Dragon Ball Recruits Blue Exorcist Creator for New Anniversary Art
Blue Exorcist has been hard at work making its way through the intense final battle of the long running manga series with its newest chapters, and now the artist behind Blue Exorcist has been tapped by Dragon Ball for a new entry in the ongoing Dragon Ball 40th Anniversary celebration exhibition project! Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball will be celebrating its milestone 40th Anniversary with Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine next year, and will be launching a special exhibition honoring the franchise's art over the years. But a special feature of this exhibition has recruited all kinds of Shueisha creators to share their interpretations of the franchise.
The extended exhibition art gallery project for Dragon Ball's 40th Anniversary has been in the works for the last couple of years as Shueisha's various manga artists and creators have been recruited to share their interpretations of the Dragon Ball manga's various covers. Following Black Clover creator Yuki Tabata, the next artist sharing their take on Dragon Ball is Blue Exorcist series creator Kazue Kato (as spotted by @WSJ_manga on Twitter), who will share their cover art in the next issue of Shueisha's Saikyo Jump magazine.
Kazue Kato, mangaka of Blue Exorcist, will be the next artist to participate in the DRAGON BALL Super Gallery Project in next month's Saikyo Jump Issue #8 2023. pic.twitter.com/Rq7XFZkY2c
— Shonen Jump News (@WSJ_manga) June 2, 2023
Dragon Ball 40th Anniversary Project Artist Line Up Explained
Dragon Ball's 40th Anniversary will be launching its special exhibition in Japan showing off each of the Dragon Ball manga covers with a major makeover from Shueisha's massive roster of artists. The artists and creators they have recruited for the new project thus far ahead of Blue Exorcist's Kazue Kato break down as such:
- Masashi Kishimoto
- Tite Kubo
- Osamu Akimoto
- Ryuhei Tamura
- Tatsuki Fujimoto
- Koyoharu Gotouge
- Shinohara Kenta
- Tatsuya Endo
- Hiroshi Shiibashi
- Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro
- Yusei Matsui
- Hirohiko Araki
- Kyosuke Usuta
- Koji Inada
- Mikio Ikemoto
- Tadatoshi Fujimaki
- Akira Amano
- Kentaro Yabuki
- Hideaki Sorachi
- Posuka Demizu
- Boichi
- Shun Saeki
- Yuki Tabata
Blue Exorcist's manga is now working its way through its final battle, and you can keep up with the manga's newest chapters with Viz Media's digital Shonen Jump library. A new Blue Exorcist anime is now in the works as well, but has yet to reveal a release window or date for the series as of this writing. But what are you hoping to see from Blue Exorcist's creator take on Dragon Ball? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animation and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!