The official Dragon Ball website’s seventy-fourth entry in “The Nearly Complete Works of Akira Toriyama” — an on-going series highlighting rare and important pieces of the author’s work over the years — is a piece of artwork and its accompanying message created for the Dragon Ball Kai premiere at the Tokyo International Anime Fair in March 2009:

I wonder how the Dragon Ball anime will be improved in 2009? I’m looking forward to it!
– Akira Toriyama

The piece was recently reprinted in 2013’s Super Art Collection.

The Dragon Ball Kai television series — released internationally as Dragon Ball Z Kai — took the original 1989-1995 Dragon Ball Z television series footage, remastered, and condensed it down for new broadcast and distribution in 2009. The Saiyan, Freeza, and Cell arcs were reduced from 199 to 98 episodes over the course of 2009-2011, while the Boo arc was split into multiple production versions for domestic vs. international distribution in 2014-2015.

The official Dragon Ball website’s seventy-third entry in “The Nearly Complete Works of Akira Toriyama” — an on-going series highlighting rare and important pieces of the author’s work over the years — is a series of design drafts for the title screen of the Dragon Ball Z television series, which debuted 29 years ago today in Japan (26 April 1989):

It was Toriyama himself that coined the “Z” name for the updated television series, which he explains in the TV anime guide Son Goku Densetsu:

— Rumor has it that you titled it after an energy supplement with “Z” in the name.

Toriyama: That’s not true~. (laughs) “Z” is the last letter of the alphabet, right? Anyhow, from that time, I really already wanted to end the comic, (laughs) so I gave the title a “Z” with the meaning of “that’s all, folks~”. I don’t remember saying a single thing about there being an energy supplement. Rumors can be so wild. (laughs)

Nakatsuru: Did you have any image of something other than the “Z”?

Toriyama: No, I probably didn’t. I myself thought, “they don’t really have to change the title, do they?” but someone from the anime staff demanded it, saying “we want to freshen it up”, so I was just sort of like, “this should be fine”.

The “Animation’s Gleanings” column in the final supplemental Daizenshuu notes that other names under consideration were Dragon Ball: Gohan’s Great Adventure, New Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball 2, Dragon Ball: The Wunderkind [Wandā Bōi], and Dragon Ball ’90.

As Toriyama’s original editor Kazuhiko Torishima recounts in his 2016 interview with Forbes, the name change was a convenient extra alongside additional changes being made on the production side of things:

“All of this was great timing as we had all these staff changes happening in the animation as well. The new anime producer also was very smart and said that if we had a new title, in that Dragon Ball would finish and we’d start a new show, then that meant the anime would get more money for promotion. So we decided to go with the different title and updated characters, with bigger proportions, and we had a meeting for this new title but we couldn’t come up with anything good. I went and asked Toriyama for his input and he answered immediately by saying “Dragon Ball Z”. I asked “why Z?” and he said “because this is last, nothing comes after this.””

The official Dragon Ball website’s seventy-second entry in “The Nearly Complete Works of Akira Toriyama” — an on-going series highlighting rare and important pieces of the author’s work over the years — is Toriyama’s character design for Chaco Yutani, a new character introduced for Tobal 2, released on the original Sony PlayStation 21 years ago today (25 April 1997):

The official website’s write-up includes an original comment from Toriyama during this design period:

ちょっとサービスして、肌の露出をアップしてみた。ポリゴンにすると、さらにムチムチでいい感じすね！

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I upped the amount of skin in the name of fan-service. Once she’s made polygonal, she should be even more nice ‘n’ curvy!

As with games such as Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger, Toriyama contributed character designs for Tobal No.1, a fighting game developed by DreamFactory for Square. Toriyama’s robo-persona — used both as a self-insert character in various series as well as in otherwise “real-life” depictions — first made an appearance as a hidden playable character in Tobal No. 1, requiring the player to complete Udan’s Dungeon in the game’s quest mode. While Tobal No.1 received an American release in 1996, Tobal 2 unfortunately never received an international release.

The official Dragon Ball website’s seventy-first entry in “The Nearly Complete Works of Akira Toriyama” — an on-going series highlighting rare and important pieces of the author’s work over the years — is the illustration used for the cover of the November 2010 issue of Armour Modelling (released 13 October 2010):

The illustration depicts Japanese folklore hero Momotarō along with his dog, monkey, and pheasant companions in a Type 89 medium tank, used by the Imperial Japanese Army for roughly a decade between 1932 to 1942:

The magazine came with FineMolds-branded parts to create a model of said tank:

The official Dragon Ball website’s seventieth entry in “The Nearly Complete Works of Akira Toriyama” — an on-going series highlighting rare and important pieces of the author’s work over the years — is the spine artwork of Arale for the 1980 No. 5-6 double issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump (released 05 January 1980), which contained the two-chapter debut of Dr. Slump:

With the series just beginning and Toriyama was still relatively unknown, Dr. Slump did not receive its own exclusive cover splash until later that year with the 1980 No. 15 issue (released 11 March 1980), which contained the series’ 11th chapter. As was the case for several years, the first issue of a new calendar year featured the various Jump authors on the cover. Though his series does not appear on the cover, this would be Toriyama’s Jump cover debut in a very literal sense.

In his author comment accompanying the chapters, Toriyama — true to form — notes a word from his Nagoya dialect:

Toriyama had not yet begun signing his comments with ＜明＞ (“Akira”), something he would begin the following month alongside Dr. Slump‘s sixth chapter.

Prior to Dr. Slump, Toriyama’s professional publications had included Wonder Island (released 28 November 1978 in the 1978 No. 52 issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump), Wonder Island: Detective Harry’s Big Panic (later called Wonder Island 2, released 27 December 1978 in the Shōnen Jump 25 January 1979 Extra Issue), Today on Hairai Island (released 22 March 1979 in the Shōnen Jump 20 April 1979 Extra Issue), and Gal Detective Tomato (released 20 July 1979 in the Shōnen Jump 15 August 1979 Extra Issue).

The title page from the first chapter of Dr. Slump was previously shared as the 21st entry in this “The Nearly Complete Works of Akira Toriyama” series.