama.

If the Toriyama-less version had bombed? Sure. But if it was a success there was no way in hell Toei and Shueisha and Bandai would have left it at that.

Well, I guess we’ll never know for sure, unless someone straight up asks Toei what they would’ve done in that hypothetical scenario, but from how their version of the movie has been described, it doesn’t sound like it would’ve left much room open for further installments.

[Skar]

If Toriyama refused to work on a new series in 2008, he might not have approved of Toei releasing a movie on their own a few years ago. I forgot where I read it but I remember someone saying that Shuiesha owns the rights to their franchises so Toei and other anime studios can't do anything without their approval including the original author's.

[VegettoEX]

Woof, do we ever have a lot to clear up! Some of y'all aren't even remotely in the ballpark.

OK. Here goes.

Is it even true?

EDIT: Found the interview with Torishima, 6:30 in. Shame I couldn't find this information on the Kanzenshuu website proper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd0ocHD ... ngofeSango

viewtopic.php?t=29086

Yep, that's the source. You're correct: it's not something we have translated in full and archived on the site. Main reason for that is... well... someone already did it! No sense repeating the effort when we have other things we can do. It's absolutely something critically important to one day have in straight text archived, so maybe one of our internal translators will consider it at some point.

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OK, and then I'm not going to quote others beyond this, but rather instead just take you through the timeline. Long and short here is that TONS of people keep making this mistake assuming Toriyama made Battle of Gods in response to Evolution. That's not true. That's a gross misunderstanding of the timeline and process.

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• April 2009: Dragon Ball Evolution is released. It its theatrical program, Toriyama's comments are super basic:
  

  As the creator, as far as the scenario and characterization are concerned, I get a feeling of “Whaa?”, but the director, everyone in the cast, and the crew on-set are ultra high-caliber.
  
  Maybe it’s correct for both me and all the fans to appreciate this as a “new Dragon Ball” in a separate dimension.
  
  With the power on-set, perhaps it will even have become a great masterpiece!
  
  I am greatly anticipating it!!

• Somewhere around 2011: A new Dragon Ball animated film is in the works at Toei. At this early point in production, Akira Toriyama is not yet involved. Yusuke Watanabe is the scriptwriter and Tadayoshi Yamamuro is the character designer. What we have at this point is an evil lizard responsible for infecting the Saiyans with evil, and a bulky, muscular, caped Super Saiyan God fighting back against him.
  
  Kazuhiko Torishima (Toriyama's original editor, and Shueisha big honcho) gives Toriyama a peek at what's going on. Toriyama is supposed to check over the scenario.
  

  I think it was around 2011? It all started when I came to Tokyo, and my first editor, Torishima-san, suddenly handed me the scenario and said, "read this!"… I guess? At that time I had no idea what it was, and when I asked Torishima-san what the scenario was for, I heard for the first time about how it was going to be made into an animated movie. (laughs)

  Instead, he effectively rewrites the entire film and its dialog (basically just keeping the ideas of "Super Saiyan God" and "God of Destruction"), and also redoes all of the character designs. Beerus is now a cornish rex, and Super Saiyan God is slim.
  

  Beerus and Whis are characters who already existed at the scenario stage. Beerus originally had a lizard-like form, but at Toriyama-sensei's idea, he ultimately became an Egyptian-style cat character. I handled the roughs for Super Saiyan God. It was "a being that surpasses everything" so I drew a character more built than Super Saiyan, with a cape, but then illustrations with a completely different feel came back from Toriyama-sensei…. It was too different from my own internal image, so I tried suggesting the more sturdily-drawn character one more time, and then Sensei told me that it really was all wrong. (laughs)

  (He changes a bunch else, such as making it Bulma's birthday party instead of Kuririn & No. 18's wedding, changing it to Pilaf's group instead of a random group of robbers, etc.)
  

  I thought I’d do a story where the enemy appears at a party on Earth when Goku’s not there, and there’d be big trouble; in the original plot, I wrote Kuririn and No. 18’s wedding, but in the story that came back from Toriyama-sensei, it had changed to Bulma’s birthday party.

  Originally, they were just going to be petty thieves. But since we were going to have the entire cast, I thought [it wouldn’t be great if] some unknown characters just suddenly showed up. So I made them into the Pilaf gang. But you know, thinking long and hard about it after making that decision, they were all getting pretty old.

• March 2013: Battle of Gods actually releases. In its theatrical program booklet, he (very openly and candidly) calls out Evolution directly as being bad:
  

  By the way, the battle scenes in the second half are particularly overwhelming! I was moved because the presentation exceeded my expectations. While I had expected, "It probably won’t be any good," it was greatly different from a certain country's live-action movie, which really was no good. Just as you'd expect, Japan’s animation is superb! Everyone on the staff, you really did a great job!!

