What Dragon Ball's Future Looks Like Without Akira Toriyama's Imagination

Earlier in 2024, we lost Toriyama. When the news broke, a lot of different emotions were flowing through me as I found out, and as I was recording a video to let my audience know what was going on it was obviously shock at first, and then after some time passed that is when the emotions kicked in and I realized he was gone. Akira Toriyama meant a lot to my life. If it were not for him I would not have gotten into Dragon Ball or Dragon Quest, my favorite video game series of all time, and I never would have expected that years later I would be producing content about Dragon Ball. It literally changed my life, gave me opportunities to meet people I never thought I would meet, including actual members who worked on the series, and it allowed me to make friends who became part of my personal life.

Earlier this year I produced a documentary telling the story of Toriyama's life, how he was discovered, his first big break, and his era writing weekly manga on Dr. Slump and later Dragon Ball. Proceeds from that documentary went to the Brain Injury Association of America, to which I made a donation last summer. Now I want to look toward the future: what will happen to Dragon Ball without its original creator.

Why I Do Not Think Dragon Ball Is Heading Toward a Disney-Style Collapse

There are a lot of fears about this among the fandom, especially the hardcore Toriyama enthusiasts. A lot of people point to Star Wars and what happened once Disney bought the franchise from George Lucas, arguing Disney has run the biggest film franchise in history into the ground to where it has become a mockery of itself, creating a divisive fan base still fighting over what direction the series should take.

I do not believe Dragon Ball is going to end up like Star Wars, and I feel this way because Dragon Ball is still in the hands of the Japanese, and the Japanese business model and worldview is vastly different from Disney's. That said, it makes sense to have some concern going forward.

The Younger Toriyama Was a Relentless Workhorse, Not Lazy

The Toriyama involved in modern Dragon Ball was vastly different from the Toriyama who produced the original 42 volumes of the manga. The Toriyama of old was younger, a hustler, producing manga at a weekly rate from 1979 to 1995 with one vacation in between Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball. It bothers me when people say Toriyama was lazy. This man was anything but lazy. He had to deliver a completely finished weekly chapter with one, maybe two, assistants and his editor for fifteen years, on top of work on video games like the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, the Tobal games, and Blue Dragon, plus helping the anime staff draw legendary movie characters like Broly and Cooler.

Modern Toriyama was a very different man. His children had grown up, he had been in retirement for many years, and he did not do a lot of work during that time, and he deserved it. Dragon Ball became an international cultural phenomenon and he had nothing to worry about. What a lot of fans do not know is that he was already wealthy before Dragon Ball. Dr. Slump made him a rich man, but Dragon Ball blew him up beyond anything, and he was considered one of the wealthiest manga authors in Japanese history.

Even in Retirement, Toriyama Kept Popping Back Into Dragon Ball

During retirement he would pop up from time to time, usually working on Dragon Quest games or drawing art for one-shot manga. In 2013 he came out of retirement briefly to produce Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, the first new multi-chapter story he had written in years, which secretly became a prequel of sorts to Dragon Ball, though fans did not know that until it was released.

He would occasionally lend his pen to drawing Dragon Ball video game characters and helping staff with needed work. For example, he helped design Chilled, Frieza's ancestor, for Naho Ooishi's Bardock one-shot manga. In 2008 he co-wrote the script for Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return, the OVA produced for Shueisha's anniversary.

It was not until 2013's Battle of Gods that he really got back into the thick of things, co-writing the script with Yusuke Watanabe, taking Watanabe's ideas and shaping them into his universe. Even then, Toriyama was not working the schedule he kept when he was younger, because there were others willing to step up, which is why on the Dragon Ball Super anime he did not contribute much until the Universe 6 tournament, when he began drawing new characters and wrote a basic manuscript the TV arcs would adapt. Toyotaro would go on to produce the monthly Dragon Ball Super manga with Toriyama's input, and little by little Toriyama laid back and let Toyotaro shape the story with his own ideas.

Akio Iyoku's Pitches Shaped the Films Toriyama Actually Wrote

During the Dragon Ball renaissance, Toriyama started writing scripts for the films. Dragon Ball Z Resurrection F, Dragon Ball Super Broly, and Dragon Ball Super Super Hero were completely written by Akira Toriyama, though there was input from directors and from Akio Iyoku, Toriyama's right-hand man, who was still the one that finalized all the scripts before the films were made.

