I was at Comicon Napoli and got to watch Kazuhiko Torishima being interviewed.

[The Dark Knight]

He specifically said even brilliant creators like Toriyama still need strong external push back and a critical editorial eye, something he feels was missing because the current staff tended to idolize Toriyama instead of challenging him.

This right here explains every single issue with Toriyama's modern Dragon Ball stories; the guy never had a second pair of eyes to go through and correct/improve them. The Star Wars prequels suffered from a similar issue of the people around George Lucas being too afraid to speak up against what he was doing at the time as a result of the original trilogy being so successful and beloved. Toriyama may have been the name that was front and center, but the people around him were just as responsible for Dragon Ball's success, be it his editors at Jump or the people who worked on the anime. They weren't afraid to demand changes where changes needed to be made (his editors), nor were they afraid to make changes themselves where they felt the story wasn't coming together (the anime's producers). Over the past decade and a half however, Toriyama was surrounded by yes-men; people who questioned nothing he wrote and treated it as some holy document, even though the vast majority of it would've been completely rejected back in the day when he was writing the original manga. Toriyama is the kind of artist who can only shine when he has a support system around him, but unfortunately, his reputation as this legendary mangaka ensured that no one would be willing to step into that role in the modern day.

[angeldreamZ004]

As usual from Torishima, can't avoid being controversial, and personally, makes me laugh because of how honest he is lol. Thank you for sharing this Izanagi.

Well, there are many things that he clearly just expressed as his own opinion, so there isn't much to discuss when it comes to veracity. But there are still some interesting things to talk about. Some I agree, some I disagree. Some I understand, some I do not understand.

When DB ended, the manga industry crashed down. According to him, GT was made because otherwise half the industry would lose their jobs.

This one, I think it's not the first time I hear this, or something similar. I remember hearing this a few years ago in some kind of a “Dragon Ball Myths Iceberg” where the Youtuber said that it just didn't make any sense. It does sound very sensationalist to me, but I tried to research that, and I saw this myth about Dragon Ball's end affecting the entirety of Japan's economy, which is indeed crazy and very unlikely to be true. So only “manga industry” may be indeed true, though I believe it was mostly for Shueisha only, and I'm not so sure that was the only reason GT was made.

Battle of Gods came out due to a promise Torishima made to his dying best friend: "If I somehow survive, let's make a Dragon Ball movie."

Well this indeed connects to an interview Toriyama did where he said that Torishima was the one who showed him the script for the movie in 2011. So indeed Torishima helped more than I thought when it comes to the series’ revival. He only forgot to consider that Toriyama also got involved because he hated Evolution lol.

On the subject of Dragon Ball Daima, Torishima made it no secret to express his disdain and said: "Daima is shit. Everyone at Toei hates me. Daima betrays Dragon Ball; it's slow, stupid and the first episode is useless. I have no idea how it was approved in the first place."

This one is still making me laugh lol what exactly he meant with “Everyone at Toei hates me”??? I guess he was just being ironic as if Toei made Daima solely to offend him given how much he hated it, I doubt he meant it literally, unless he tried to get involved in Daima but a “leave us alone you old bastard” situation happened.

Well, Toriyama was highly involved in Daima, so I wonder if he's also included in one of those who “hate him” and “betrayed Dragon Ball” lol. Still, made me laugh a lot, my bad.

- He says the big difference between OP and DB is that Oda is too in love with manga and his own story, while Toriyama hated drawing manga.
- According to Torishima, Toriyama hated manga, so he made them as synthetized as possible.

Okay in regards to him believing that Toriyama didn't love manga and his own story, but Toriyama hating drawing manga? Maybe he exaggerated lol, I only know that Toriyama didn't like to draw certain aspects, such as the Saiyajin tails, and the black ink for the characters’ hairs, which connects to the classic story of the creation of the SSJ.
Couldn't find any info on Toriyama hating to draw manga, if it were true, I highly doubt we would've seen some of the alternate one shot mangas he did during the serialization of Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball, and of course, the mangas he did after Dragon Ball ended, like Neko Majin, Sand Land, Jaco, etc. So was this really a man who hated drawing manga? I don't think so.

- Torishima thinks modern manga has two problems: 1.) Manga is written by adults for adults, making them too wordy and unappealing to kids.