  Following the film's release, in an interview with Asahi Shimbun Digital, Toriyama goes even further:
  

  Also, at the time of the Hollywood movie, the live-action Dragon Ball, the script had too little of a grasp on the world and its characteristics, and on top of that, it had a conventional content that I couldn't find interesting, so I cautioned them, and suggested changes; but in spite of that, they seemed to have a strange confidence, and didn't really listen to me. What came out in the end was a movie I couldn't really call a Dragon Ball that lived up to my expectations.
  
  That being the case, there were parts where I wanted to show some spine, with a world and story only the creator could draw.

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Toriyama stepping in and doing more meddling with the production of Battle of Gods is something you can absolutely make a connection with in terms of following up on how he was treated and dismissed during the production of Evolution.

But Battle of Gods was already in the works without Toriyama. It was going to be made, with or without him. Toriyama did not conceive of or initiate the production of Battle of Gods.

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And then looping back around to the original video interview source with Torishima:

• Bandai wanted a new series
• Toriyama said no, he didn't want any involvement
• Everyone respected his wishes: no new series, since they wouldn't want to do one without being able to say Toriyama was involved
• (And yet we get the 2008 Jump Super Anime Tour special instead; but that sorta makes sense, since it was a one-off instead of a long-term project)
• Instead, Torishima's grand idea was to re-edit the old show and get that back on TV instead: and so we get Kai in 2009
• How did that work out? Read the whole story here.

[Grimlock]

The most interesting thing about all that would be Kuririn and Android 18's wedding. Maybe it wouldn't make a lot of sense given the time period (they got together at some point after AGE 767, they had Marron in AGE 771, and would only marry in AGE 778?), but no one cares about that anyway. And at least both Kuririn and Android 18 would get a lot more attention.

It's not like Movie 14 even felt like they were throwing a party, by the way. They were just there, together... And we already got that in Tarble OVA. I imagine we would get a proper wedding if it was such setting instead.

But we're still stuck with Bulma showing up where she is not needed and where it doesn't make sense... Bulma everywhere.

[WittyUsername]

Just so we’re clear, I never claimed that BoG was made because of DBE. I specifically said that Toei’s version of the movie would’ve been very different from the movie we ended up getting, but regardless, I still acknowledged that it would’ve been made. It just doesn’t strike me as something that would’ve launched a new series. Again, Toei’s concept for the movie seems like it would’ve only really worked as a one-off.

[Shintoki]

The most interesting thing about all that would be Kuririn and Android 18's wedding. Maybe it wouldn't make a lot of sense given the time period (they got together at some point after AGE 767, they had Marron in AGE 771, and would only marry in AGE 778?), but no one cares about that anyway. And at least both Kuririn and Android 18 would get a lot more attention.

It's not like Movie 14 even felt like they were throwing a party, by the way. They were just there, together... And we already got that in Tarble OVA. I imagine we would get a proper wedding if it was such setting instead.

But we're still stuck with Bulma showing up where she is not needed and where it doesn't make sense... Bulma everywhere.

it's quite interesting that according to toei, kururin and 18 weren't wedded to each other prior to that point in the story? huh

[MasenkoHA]

It’s not unheard of for people to have kids and be a couple and not marry for whatever reason. Kuririn and 18 might want to have waited until after they were no longer living rent free at Kame House

[WittyUsername]

I think it would’ve made a lot more sense for it to be Gohan and Videl’s wedding, but it doesn’t really matter, because the wedding idea wasn’t in the finished movie.

[Grimlock]

it's quite interesting that according to toei, kururin and 18 weren't wedded to each other prior to that point in the story? huh

Yeah, but at least it wouldn't cause any problem to the timeline, as Bulma's supposed "38 years old" causes (and it gets worse considering people place Movie 14 in August...).

And as mentioned, Gohan and Videl's wedding would also be a better option (because we do have an image, so we know it happened).

[JulieYBM]

They would've been too afraid to have Videl be pregnant out of wedlock while also having their cake of alluding to Pan and being a post-Super Saiyan 3 story.

Anyway, I'd love to see Tomioka Atsuhiro and a good director from Toei come up with a story for a series. Bandai and Shueisha executives trying to shill new merchandise would inevitably be an issue but I do think that Super Dragon Ball Heroes has potential as a series so I would love to see it fleshed out.

[Koitsukai]

They would've been too afraid to have Videl be pregnant out of wedlock while also having their cake of alluding to Pan and being a post-Super Saiyan 3 story.

I thought the same thing. Why would they not do something as conservative? because they were doing something even more conservative.