It was Akio Iyoku who wanted Toriyama to write a story about Future Trunks, which led to the Goku Black arc. It was Akio Iyoku who pitched the popularity of Broly to Toriyama, leading to the creation of Dragon Ball Super Broly, where Toriyama took a character he did not originally create, one made by Takao Koyama back in the 90s, and repurposed and rewrote him into Dragon Ball Super, as well as introducing Gogeta into the series. With Super Hero, Toriyama wanted to tell a Piccolo story, but it was Akio Iyoku who pitched making Gohan the co-lead, which led to Gohan fans getting excited over their favorite character becoming a protagonist and unlocking the new Gohan Beast form that has become popular.

Older Toriyama Was Not Prime Toriyama, But He Still Had Vision

Respectfully, the Toriyama of this era was not prime Toriyama. His prime was probably the late 80s as an inventive writer, but he was still contributing new ideas and taking Akio Iyoku's pitches and molding them in his own style. Much like George Lucas writing the prequels, the stories he told as an older man were different, and the writing consistency of both men was stronger when they were younger. But the one thing that never left Toriyama was a vivid and creative imagination.

If you doubt that, look at Dragon Ball Daima. I do not think we have seen a more creative and diverse world from Toriyama in a very long time. What he added to the lore in the Demon Realm, controversial for some, still shows a man late in life with a lot of imagination. Many of us have criticized his writing of the current era, and not everything he put out was a banger the way it once was, but he remained a phenomenal artist and a vivid, creative person until the day he left us.

Now That Toriyama's Pen Is Gone, Toyotaro and Akio Iyoku Carry Dragon Ball Forward

Now that Dragon Ball Daima has ended, Toriyama no longer lends his mind and his pen to anything Dragon Ball, and the franchise is stepping into unknown territory. At this point Dragon Ball is in the hands of Shueisha and Toei, two companies I personally do not really trust. Two people within that group I feel more comfortable with are Toyotaro and Akio Iyoku.

Toyotaro has never really hit the levels of Toriyama, and I know that might sound controversial since some folks love Toyotaro, but Toriyama was a prodigy and one of a kind, and Toyotaro has tried his best to follow in his mentor's footsteps. He will keep continuing Dragon Ball. In fact, recent updates to Dragon Ball Legends now list credits with Toyotaro's name, something that was never the case before when it was always Toriyama and Bird Studios.

My Real Worry Is That Dragon Ball Becomes Nostalgia Bait Instead of New Storytelling

Akio Iyoku is a somewhat polarizing figure, since some in the fandom believe all his ideas are manufactured from corporate research, which is probably true, and that all he does is bring back old characters using nostalgia, as seen with Frieza returning, Cell Max giving Gohan a new form resembling his Cell Saga transformation, and Broly. All of this capitalizes on decades of fandom built from the original series of the 80s and 90s. At the Dragon Ball Daima premiere event in Japan, Akio Iyoku stated that there was still more to come.

As a fan, Battle of Gods to me was the perfect send off for these characters. I am not saying I did not like Super Broly, because I loved it, and I liked Super Hero and parts of Dragon Ball Super, though not all of it. But it was such a success that more came, and it allowed me to start a business talking about Dragon Ball, one that because of Toriyama's incredible vision has been fun even when the material has not been great.

Dragon Ball will likely continue under the watchful eye of Akio Iyoku and Toyotaro no matter what. But I am concerned because the imagination and creativity Toriyama brought to everything he touched will not be there. As much as Toyotaro can improve his skills as an artist and even as a writer, will he ever truly have the imagination, creativity, and outside the box thinking that Toriyama had? Toriyama was one of a kind, and anybody who has even done the smallest minutia of research will agree with that.

So the future of Dragon Ball, to me, is in question, not because more will not get made, but because I worry it will just become more nostalgia baited, with characters doing the same things they have done before and no outside the box thinking or different kind of storytelling. I think Dragon Ball needs to evolve, look at itself, come up with fresh ideas, and go past the end of Z to tell new stories, or at the very least expand the universe by exploring the distant past or something different. Toriyama would have been the guy to create unique landscapes, planets, civilizations, and creatures, and without him, his imagination remains the backbone of why this series hit with so many people across so many cultures and languages.

Can Toyotaro and Akio Iyoku ever recapture the kind of outside the box imagination Toriyama brought to Dragon Ball, or is nostalgia the only road left for the franchise?