I don't think Adult manga creators making manga for adults is a problem, different demographics exist, but when it comes to a series like Dragon Ball, maybe I agree, I don't think I can imagine my younger self enjoying the Super manga, at least not that much when I also try to imagine my younger self enjoying the original DB manga. I highly respect Toyotaro's work but I think he makes the Super manga more complex than it should, not allowing the art to shine and talk for itself as it should when compared to Toriyama's old manga, maybe even Toriyama himself was involved in this.

- He says this cycle must stop because if kids aren't reading today, there won't be mangaka tomorrow.

I agree but I think it also applies to many other sectors especially the artistic ones, thanks to stuff like AI and short content.

- Torishima thinks only Japanese people can make manga.

Agree 99% here and I don't think there's any problem with this opinion nor I think it's "racist" or anything.
I do think the western people can create comics that are as good as manga, but I agree that indeed only Japanese people can create manga. There are people in the west who make comics and like to call them “manga” which is something I really don't like, they're free to do it but I dislike it, manga is manga because it's japanese, it's like calling the Avatar cartoon an anime, which I also disagree with. If I made a comic with anime / manga art style I would not dare to call it manga, it's not the same regardless of quality, Japanese art is Japanese. But that's just me.

- Torishima told the interviewer about a "secret announcement" that he can't disclose yet.

Hmmmm let's wait, I doubt it's Dragon Ball related though. I would like for it to be some kind of collaboration with Toyotaro.

- Finally, when Toriyama died, Torishima felt the need to come out of retirement and tell the world about his late friend and Dragon Ball. This is why he started going to conventions more often.

How cute. Despite how controversial his figure is, I do think his heart is at the right place.

I just think he should elaborate more on his criticism. It sounds to me like someone who acts more on emotion, criticizing impulsively rather than thinking and analyzing carefully before making a statement, because he's too vague most of the time, to the point that many might think he's just another old guy saying "things were better in my day.”

I also think he needs to be more considerate with Toyotaro, It's fine if he dislikes Super or what Toyo does, but there's a strong emotional side where he'll still need to prove himself without Toriyama on his side, and he'll need to carry the weight of one of the most important franchises of all time, that's insane because he's formerly just a fan like us, it also adds a lot how many people talk poorly about his art. Delivering 40 pages every month with the art he does is just not easy. The Moro arc very likely made him anxious, and similar to Toriyama, he's not someone who appears in public very often like you do Mr. Torishima, so we don't know what's going on in the head of someone who's shy like him, especially in the current scenario where his master is gone, only he knows it.

So I hope Torishima tries to understand Toyotaro's side more in case something between the two happens in the future. I'm not saying he shouldn't be honest, but that he needs to better understand the current situation of the series and Toyotaro, and how it's much more complex than what he addresses in his podcast or public appearances, that would help us to understand more his side, similarly to how a lot of people agreed with him when he criticized the Dragon Ball Store. I don't believe he purely thinks about the “money money” side, I do see an artistic side to his criticism as well, an example was when he criticized the cover art for DBS Volume 24, which I disagree with, but I do understand his point. So I think his latest criticisms of Toyo were more nuanced and elaborate compared to some of his older ones, which sounded just like insults, so empty and funny to me, so I think he's maybe on the right track, maybe he's very worried but is still not expressing it so much.

On Daima, he wasn't just stumbling into criticism. He specifically said even brilliant creators like Toriyama still need strong external pushback and a critical editorial eye, something he feels was missing because the current staff tended to idolize Toriyama instead of challenging him.

I don't know if this is part of the same interview or not, but thank you for sharing it as well. I do agree with him and actually it does connect to something I read recently about someone from the production saying “If Toriyama wants it this way, then we might do this way”, I just can't remember where it was, if it was an interview for one of the movies or what, found it on the Kanzenshuu site if I'm not mistaken.

He hated how Toei handled the Piccolo Daimao fight. The team was the same one from Dr. Slump who are great at comedy but sucks at fight scenes. This was one of the low points.

I've read this before and I honestly don't get it; I wish he would elaborate more on what he didn't like. The only scene I didn't like was how slow Goku was going up after firing the Kamehameha from his one arm before going through Piccolo.

I really dont get what was wrong with the Piccolo Daimao fight, especially the episode he dies. I dont get what was so comedic that he hated it? The only thing bad or cutesy about it was some of the music after he died. But otherwise the Daimao was extremely bleak in the anime, it wasnt the cutesy Dr Slump laugh fest he insists it was. The only thing that changed was that Z was a bit less prone to Dr Slump esque humor but it still had humor and cutesy music.

