Dragon Ball Announces Special Death Note Collab

Dragon Ball has recruited Death Note's Takeshi Obata for some special 40th Anniversary art!

By Nick Valdez

Dragon Ball is now in the midst of celebrating its 40th Anniversary, and it's teaming up with the artist behind Death Note on a special new project to help hype this new milestone! This year will mark 40 years since Akira Toriyama's original Dragon Ball manga was launched in the pages of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, and the franchise is going all out with several new projects to help commemorate the occasion. Not only will the Dragon Ball anime return for a brand new anime series in Dragon Ball Daima, but several of Shueisha's biggest names have been teaming up for a cool new project. 

Shueisha will be commemorating Dragon Ball's 40th Anniversary with a special art exhibition for the franchise in Japan, and has been leading up to the exhibit by showing off Shonen Jump's biggest creators sharing their takes on Dragon Ball. Remixing the many manga covers from Dragon Ball's run in the year leading to the new exhibition, creators such as Undead Unluck's Yoshifumi Tozuka, Jujutsu Kaisen's Gege Akutami, Black Clover's Yuki Tabata and more have shared their takes on Dragon Ball. Now it's been announced that the next release will feature Death Note artist Takeshi Obata! 

What's Next for Dragon Ball's 40th Anniversary? 

Death Note artist Takeshi Obata's take on Dragon Ball will be unveiled next month, and it will be one of the many releases leading up to the full celebration of Dragon Ball's 40th Anniversary later this Fall. The biggest part of the celebration will be the premiere of Dragon Ball Daima, which currently does not have a concrete release date but is set for a Fall 2024 release. Original series creator Akira Toriyama is providing the original story and new character designs for the upcoming anime, and it will feature a newly de-aged Goku in the central role. 

Yoshitaka Yashima and Aya Komaki are directing Dragon Ball Daima for Toei Animation with Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru adapting Toriyama's designs for animation, and Yuuko Kakihara supervising and writing the scripts. Akira Toriyama teases the original story for Dragon Ball Daima as such, "Due to a conspiracy, Goku and his friends are turned small. In order to fix things, they'll head off to a new world! It's a grand adventure with intense action in an unknown and mysterious world. Since Goku has to make up for his petite size, he uses his Power Pole to fight, something not seen in a long time."

Are you excited to see Takeshi Obata's 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 X (formerly known as Twitter)!

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