Dragon Ball's Creator Feels Sorry for One of Its Anime Stars
For decades, the shonen series Dragon Ball has been one of the biggest anime franchises in the world, with the Z-Fighters slated to hit theaters in North America via Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero this summer. To help in promoting the movie, creator Akira Toriyama explored some big changes in the movie while also expressing his sadness when it comes to the performance of one voice actor, who is making a big comeback to the shonen franchise.
Warning. If you want to avoid spoilers for Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, turn back now as we'll be discussing quite the big one.
It's a poorly kept secret at this point that the major villain of Super Hero is a new take on the nefarious biological nightmare known as Cell, with the Red Ribbon Army creating a new version of the villain known as Cell Max. With this new take on the Dragon Ball Z antagonist increasing his size to that of a kaiju and looking more like his second form with a new color palette, Toriyama expressed his sadness for the voice actor that brings Cell to life, Norio Wakamoto. Not only do we see a new version of Cell in Super Hero, but it's a version that doesn't have much to say, as Toriyama explains:
"He's a garishly-colored giant who just rampages around screaming, so I feel kinda bad for the voice actor, and he's such a veteran voice actor, too. I'm so sorry."
Toriyama also took the opportunity to dive into Cell Max's backstory as well as his power level:
"Cell was a fearsomely powerful foe created by Dr. Gero through the manipulation of cells. This time around, Gero's grandson Hedo used his genius to create Cell Max, a bigger, stronger version based on the original Cell's blueprints. However, Hedo only created Cell Max because it was what Magenta wanted, so he isn't very fond of Cell Max himself. If Cell Max had been completed according to plan, he would have been a superhuman who even Broly couldn't defeat, but since he was forcible activated, he became an uncontrollable monster."
What do you think of Cell's big comeback? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of Dragon Ball.