I still don't understand his qualms with the Goku killing Piccolo scene from the original; it isn't portrayed as comedic in the slightest, though you might be able to construe that his problems were less with intentional comedy and more unintentional? The scene, as is wont for the series, is stretched out (though not to the point of tedium) and I could see how the cuts between two yelling characters as they near each other could come off as dopey.

I personally think you guys missed the point of what exactly he meant. He's not talking about comedy but the way the fight looked, and honestly, I kinda agree with him, It could've been a lot better. I don't hate Goku's fight against Daimao in the anime nor I think it's terrible, but if you compare to some previous fights in the anime, such as Goku vs Tao Pai Pai and some of the fights in the Tenshinhan arc, you'll understand what exactly he's talking about. Especially because some of the previous fights in the anime were handled by studios that usually did episodes with very good art and animation, part of Kid Goku vs Tenshinhan even had Nakatsuru involved.
Both of Goku's fights against Daimao (Old and Younger) were made by middle to low quality studios at best, if I'm not mistaken, both fights had a huge part of them dedicated to Studio Last House, which is not very well received inside the animation part of the fanbase, with the exception of one animator who was able to make some incredible animated scenes under that cartoonish and cheap art style from Uchiyama, he was involved in the Meteor Combination scene if I'm not wrong. Maybe the best parts of Goku vs Daimao in the anime were animated by this animator (can't remember his name, sorry)
So it makes sense why he even says “the team was the same from Dr. Slump and they suck at fight scenes”, most of Last House's work just isn't impactful from an animation perspective and they very often lack fluidity, most of the fights handled by them are especially slow, giving a very “robotic” feel to them, it's at least the way I remember their work when compared to other studios throughout DB-Z-GT.

Because of that mess, they decided to rebrand the franchise with Dragon Ball Z and bring in a new team.
The team who worked on Z is the same one that worked on Saint Seiya.

This part indeed does sound confusing though. Maybe because he didn't mean that the “new team” was brought alongside the new series, but prior to it, which makes sense as indeed things get a notorious improvement from the animations side in the Piccolo Junior arc. I remember most of the fights in that arc being very well done, especially Goku vs Tenshinhan and Goku vs Majunior.

But as far as I remember, most, if not, all of those who worked in the Piccolo Junior arc and even at the beginning of Z were already recurring studios present in the anime prior to the Daimao arc, so nothing really changed, even Studio Last House was still there in Z from start to finish, and in GT the Last House episodes are literally the very few ones where you can notice how off-model the characters look.
So I don't really get what he meant from this perspective, so he's most likely referring to a change inside Toei at the time where new people took over and handled the animation studios better, that's why he mentioned the Saint Seiya staff also working on Z. But again, I think the changes already happened back in the Piccolo Jr arc, that arc already has the quality of the top Z fights, at least in my opinion.

This right here explains every single issue with Toriyama's modern Dragon Ball stories; the guy never had a second pair of eyes to go through and correct/improve them. The Star Wars prequels suffered from a similar issue of the people around George Lucas being too afraid to speak up against what he was doing at the time as a result of the original trilogy being so successful and beloved. Toriyama may have been the name that was front and center, but the people around him were just as responsible for Dragon Ball's success, be it his editors at Jump or the people who worked on the anime. They weren't afraid to demand changes where changes needed to be made (his editors), nor were they afraid to make changes themselves where they felt the story wasn't coming together (the anime's producers). Over the past decade and a half however, Toriyama was surrounded by yes-men; people who questioned nothing he wrote and treated it as some holy document, even though the vast majority of it would've been completely rejected back in the day when he was writing the original manga. Toriyama is the kind of artist who can only shine when he has a support system around him, but unfortunately, his reputation as this legendary mangaka ensured that no one would be willing to step into that role in the modern day.

It's a bit more complex than that. We need to understand the side of the “yes-men”.

