Did you know there’s a department at Shueisha dedicated to Dragon Ball media?
When you think of departments at work, you immediately think of individual sections dedicated to contributing to a company’s mission. But Shueisha is different.
The Dragon Ball Department
In 2016, Shueisha created a department called the “Dragon Ball Room”. As their first project, Dragon Ball Super: Broly was developed in order to preserve the franchise for years to come. The reason Super is used in the title instead of Z is because the latter is more familiar by fans outside of Japan at the time. Dragon Ball Z finished its original anime run in Japan in April 1996 while Western audience were still enjoying the show at the turn of the millenium.
The remasetered version of the series, Dragon Ball Kai (or Dragon Ball Z Kai as it’s known in the West), was developed in order to introduce the franchise to a new audience. When the final saga wrapped up, the show was followed by its sequel: Dragon Ball Super.
Thanks to streaming sites such as Crunchyroll, fans around the world were able to enjoy the new series simultaneously.
Akira Toriyama
Akio Iyoku, an Editor at Shueisha, kept in touch with the series creator Akira Toriyama mainly through e-mail. Around Spring 2017, Iyoku proposed several new movie story ideas to Toriyama, and after it was decided that the story would involve the Saiyans, planning progressed quickly and the script for the film was completed around May 2017. Tatsuya Nagamine, director of the Dragon Ball Super TV series, was assigned to direct the film.
Toriyama felt that the first script was too short so he added more content to the story. When the storyboard was illustrated, the team felt that the movie that was planned to be 90 minutes, was too long. Toei Animation held a meeting with the producers and other parties involved and were able to cut down the story to fit the intended runtime.
Broly’s Redesign
Toriyama had actually forgotten what his original design for Broly looked like in the 90s. It wasn’t until one member of the team suggested that they reuse the character and recreate him for the Super series. He commented:
“I apologize to fans who love the old Broly. I recreated the character in my image using the old design as my base. I’ve added a little bit of dramatic content and a little bit of humanity to the story to make it a story that everyone will enjoy.”
He was also in charge of character design, and drew more than 20 designs in all, including characters, mechanics, and the appearance of the planet on which the film takes place. Norihiro Hayashida, producer of the film, held an “audition” with the animators by selecting 20 illustrations from the Dragon Ball books he had home and having them redraw them. After a careful selection of many candidates, Hayashida selected Naohiro Shintani as Animation Director.
Source: Dragon Ball News, (2),
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