As teased last month in the November 2024 issue, Toyotarō contributed a 32-page (one color title page and 31 black-and-white content pages) one-shot manga — in support of the forthcoming Dragon Ball Super Divers card-based arcade game in Japan — to this week’s December 2024 issue of Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine (released 21 October 2024).
The story — simply titled “Dragon Ball Super Divers” as-is from the source game name — is a condensed run-through of the battle against Nappa and Vegeta. A Super Divers avatar character fights alongside the heroes, having been sent into the game world through a capsule game system by Trunks. Yamcha, Tenshinhan, Piccolo, and Kuririn all rush in to fight the Saibaimen, but the fight roughly continues as it did in the original series with one of them grabbing onto Yamcha and exploding. Even with Goku already on the the battlefield, the avatar character tells Goku to save his strength, and the battle resumes with Nappa attacking Tenshinhan and killing Piccolo. The avatar character rescues Gohan from Nappa’s foot stomp, and proceeds to distract him with a Kienzan before taking him out point-blank with a blast, overpowering Nappa’s own mouth blast. Vegeta takes to the skies to unleash his Gyallic-Hō, but Goku and the avatar character power-up their own Kamehameha in response. The two power-up from a 3x to a 4x Kaiō-Ken, finally overwhelming and defeating Vegeta. It’s a “K.O.”… and the player awakens back in the real world, stepping outside of the capsule gaming system. A young woman welcomes him back, saying that Freeza is up next, and the enemies only get stronger from here on out. The player is ready to take them all on!
Toyotarō’s previous work was the Dragon Ball Super manga, which has been on hiatus since March 2024 with the release of its 103rd chapter. Each issue of V-Jump since then continues to include a tiny blurb toward the back saying it will be on hiatus the following issue — this remains true even as of this December 2024 issue. No concrete word on the series’ possible return has been announced.
While other artists such as Yoshitaka Nagayama and Yūji Kasai have contributed manga adaptations of Dragon Ball video games before (primarily in Shueisha’s Saikyō Jump magazine), Toyotarō contributed a special one-shot manga for Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 alongside the game’s launch back in October 2016. In Japan, the chapter was included within the game’s guide book, while internationally the chapter was included within a special “Time Patroller’s Guide” booklet accompanying the game’s Collector’s Edition.
Kasai is set to begin serialization with a new series — Dragon Ball Super Divers: Let’s Super Dive!! — beginning next week in the December 2024 issue of Saikyō Jump.
Dragon Ball Super Divers is a forthcoming physical and digital card-based arcade game, effectively replacing the existing Dragon Ball Heroes run from the last 13 years. Super Divers was announced last May and launches next month.