Like, I don't know much about Star Wars, but as far as I know, even though it has its similarities, the differences are huge as well. For the last decade, Star Wars has seen nothing but a continuous decline, it has kept its popularity of course, it's one of the top most important franchises in Cinema history. But it just wasn't enough to keep the steam and bring in a new public to follow and stay with it. The costs for each movie in the sequel trilogy were too high, and the studio didn't see the box office getting any higher each movie they released, one of the spin-offs was a complete failure, Sequel Trilogy started the first movie performing 4x more than its costs, while it ended with a movie that performed only the double of its costs, which were nearly 600 million, insane. Then there are the Disney+ shows which I just heard many times of how people stopped caring about them every time they released a new one. I also heard about them getting poorer and poorer, though maybe I would have to watch them to notice the decline in quality by myself. And the first movie they are releasing after 7 years, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is coming with low expectations. Though I personally would take it easy with that one, it's not a main series movie, but a spin off that serves as a sequel to a show-only story, the one that became more popular on Disney +, but doesn't guarantee the same success or hype as a mainline movie.

And I'm not even considering here how controversial this modern Star Wars content is, because the things I hear, hehe, oh boy. I'm talking about the revenue part only, things aren't good for that franchise financially and can strongly compromise the health of the belief system that keeps it as something popular, legendary, successful, from both an audience and studio perspective.

Dragon Ball is the opposite of that scenario. When Toei and Shueisha tried to make GT, they tried without Toriyama. GT didn't work out, very unpopular in its home country which was what determined the continuation of the series at that time prior to the Internationalization of the franchise. I think this was enough for them to think something like “Dragon Ball without Toriyama = failure”, especially given how we got a whole decade without a new series.
Then there was Battle of Gods which started as a Toei / Shuisha solo project, but then Toriyama got involved, making the movie into a success, then there's Fukkatsu no F, which I think is just a cheap trimmed rip-off of the Freeza saga, and was a higher success. Then Super comes out with that godly quality it had at the beginning, but it gets higher and higher each arc, until it exploded with the ToP which literally was a worldwide phenomenon. Then later there's Broly which was the most successful movie. All this also followed by an improvement in quality )at least from the visual part). Okay you can talk about Super Hero, but remember, that was a CGI movie where Piccolo and Gohan were the main protagonists, not Goku and Vegeta. And still, managed to get close to Broly's success, in a time where there was no new DB anime for 4 years.

Daima, despite many people thinking it had a barebones story, and not performing as much as Super, was still a big success and that is also followed by the fact that it's the most well produced Dragon Ball anime ever. And this wasn't even the anime people weren't expecting, people at the time wanted Super to continue.
In the manga, of course it won't be seen as one of the top sellers, but remember that it has been on hiatus for 2 years, releasing only a special chapter in early 2025 and throughout the entirety of 2023, it covered an arc that was already seen in a movie. So a fair comparison with other manga would be at the middle of 2022, and whenever I try looking up at the top manga sales from the first half of 2022, DBS is always there in the top 10 or at least the top 15.
All of these had one thing in common: Toriyama was involved, and once he got involved, they saw the success coming, they saw what they couldn't achieve alone with GT.
That's why they gave this divine treatment to Toriyama, everything he touched became gold for them, guarantee of success, even projects with lower expectations such as an anime that wasn't a sequel to Super and everyone became kids, and a movie where Goku and Vegeta were barely present, they became a success as well, so for them, this translates to “if there's Toriyama involved, it will work”, there's a reason why DBS The Galactic Patrol is marketed by only using Toriyama's name, not Toyotaro, they never saw a success with this guy where he worked “alone” in the same way Toriyama did in multiple projects, so there's no reason to put his name in the marketing (i'm very respectful in regards to Toyotaro, I'm talking about a corporate perspective here), Toriyama was different so they allowed him to have this status by looking at his results in the modern era.

It's a return to the franchise that had its good side, it helped them, it shone for a decade. But it had its bad side as well, and we might still see that bad side shining starting from 2027 or at some point in the future, we see some signs, with Capsule Corp Tokyo and Shueisha relying too much on Toriyama's name, giving no space for Toyotaro's name to grow. Can create something problematic in the future. The manga with Toyotaro is the most fragile side now, while the animation part is safe at least for the next 7 years as they still have some stories made by Toriyama to tell.

That's why I wish Toyotaro the best of luck, maybe we can see as a good thing that he's actually close to what Toriyama was in the 80 / 90's, where he wasn't a “god”, and other people could help him shape the series more effectively. But I personally think Toyo and the manga now are the weakest part of the IP, not because of lack of effort, far from that, but because of how little attention its given, you'll see CCT and Shueisha promoting the Toriyama stuff like crazy, but barely anything by Toyotaro except for a very few figures based on his art, I don't see much support to him, but the other sectors, very different.

