Dragon Ball Super Artist Toyotaro Reflects on His First Time Drawing Goku

Dragon Ball Super's manga has managed to step out of the anime's shadow and enter a bold new era of its own, following the events of the anime series and Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie. The manga's new story arc "Galactic Patrol Prisoner" also sees Akira Toriyama's chosen protege, Toyotaro step into a full-fledged role as the series mangaka.

In a recent interview, Toyotaro opened up about his experience working on Dragon Ball, and even shared some backstory about how he landed the gig. In one especially touching anecdote, Toyotaro shares the story of how he came to draw Goku for the very first time:

I don't know if my english is good enough but I can translate some questions!

Not all of them though: the whole thing is quite long and it's written for kids so it's not always super interesting 😅 pic.twitter.com/mezKzcIc4F

— 🐼 JIa 🐼 (@JakIchanDB) August 28, 2019

As Toyotaro explains:

"In 2011, I was inpsired by a game, "Dragon ball Heroes", and drew an entire story. I took this little manga to the publisher Shueisha, the biggest one in Japan. It was the one that published the chapters of "Dragon Ball". The editors liked my sory so much they decided to publish it in "V jump", arenowned maazine about manga. I worked for them during four years. And then in 2015, Shueisha gave me the offer to draw "Dragon Ball Super". I was really honored."

So there you have it: Dragon Ball Heroes is the reason that the franchise now has Toyotaro. Ironically, both Toyotaro's manga and the Dragon Ball Heores promo anime have come into their own over the course of the last year - much to the chagrin of some fans, in both cases. However, for every Dragon Ball fan that complains about the franchise expansion, there's about two more who are being brought into the tent by these new ventures. For our part, Toyotaro's "Galactic Patrol Prisoner" arc has been one of the most exciting stories in all of Dragon Ball Super's run, and the future of the manga looks bright with him at the helm.

Dragon Ball Super currently airs its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonamiprogramming block on Saturday evenings, and is also available to stream on Funimation and Amazon Video. The Japanese-language release of the series is complete, and available to stream on FunimationNOW and Crunchyroll. The manga has chapters that can currently be read for free thanks to Viz Media, and Dragon Ball Super's big movie, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.