Two New Dragon Ball Anime Projects? A Leaker's Cryptic Teases and What I Was Hearing in 2022

In August 2022, a well connected anime leaker teased that Dragon Ball had two anime projects in the works, and then added that he had not said one of them was a movie. Combined with the confirmed pre-planning of the next theatrical film, that pointed to possibly three new Dragon Ball projects: two TV anime and one movie.

At the time I called 2022 a landmark year for the franchise. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero had opened in most of the major markets around the world, One Piece Film Red was also out, and the questions about what Dragon Ball had coming next were piling up. Here is what I knew and what I did not know at that point.

A leaker with a strong track record was teasing new Dragon Ball anime

The leaker behind these teases is one of the bigger names in the anime community. I do not know who he talks to, but he has his own sources out in the East, and they have proven credible. He had recently teased that One-Punch Man season three was coming, and just a couple of days before I wrote this, it was officially announced. In my view, that showed he had credible sources without question.

He had been teasing a new Dragon Ball anime for quite some time. I had been covering the same idea for months, going all the way back to January, when Akio Iyoku, the executive producer at Shueisha's Dragon Ball Room, talked about how there was more coming beyond the movie that year. The Dragon Ball Super manga was heading into a temporary hiatus before its next arc, and more manga was on the way, but movies and anime were in the pipeline too.

The new Dragon Ball anime announcement looked likely by Jump Festa

The rumour of a new Dragon Ball anime arriving the following year had been going around for a long time, so the obvious question was when it would be announced. I stressed that this could very easily change, because things happen pretty quickly in this industry. As of August 2022, though, I saw one of two possibilities.

Either the announcement would come within a few weeks, followed by a trailer at Jump Festa in December, or the announcement itself would happen at Jump Festa in December, with a trailer coming later. Those were the two most logical scenarios as I saw them, but they might not play out in that order. An announcement could come in November, or there could be a teaser. I was not sure what they would do. What I did know was that a new Dragon Ball project had been in the works for quite some time.

The One Piece animator theory was one I had not heard

One question people kept asking me about was a cryptic post from the leaker. He reposted a tweet made up entirely of emojis, and some people believed he was hinting that One Piece animators would be moving over to the new Dragon Ball project. I can say that I had not heard that.

What I did know is that Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero and One Piece Film Red were both finished and released. The way the industry works, once a project is complete and out, the animation staff get moved on to other projects. At the same time, two other things were happening in the business. Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai was heading into its finale, in its last arc. That show had a majority of Toei's top people on it, and a lot of the animators who worked on Dragon Ball Super: Broly went on to work on it.

The Digimon series that took Dragon Ball Super's time slot was also supposedly coming to an end sometime in the following couple of months. I had no inside source on that; I was going only on the episode numbers they had released themselves and when it was supposed to finish.

So the people who worked on One Piece Film Red and Super Hero were obviously going to move to other projects. Some would work on the One Piece anime, some on Dai, and yes, some would work on Dragon Ball Super whenever that arrived. But we had no actual information on that yet, because it had not been determined. Every anime episode usually has a somewhat different staff, though sometimes it is the same staff, so we could not be sure who would go where. That information was going to come out at some point, but at the time we did not have it.

The new Dragon Ball series would reportedly not be full CGI

The leaker then tweeted a reminder that Dragon Ball has two anime projects. I assumed the first was the eventual new TV anime for the franchise, and people had been asking me whether it would be CGI or 2D.

The only thing I had heard, and it may have been old information, was that it would not be full CGI and would not look like the movie. CGI would be used in some instances, but it would be more like what Dragon Ball Super used to be, except with better preproduction. That is something I had been hearing for a while.

The next Dragon Ball movie was confirmed, and my guess was 2024

The other project people kept asking about was the upcoming movie. This was not even a rumour at that point. It was confirmed by Akio Iyoku himself in an interview given right when Super Hero came out in Japan: Toriyama and Iyoku were already pre-planning the next Dragon Ball theatrical film.

As for when it would release, my best guess, based on the trajectory of things at the time and with the caveat that it could change, was 2024. That would coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Dragon Ball manga, which began running in Weekly Shonen Jump in Japan in November 1984. For that anniversary I was expecting new video games, which were rumoured, and hopefully another theatrical movie.

Third was what I wanted to happen, though I could not say for sure it would come in 2024: a re-release of the original Dragon Ball anime as a high definition remaster, in 4K or 1080p. If we got to watch the old 80s Dragon Ball remastered in high definition, "I will be a happy happy fan." Even if Dragon Ball Super turned out badly for the rest of my life, at least the old material could be seen in its best quality. "I don't think it will though."

The leaker suggested the second Dragon Ball project was not a movie

Here is where the leaker's teases got interesting. When he said Dragon Ball has two anime projects, I thought he meant the TV anime and the movie. But then he went on to say: "I didn't say we are getting a movie." I was not sure what information he had. He is a different leaker with different sources out in the East, and I had not heard anything about a second project. As far as I knew, even the film was not yet being produced; maybe pre-planned, but not produced.

That did not mean the other project was definitely a thing, but sometimes these projects start without anybody knowing until weeks or months later. Toei is very good at keeping things to themselves. Even though I got a lot of leaks for Super Hero, we did not know about Gohan Beast until the week before the movie came out, and that was finished long before. I reported that Gohan was the main character a year earlier, in August 2021, before anybody else did, but I had no idea he would get a new form.

Whoever his source is said it was not about the movie. I was not sure whether he meant another anime in general or specifically Dragon Ball, but it sounded like there was another Dragon Ball anime project in the works that was not a movie. That meant possibly three new projects: two TV anime and one movie. The movie was for sure happening, since Iyoku had confirmed it, and the TV anime had been rumoured for some time by several leakers. With other shows wrapping up, staff would open up to work on Dragon Ball and hopefully make it look as good as possible.

So what could the other project be? Maybe a TV special, perhaps a Jaco special, or a history of the Saiyans special centred on Yamoshi. There were a lot of possibilities. I had plenty of ideas, but I did not know if they would actually go through with any of them. We saw how poorly they marketed Super Hero, and it still did well, so Dragon Ball still had fuel in the tank to be successful in the future.

What would you have wanted that mysterious second Dragon Ball anime project to be?