Because damn, even the other sectors are a success, yes, in the videogames, you'll see some flops here and there like The Breakers, but they are the exception and not the rule. Xenoverse 2 will only stop receiving DLCs after 10 years, and this is to give place to Xenoverse 3 (Toriyama involved), Kakarot is like, one of the most live streamed modern casual video games ever. Sparking Zero despite its problems was a success and it's getting updated and improved. Mobile gachas are performing well too, Heroes card game took more than a decade to end and was also to give place to a new card game.

I'm personally surprised how Shueisha, Toei, Bandai, these companies aren't as greedy as they could be when it comes to this franchise, I do feel that they are caring more about quality now. But Toyotaro and the manga are truly a mystery. They do give him some credits here and there, but it's almost nothing.

If Torishima plans to get involved with Toyotaro, I really hope he does help him positively in some way.

[kiarasuraru]

Nothing but truth nukes left and right. God, I love Torishima so much its unreal.

That he doesn't think there's a single good manga today is a bit extreme but I can get the sentiment. That said, I have no idea what he's on about Hirayasumi though. I dropped it when it became the typical dragged on romcom love triangle drama. I can't believe my GOAT missed like that...
The Kakashi and Pain stuff I find super funny since those two are sentiments people have echoed for years and years. Feels so weird to see it coming from someone higher-up.

The problem with Torishima's remarks in regards to 'modern manga' is that it just comes across as him viewing commercial art through that commercial lens and not through an artistic one. He worked in selling magazines for kids and he had his own restrictive view on how that would operate. It basically invalidates his views, especially given the broad wording used to describe these points.

Nah. Torishima is a rare person with both business sense and creative integrity.
I mean, that's the whole point of the whole him hating how the DB anime was being made. To this eyes, the work was not being properly portrayed.
One of my biggest shocks was finding out how he actually had a hand on DQ's creation. He actually worked things out so that Horii kept the IP to himself because otherwise Shueisha would fuck up things up. He wanted Horii to have full creative control, not the suits bossing around. DQ as we know it would literally not exist without Torishima. And not just because he got Toriyama on board to draw for it.

And let's be honest. At the end of the day, no matter how much people love to pretend otherwise. All of this shit is a business. Art for art's sake doesn't put meals on the table. It's all inextricably intertwined.

I get where you're coming from. Torishima speaks from a very commercial/editorial perspective shaped by decades at Weekly Shonen Jump. To him, manga is a means to an end and his job was to sell magazines to kids every week, so his lens is inherently market-driven rather than purely artistic. That said, I don't think Torishima treats it purely as a disposable tool for profit or jobs. If anything, he comes across as a very pragmatic, results-oriented editor with a deep (if sometimes blunt and cynical) investment in the craft and long-term health of manga as a popular medium, especially for kids. I also don't think it completely invalidates his observations, especially on the Dragon Ball stuff he was directly involved in.

You got it.
One thing doesn't invalidate the other.

He specifically said even brilliant creators like Toriyama still need strong external pushback and a critical editorial eye, something he feels was missing because the current staff tended to idolize Toriyama instead of challenging him.

Same thing that's happening with Oda right now.
With Toriyama it must have been a million times worse. Oda is one thing but THE Toriyama must have been on another level. Furthermore, unlike with Oda who you can tell is still invested heavily in OP, Toriyama was truly well and over and past Dragon Ball so he was just kinda going in with the flow, taking in on people's suggestions on what to do, working out something here and there, and letting everyone else fill in the gaps. The same issue from a different direction. No one would have the balls to hover over Toriyama's shoulders to straighten him up like it happened in the past. With the cherry on top of the cake that the Dragon Ball in Toriyama's head differed from the Dragon Ball from basically the entire rest of the world.
George Lucas Syndrome is a bitch.

That's exactly what i took away from it, too. Making work that sells and has an impact is a combination of strong, compelling creative and approachablity, not simply just making slop that appeals to the lowest common denominator.

Torishima comes from the old school capitalist perspective of "Good work sells itself and there's a tried and true formula to it." It's a chicken-and-egg type of situation that, while I entirely agree with, it's a lot better than today's enshittification approach. But it's the type of thing that the ad industry used to run on, diving into the minds of consumers, figuring out what they like and dislike, insecurities and aspirations and making things that seek directly towards them. "It sells because it's good and it's good because it sells" essentially.

