Dragon Ball
‘Dragon Ball Daima’ Producer reveals Toriyama’s reaction when he heard about new project
Capsule Corporation Tokyo’s Ino Akio shares the keys to starting the ‘Daima’ project with franchise creator Akira Toriyama.
2024 was the fortieth anniversary of the birth of ‘Dragon Ball’ and to celebrate such an important date, Toei Animation released in October of that year ‘Dragon Ball Daima,’ a new, completely original anime series that is part of the official canon and that Akira Toriyama himself, the creator of the franchise, was working on before his sudden death almost a year ago. That’s why the anime’s producer, Ino Akio of Capsule Corporation Tokyo, has shared how the idea came about and Toriyama’s own reaction to the possibility of a new story written and supervised by himself becoming a reality.
How ‘Dragon Ball Daima’ was born
The original ‘Dragon Ball’ manga was published in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump from 1984 to 1995, and the TV anime series began in 1986. The total number of comics published worldwide exceeds 260 million copies. In recent years, the ‘Dragon Ball Super’ series, based on an original concept by Toriyama, aired from 2015 to 2018, and the animated film ‘Dragon Ball Super: Broly’ was released in 2018, while ‘Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero’ was released in 2022. All of these productions achieved great commercial success, in addition to the affection of the public that has followed the adventures of Goku and company for four decades.
‘Dragon Ball Daima’ presents us the adventures of Goku and his friends, who have been reduced to mini forms by a conspiracy, as they travel through the Demon Realm in search of a solution. But where did the idea for a new anime series come from? “This story goes back about six years, but when we were making ‘Dragon Ball Super: Super Heroes’, we started talking about making a new series with a different plot from the movie,” explains Ino Akio.
“We were making the movie, and in order not to burden him, I wanted him to just take a look at it, rather than have him do the whole thing, so I asked him what he thought. As we went along, he got very excited about it. It was different from the original plan, but after consulting with him, we ended up having him do most of it,” Ino Akio goes on to explain about his conversation with Toriyama regarding ‘Dragon Ball Daima’.
“Toriyama came up with ideas such as ‘What kind of place is the Demon Realm? Who are the new characters…’, and the world view of ‘Daima’ was solidified. It was the first time for me to make a series from scratch like this, so I think it was interesting from the Sensei’s perspective.”
“It’s longer than a movie, and we spent a lot of time going back and forth on the story. In fact, the production of the anime started before the story was completely finished. That’s how much I racked my brains over it. Maybe that’s why it has the same kind of thrill as a weekly serialized manga,” concludes Ino Akio.
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