Dragon Ball Producer Akio Iyoku Said a New Entry Was Already in the Making After Super Hero

In a V Jump interview published in June 2022, Dragon Ball producer Akio Iyoku said a new entry in the series was already in the making, only weeks after Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero reached Japanese theaters. Whether that next project would be a movie or a return of the Dragon Ball Super anime was not confirmed, and I was clear at the time that the anime's comeback was still only rumored.

When I wrote this in June 2022, Super Hero had been in theaters in Japan for almost two weeks and was doing relatively well. For the past few years, the question people had asked me most was what the next big Dragon Ball project would be: another movie or another anime. It was the most requested thing ever, because people wanted to experience the feeling we got when Dragon Ball Super was on the air.

Akio Iyoku had already hinted in January that more Dragon Ball was coming

Akio Iyoku was Akira Toriyama's right hand man. He was the person who met with Toriyama literally once every few months to discuss the future of the franchise. He works at Shueisha, and he is much higher in the food chain than the people handling games or merchandise.

Back in January 2022 I covered a comment from him that there might be more coming that year. He did not go into more detail than that. He was not talking about the manga, because the manga was running indefinitely. He was not talking about anything video game related either, because that would come from Bandai, not from him. And it was not going to be an action figure or anything like that, because that goes to Banpresto. It was something else.

People had also been asking me for a long time what was going on with Super. It reportedly was going to come back in 2019, but it got postponed, because Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero was their main project and their main priority.

Super Hero was made with the whole world in mind, and Iyoku pushed for Gohan

Asked what his plans were now that Super Hero had been released in Japan, Iyoku said the film was made not only for the Japanese audience but with the whole world in mind. The reason he said that comes down to how the story developed. Originally, Super Hero was supposed to be a Piccolo only movie. Toriyama wrote it just for Piccolo.

Iyoku was the one who suggested adding Gohan, because he knew Gohan was popular worldwide, not only in North America but also in South America, where Gohan is really, really popular. So he was the one who influenced Toriyama to add Gohan to the story. Iyoku also noted that they were releasing the film in America that summer.

Then came the key line. As for what comes next, Iyoku said "a new entry on the series is already in the making." He added: "Superhero took us five years to make so it's only natural we're already working on what comes next."

Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai and the Digimon reboot had to end before Super could return

On the Dragon Ball Super anime specifically, I stressed that a couple of things had to happen before Super came back, and I asked people to "please listen to what i say don't take my words out of context."

First, Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai had to end. The reason is that the majority of the good animators working on that show needed to be free to work on Super. We did not want Super to look as rough as those early episodes did back in 2015. Second, the Digimon reboot series had to end, because it occupied what had been Super's time slot.

At the time, it was heavily rumored that both of those shows were going to end in October 2022. I wanted to be clear that I was not confirming Super was coming back that October. That was not what I was saying. October had been a rumored date for a while, but those two things had to happen first.

Toriyama was always working on new Dragon Ball concepts, and Super Hero dated back to 2017

Iyoku went on to write that "toriyama sensei is always working on new db concepts and ideas," adding that everyone was thinking about what they wanted to show the world next. In other words, the story was far from over.

In my view, fans should have known that by then. With Broly being introduced, Frieza being alive and new power ups for pretty much every main character, there were bigger plans on the horizon. The franchise was far from being over, not just with the manga but with the anime too.

We also learned from the interview that Super Hero had already been a thought in 2017. So they had been planning more than just one movie. Broly came out in 2018 and Super Hero came out in 2022, but Super Hero had been discussed between Iyoku and Toriyama since 2017. At that point the anime was running, the manga was running, and they were also preparing for Broly. They were doing all of that at once.

A movie looked likely, but an anime return in 2023 was heavily rumored

So would the next project be a movie or an anime? In another part of the interview, Iyoku talked about working on the next film, so I said it was probably going to be a movie. However, I pointed back to the fact that they had pre planned the movie and the anime at the same time before. What Iyoku was basically saying was that whatever came next, they were already working on it. And remembering his January comment, there was more coming, and it was not a video game and it was not manga.

It had also been heavily rumored that the anime could come back in 2023. I was not confirming that until there was an announcement. Maybe it would be that October; some said 2023. That date had been rumored for a very long time. I had heard it from two different sources, but it was also old information.

On top of that, a friend of mine, whom I chose not to name, is friends with a Dragon Ball Super writer. That writer told him the same thing I had said: that Super got postponed in 2019. He also said it would come back after Dragon Quest ended, because Dragon Quest was their priority and it is super big in Japan. Once that ended, there would be a higher probability of Super coming back. At the time, this was a developing story.

Given what Iyoku said, did you expect the next new Dragon Ball project to be a movie or a return of the anime?