One thing I learned from that is if you work hard on making something great for one place, it tends to work globally. A good example is that with Japanese food, like sushi or ramen, is that we developed that for our tastes. Yet it still works for almost everyone in the world. So long as you have the core part, the essential part, really good then it will work everywhere.

Something Torishima said in a interview once which further adds to what you took away from it.
The man clearly cares about the "craft". He wouldn't be so incensed about things otherwise. If he didn't like it he wouldn't be so disappointed.
If he only cared about the money he wouldn't be pushing for things like this at all. He'd only care about bringing in money money money no matter what with, to use your own words, lowest common denominator slop. Because boy, does that sell a lot.

It helps that while he's extremely negative, he does give credit where credit is due. And while he is a boomer and thus has a lot of "Kids stuff is shit!" opinions he's not entirely bad.

It's super obvious that Torishima is playing up a persona at this point. Not even at this point. ALWAYS. I honestly seriously do not, cannot, comprehend, how so many people are unable to see it.

I've honest to God seen people say that "Toriyama hates him because he turned him into the villain into Dr Slump", obviously always said by someone I can bet you anything hasn't ever read Slump. Like, how? How do you seriously can believe this? How are you seriously unable to see that that was Toriyama fucking with him? Do you even have friends? You've seriously never fucked with your friends like that?

So many people who are butthurt about that one panel with Toyotaro too. Like, c'mon man. You really think that was a impromptu thing that caught everyone with their pants down and everyone was too scared of the mean old Japanese boomer to tell him to stop? You really think that was not a very planned thing where everyone knew what they were getting into and what everyone what their roles were?

It's also really really obvious that if Torishima thinks something is shit, truly fucking shit, with zero redeeming values whatsoever, he wouldn't even bother engaging with it at all in any deeper level. Like, look at how he says Daima is shit, just shit, and nothing else at all. Meanwhile you see him criticizing all sorts of things all the time but then realize half of the criticism is wrapped with "it could be SO much better!" around it.

He's the kind of guy who only does that to something he actually thinks has redeeming values, that he thinks could be so much more, and wants it to reach those heights, will completely rip it to shreds and when you've turned into a blubbering crying mess melting into the floor from seeing how your [thing] got done in like that, he'll start telling you how to go about reaching those heights he can see can be reached.

I would KILL to go through a Torishima humiliation ritual because it means he actually saw a modicum of potential in me.

[Yellow Flower King]

Uuuuuuuh I was defending him, like giving credits where its due like he does too, and that he doesnt just think Shonen manga is good, he read those Shojo manga back when he absolutely hated Shonen Jump manga before he started his revolutionary editorial work in the 70s. I was really positive about him, with some caveats because we all do as human beings.

[Kenji]

"It's just a persona, don't be butthurt about what he's saying."
Everybody wears a mask. There are countless studies detailing how human beings resort to extreme negativity and a "comedian persona" to cover up their own traumas and insecurities, and their inability to communicate like a healthy adult. It doesn't justify their behavior in the slightest, and any secure person would tell you to distance yourself away from them before they take you down to their level.

"It's just a joke, you're too sensitive."
No, what actually happens is that he's just a toxic, insecure old man, and his behavior is unjustifiably shitty. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[jjgp1112]

Snip

I was agreeing with you lol

[Yellow Flower King]

I agree with kiarasuraru but I agree wtih the above post that they see disagreement or criticism/negativity where there isnt any.

[jjgp1112]

"It's just a persona, don't be butthurt about what he's saying."
Everybody wears a mask. There are countless studies detailing how human beings resort to extreme negativity and a "comedian persona" to cover up their own traumas and insecurities, and their inability to communicate like a healthy adult. It doesn't justify their behavior in the slightest, and any secure person would tell you to distance yourself away from them before they take you down to their level.

"It's just a joke, you're too sensitive."
No, what actually happens is that he's just a toxic, insecure old man, and his behavior is unjustifiably shitty. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Youre taking this too seriously, meethinks

[kiarasuraru]

Snip

I was agreeing with you lol

Uuuuuuuh I was defending him, like giving credits where its due like he does too, and that he doesnt just think Shonen manga is good, he read those Shojo manga back when he absolutely hated Shonen Jump manga before he started his revolutionary editorial work in the 70s. I was really positive about him, with some caveats because we all do as human beings.

Oh, I was not arguing or disagreeing with you two lmao
Just went on about other things jumping from things you guys said.

