Akira Toriyama’s Fmr Editor Says ‘Dragon Ball Super’ Should Have Been A Vegeta Story, ‘Daima’ Is “Sh***y”
In lobbing a molotov cocktail into the ever-raging flames of the series’ fandom in-fighting, Akira Toriyama’s early Shonen Jump editor Kazuhiko Torishima has admitted to having a less-than-negative opinion on both the recent Dragon Ball Daima and the non-Vegeta-centric Dragon Ball Super.
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Torishima, who oversaw the late mangaka‘s entire Dr. Slump run and the first half of his work on Dragon Ball (up until the Saiyan Saga) before serving as Shonen Jump’s Editor-in-Chief from 1996-2001, shared his criticisms regarding the current state of the shonen battle franchise during his and Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii’s latest segment for the Yubo & Mashirito’s Kosokoso Broadcasting Station radio show, as hosted by the pair every fourth Saturday night of the month in service of sharing their opinions on the latest goings-ons of the Japanese video game and manga industries.
As machine translated during the original broadcast by YouTube’s auto-translation caption system (at present, the archived version of said broadcast does not allow for closed-captioning), Torishima first took aim at the current state of the Dragon Ball Super manga, declaring that the series was suffering due to series steward (and Toriyama’s hand-picked successor) Toyotarou’s lack of talent:
“Toyotarou and [Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai – The Hero Avan and the Demon King of Hellfire mangaka Yusaku] Shibata, are bad at manga. The basics aren’t up to par.
“The people in charge of editing these manga [Victory Uchida for Dragon Ball Super] don’t understand why the pieces are divided, how the eyes are guided, how the angles are handled in the information spread, and so they can’t check it. Once it’s finished and the pictures are in, they think it’s a manga.”
From there, he turned his attention towards Goku and company’s anime outings, first declaring, “It would have been better to do a Vegeta story than Dragon Ball Super“, and then “Dragon Ball Daima is a sh***y anime” [lit. ‘Daima ga kuso anime.’]
It should be noted that despite Torishima having served as the legendary mangaka’s editor for the early half of his Shonen Jump career, he and Toriyama had a contentious relationship, to say the least.
Per a recap of Shonen Jump editors Yū Kondō, who oversaw Dragon Ball from the Saiyan Saga up through the Perfect Cell Saga, Fuyuto Takeda, who worked with Toriyama from the Cell Games Saga up to Jaco the Patrolman, and Torishima March appearance on Yubo & Mashirito’s Kosokoso Broadcasting Station, as provided by Twitter user @Venixys:
“During an especially intense period between the end and start of the year, Toriyama found himself having to work simultaneously on Dragon Ball and a one-shot episode. To make matters worse, Jump required color chapters to be submitted two weeks in advance, forcing authors to work on two episodes in parallel. At that time, Toriyama was also suffering from tendinitis and claimed he could no longer draw.
Kondo, who was working with him, realized how serious the situation was and decided to speak with Torishima. The three of them met at a café to discuss the possibility of adjusting the schedule or canceling one of the two projects. During the meeting, Torishima, fully aware of the difficulty, handed Toriyama a pencil and asked him to write his name. When Toriyama managed to do it, Torishima replied, “See? You can draw,” putting him in a tough spot when it came to continuing to refuse.
Despite his frustration, Toriyama accepted and completed both works on time. Torishima comments that, for him, it was mainly a psychological matter: if Toriyama hadn’t been able to write his own name, he was ready to give up and tell Kondo to let it go. It was a gamble, but in the end, it worked. A surprising outcome.
