The weird thing about some of the back stories is that not only are they not in the film itself that they're tied to, but often they're not even in the film's respective theatrical pamphlet. For example,
- All of the henchmen in DBZ movie 3 have extensive back stories (like Amond being a criminal captured by the galactic police force)... but they're not in the film, but instead in the theatrical pamphlet as well as the Akira Toriyama - The World SPECIAL guidebook that accompanied that specific film festival
- The DBZ movie 5 henchmen information (like Thouser being from the same star system as Jheece and knowing a gazillion languages) was published in a Weekly Shonen Jump 1991 #25 column
- The "Hera Clan" stuff from DBZ movie 9 begins with an off-hand comment during the story mode of Super Butoden 2, a couple mentions in things like the game's strategy guide and V-Jump coverage, and then uncited remarks in later guidebooks
We've really had to scrounge up this stuff over the years (decades!), and a lot of that was trying to independently corroborate non-specific citations on Japanese Wikipedia (by... uhh... just buying every magazine we can). I'm also occasionally
still finding something new (or, rather, perhaps just new to me?).
For the movie characters that
aren't specifically cited to have been initially designed by Toriyama, we can likely attribute their design to the film's overall character designer and/or animation supervisor (so perhaps Minoru Maeda in this case with Garlic Jr.; worth noting that while Garlic himself isn't called out by name,
this "Golden Warrior" interview does note Maeda designed characters for filler and movies).
Pretty much everything that we know of Toriyama doing for the TV series and films (pre-
Super) is covered (and translated, where appropriate) over in our "
Toriyama's Contributions to the Anime" sub-guide within the "
Animation Production Guide" here on
Kanzenshuu.
:: [| Mike "VegettoEX" LaBrie |] ::
:: [|
Kanzenshuu - Co-Founder/Administrator, Podcast Host, News Manager
(note: our "job" titles are arbitrary and meaningless) |] ::
:: [| Website: January 1998 |] :: [| Podcast: November 2005 |] :: [| Fusion: April 2012 |] :: [| Wiki: April 2026 |] ::
