This weekend’s Jump Festa event included various Super Dragon Ball Heroes game reveals during the franchise’s stage presentation yesterday (beyond a continuation of the Super Dragon Ball Heroes promotional anime, no additional story projects were formally announced). While this particular stage presentation was not live streamed, Twitter user @SaikyoDevin provided video with comments from Akira Toriyama and Toyotarō, which have been translated below:
Akira Toriyama:
Hello, everyone. This is Akira Toriyama. I really should be greeting you in person here, but since I’m not fond of standing out on stage, please excuse me for sending these comments. My apologies, Nozawa-san. I always appreciate your assistance.
The movie Dragon Ball Super: Broly has started screening. This marks the third animated film I’ve been involved with in earnest. Back when I was doing the comic in serialization, I was so busy that I was complete hands-off with the animated version, but perhaps because I’ve gotten to have more free time now, before I knew it, I got roped into the rough world of animation production. Although, having said that, all I did was come up with the story, dialogue, and designs; the ones who really had it rough were all the staff members charged with turning it into a single movie. Thanks to them, the movie looks to be a hit.
The character Broli has apparently been popular since way back when, so if the movie weren’t well-received now, it would have been because the story I wrote was no good, so I’m a bit relieved. Even so, as I think those of you who have seen it already know, those battle scenes done by Toei Animation were amazing. For someone like me, just watching it was exhausting.
To all boys, adult men with the hearts of boys, and the perhaps-few-in-number women who understand the hearts of boys, by all means please see the movie and get fired up. For me personally, the work Dragon Ball is nothing but fighting, which to be perfectly frank, isn’t something I like all that much (laughs), but for some reason, it’s this really fun, mysterious work that gets me excited when I’m coming up with a story. Like that, I’m now an old geezer through and through, but I’m also coming up with ideas for my next work. Let’s meet again sometime in my next work.
—Akira Toriyama
It is worth noting that the official @shonenjump Twitter account posted their own “super duper rough translation” during the event, in which some of the nuance is lost:
Toyotarō:
At last, the “Galactic Patrol Prisoner arc” has begun! It’s a story that takes place after the Broli movie. Naturally, it’s a completely new work that hasn’t been animated, and can’t be read except as a comic. The prisoner Moro, who has been locked away in the Galactic Penitentiary for 10 million years, has escaped. Will Goku and Vegeta, who have become Galactic Patrolmen, along with the Elite Patrolman Merusu, be able to capture Moro once more?!
For the “Galactic Patrol Prisoner arc”, I’m tag-teaming with Toriyama-sensei, producing it to great acclaim! I’d like it to be an enjoyable story that can give you all excitement and suspense, so by all means, please look forward to it.
—Toyotarō
In the comment, 絶賛〇〇中 is a standard phrase people use whether something is being done to great acclaim, or just want it to be; in this case, the intended meaning is not quite clear. Toyotarō noted having received praise for the new story in a comment in a supplemental Saikyō Jump booklet earlier this month.
The Dragon Ball Super television series concluded in March 2018 with 131 total episodes. FUNimation owns the American distribution license for the series, with the English dub airing on Cartoon Network, and the home video release reaching its fifth box set last month. The story, script, and character designs for the Dragon Ball Super: Broly theatrical film, which opened nationwide in Japan 14 December 2018 in 2D, IMAX, and MX4D, is crafted by original manga author Akira Toriyama. The film is directed by Tatsuya Nagamine, and features animation supervision by Naohiro Shintani along with art direction by Kazuo Ogura. The film will receive international distribution following its Japanese debut. A world premiere was held 14 November 2018 at Nippon Budōkan with special guests including Masako Nozawa, Ryō Horikawa, Ryūsei Nakao, Bin Shimada, Katsuhisa Hoki, Tatsuya Nagamine, and Daichi Miura.
The Dragon Ball Super “comicalization” began in June 2015, initially just ahead of the television series, and running both ahead and behind the series at various points. The manga runs monthly in Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine, with the series’ forty-third chapter coming earlier this week in the magazine’s February 2019 issue. Illustrated by “Toyotarō” (in all likelihood, a second pen-name used by Dragon Ball AF fan manga author and illustrator “Toyble”), the Dragon Ball Super manga covered the Battle of Gods re-telling, skipped the Resurrection ‘F’ re-telling, and “charged ahead” to the Champa arc for further promotion. Though the television series has completed its run, the manga continues onward telling its own version of the existing story, now entering its own original “Galactic Patrol Prisoner” arc. Viz is currently releasing free digital chapters of the series, and began their own collected print edition early last year. The fourth collected volume is due in English from Viz this coming January, while Shueisha released the eighth collected volume in Japan this month.
