Dragon Ball Debuts New Cover From Slam Dunk Creator

Dragon Ball has gotten a special manga makeover from Slam Dunk creator Takehiko Inoue! Dragon Ball will be officially be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the late Akira Toriyama’s original manga making its debut with Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. As part of this major milestone, Shueisha has been going all out to help celebrate the occasion. Part of this plan is to launch a special exhibition in Japan for the franchise featuring Akira Toriyama’s art along with a major project that has enlisted Shueisha’s other creators to share their own versions of each of Dragon Ball’s volume covers. 

This special Dragon Ball 40th anniversary exhibition project has seen other Shonen Jump creators such as Jujutsu Kaisen creator Gege Akutami, Black Clover creator Yuki Tabata, Tokyo Ghoul creator Sui Ishida and more to reveal a new cover art makeover each month until later this November. This time around it’s Slam Dunk creator Takehiko Inoue, who’s shared a new version of Dragon Ball Volume 17’s cover art with a new take on Goku. You can check it out below as spotted by @WSJ_manga on X. 

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

This won’t be the only event happening for Dragon Ball’s 40th anniversary as the franchise will be returning to screens with a new anime. Dragon Ball Daima is a brand new anime series set to release some time later this Fall, but has yet to confirm a concrete release date as of the time of this publication. The late Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama helped to craft the original main story and character designs for Dragon Ball Daima with Yoshitaka Yashima and Aya Komaki directing the series for Toei Animation, Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru adapting Toriyama’s designs for animation, and Yuuko Kakihara supervising and writing the scripts.

Masako Nozawa is returning to the anime to once again provide the voice for Kid Goku, and she is currently the only confirmed member of Dragon Ball Daima‘s voice cast announced so far. Akira Toriyama previously teased the original story for Dragon Ball Daima as such before his passing, “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.”