The official Dragon Ball website’s fortieth 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 cover illustration for the April 1995 issue of Shueisha’s V-Jump magazine (released 21 February 1995) featuring the main/titular character from the Super Famicom role-playing game Chrono Trigger.

Released 11 March 1995 in Japan (making this roughly the game’s 23rd anniversary), Chrono Trigger brought together a so-called “Dream Team” of development and artistic visionaries: Hironobu Sakaguchi (creator of the Final Fantasy series), Yūji Horii (creator of the Dragon Quest series), and artist Akira Toriyama (obviously of the Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball franchises, but also a character designer for the Dragon Quest series). While the game did see some musical contributions from Final Fantasy stalwart Nobuo Uematsu, its score was primarily handled by Yasunori Mitsuda, stepping up into such a role for the first time.

The game saw an American release on the Super Nintendo later that year. A Nintendo DS port was released worldwide in late-2008/early-2009, followed by a mobile port in late-2011/early-2012, and most recently a PC release via Steam (ported from the mobile version) last month.

The official Dragon Ball website’s thirty-ninth 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 Truth About the Dragon Ball Manga“, the first of two such Q&A sessions published in 2009’s Super Exciting Guide books. Showcased on the official website are the fourth and fifth pages from this first session.

In this Q&A, Toriyama shares his five favorite battles from the Dragon Ball series, along with the editorial and creative reasons behind the Super Saiyan transformation and the “Kamehameha” attack name.

The Super Exciting Guide books are divided up into two volumes: the “Story Volume” released 04 March 2009 and the “Character Volume” released 03 April 2009. Both volumes contain an interview with Toriyama, and are based on the kanzenban release of the manga, similar to Landmark and Forever a few years prior. As the name suggests, the “Story Volume” focuses heavily on the manga’s story development, including the main battles, training, and of course friendships. The “Character Volume” is very similar to both Daizenshuu 2 and 4, covering the main characters, the Dragon World and its many races, and many of the main techniques used throughout the series.

The official Dragon Ball website’s thirty-eighth 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 inside title page from 1988’s second Akira Toriyama’s _____piece Theatre volume.

I’m crying. Since I don’t get to see my son much, on my days off I fawn over him as though my life depended on it. So I haven’t gotten to ride the motorbike I went and bought even one bit. But the bike is crying even more…

The second Akira Toriyama’s _____piece Theatre compiled Today’s Highlight Island, Escape, Pink, both chapters of Dragon Boy, The Adventure of Tongpoo, Mr. Ho, Kennosuke-sama, and Sonchoh.

Dragon Boy (originally published in the August and October 1983 issues of Fresh Jump) and The Adventure of Tongpoo (originally published in the 1983 No. 52 issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump) both served as stepping-stones toward what would become Dragon Ball in November 1984. Dragon Boy in particular was written in direct response to Toriyama’s editor, Kazuhiko Torishima, telling him to draw a kung-fu comic, with Tongpoo (venturing into space with an otherwise-similar tone) serving as Toriyama’s last one-shot before Dragon Ball one year later. Check out the “Tale of the One-Shots” article in our 30th anniversary magazine for more information and one-shot comparisons!

The official Dragon Ball website’s thirty-seventh 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 final transformation design of Freeza’s older brother Coola from the fifth theatrical Dragon Ball Z film, “The Incredible Strongest vs Strongest”.

The movie’s character designer, Minoru Maeda, discussed Toriyama’s designs for the film in the 2005 “Dragon Box: The Movies” DVD set:

Toriyama-sensei drew all the enemy characters, such as Coola and Neiz, up to and including a height-comparison chart. They even came with colors, so there was no need to change them. There would be no point in changing them. (laughs) It made it a breeze being the one making them, so I was grateful.

The film debuted at the Toei Anime Fair on 20 July 1991. Coola returned as “Metal Coola” in the following film, and has subsequently been included in various video games and minor features over the years (such as in “Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans” and its various remakes).

Coola’s name is one of only a handful in the series that legitimately has multiple layers to its pun. While the “cold” association (following Freeza and King Cold) rings true, as explained in Daizenshuu 6, a different meaning was intended as the reference:

You’d normally think that since his younger brother is Freeza (Freeza=freezer) that his name would be Coola (cooler), but it’s not that simple. The truth is that it involves the Shizuoka dialect. The producer Mr. Morishita, who is from Shizuoka, was worried that “Cooler” would be too direct, and remembered that in the dialect of his hometown one said “meshi demo kuura” [editor’s note: sort of equivalent to “Let’s chow down”] when eating. Because of this, they used the Shizuoka dialect… and so they decided on the name Coola!! To think that it was so complicated a process…