"It's just a persona, don't be butthurt about what he's saying."
Everybody wears a mask. There are countless studies detailing how human beings resort to extreme negativity and a "comedian persona" to cover up their own traumas and insecurities, and their inability to communicate like a healthy adult. It doesn't justify their behavior in the slightest, and any secure person would tell you to distance yourself away from them before they take you down to their level.

"It's just a joke, you're too sensitive."
No, what actually happens is that he's just a toxic, insecure old man, and his behavior is unjustifiably shitty. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You seem to be taking this pretty personally. Are you sure you are just not projecting?

[Kenji]

You seem to be taking this pretty personally. Are you sure you are just not projecting?

Possibly.
I'll just say I had a number of experiences with shitty men in real life and I don't take the "it's just a joke/persona" excuse lightly and leave it at that.

[SHINOBI-03]

Torishima still lives in his "Old Man Yells at Clouds" phase.

And the worst part is the crowd that already hating on the "modern stuff" would look at his word and take it as gospel.

Forget Hayao Miyazaki. Torishima should be the new face for the "Anime Was a Mistake" meme from now on.

[Yellow Flower King]

There is a major Twitter controversy that some of these statements are being misquoted or mistranslated and a push for a more official and true translation. This looks like a job for Kanzenshuu!

[Jord]

He specifically said even brilliant creators like Toriyama still need strong external push back and a critical editorial eye, something he feels was missing because the current staff tended to idolize Toriyama instead of challenging him.

This right here explains every single issue with Toriyama's modern Dragon Ball stories; the guy never had a second pair of eyes to go through and correct/improve them. The Star Wars prequels suffered from a similar issue of the people around George Lucas being too afraid to speak up against what he was doing at the time as a result of the original trilogy being so successful and beloved. Toriyama may have been the name that was front and center, but the people around him were just as responsible for Dragon Ball's success, be it his editors at Jump or the people who worked on the anime. They weren't afraid to demand changes where changes needed to be made (his editors), nor were they afraid to make changes themselves where they felt the story wasn't coming together (the anime's producers). Over the past decade and a half however, Toriyama was surrounded by yes-men; people who questioned nothing he wrote and treated it as some holy document, even though the vast majority of it would've been completely rejected back in the day when he was writing the original manga. Toriyama is the kind of artist who can only shine when he has a support system around him, but unfortunately, his reputation as this legendary mangaka ensured that no one would be willing to step into that role in the modern day.

I really wonder how the staff reacted to his "new" designs

-"SSGSS looks like SSJ, but I made his hair BLUE!!"
-"This new form of Freeza...has different colors because he trained for a few months!"
-"Ultra instinct looks like regular Goku but his hair is WHITE!"
-"MY SSJ4 has.....BIG HANDS!"
-"This version of Cell.....is RED!"

The staff (probably):
"Wonderful, no one can do designs like Toriyama-sama!"

Not to mention writing stuff like "Goku defeats the bad guy by pressing a button on a remote, to summon someone that erases the bad guy" or "Freeza beats Vegeta and Goku.....only for a magical being to rewind time and let Goku try again and win."

Some of the best stuff in DBZ came from getting pushback from his editors, like dropping the early versions of the androids early. Battle of Gods was quite good, but Super is a prime example of either getting no pushback or not caring.

[The Dark Knight]

Super is a prime example of either getting no pushback or not caring.

The biggest issue I have with the current era of Dragon Ball is that I feel like I'm watching a merchandise commercial first, then a story second. In the original run, whether we're talking about DB, Z, GT, or the movies, I never once felt like I was watching a toy or card commercial, as the stories and characters were always prioritized above everything else.

[VegettoEX]

There is a major Twitter controversy that some of these statements are being misquoted or mistranslated and a push for a more official and true translation. This looks like a job for Kanzenshuu!

Without an actual original recording of what Torishima said in Japanese, this is impossible.

If "they" (Torishima, Shueisha, friends, et. al) are consistently and repeatedly so concerned about what Torishima is saying on public international stages, maybe they should either (1) have him stop saying things on public international stages, or (2) provide their own transcriptions with corresponding translations.

This analysis is nothing new out of me, but it sure sounds like someone who's never gotten media training, has a team that's never gotten media training, and the lot of them continue to misunderstand the global scale that this franchise and their statements are on.

(That all said: I don't disagree with most of what he's reportedly saying.)

[Yellow Flower King]

Me neither sans some of the more old man yells at cloud statements.