Dragon Ball Super: What Did the Series Creator Add to New ‘Super Hero’ Arc?

Dragon Ball Super has finally, officially, brought the storylines of the manga and anime together into one continuity, thanks to the new “Super Hero” story arc now running in the Dragon Ball Super manga. The storyline of Super Hero is a precursor to the recent Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero movie that was released in theaters this past summer and went on to become a record-setting smash at the international box office. At the same time, the manga version of Super Hero directly follows the events of the last few Dragon Ball Super manga storylines, while fleshing out more of the foundational story and characters that are the focuses of the Super Hero movie. 

What Did Dragon Ball’s Creator Add to the Super Hero Manga Arc? 

Dragon Ball Super manga artist/writer Toyotarou was doing one of his regular updates with the official Dragon Ball site (“Weekly Dragon Ball News”) when he revealed there was one key element of the Super Hero manga story that Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama contributed: making a Trunks a full-fledged superhero. 

In the interview, Toyotaro says the following about how the Super Hero manga story came about:

“There were a lot of ideas floating around about the new story… And when we met with Toriyama and other staff, we discussed how Goku and Vegeta had been the main characters for so long, and the stories were also large-scale and intergalactic so it might be interesting to do something smaller and simpler this time.”

Toyotarou goes on to describe how he’d been keeping a Trunks story in his back pocket for years, and saw an opportunity to finally roll it out: 

“I had been wanting to do a story with Trunks as the main lead before the Super Hero movie was even being discussed. That’s something that interested me. But I didn’t know if it would actually fit in with the main story…  I mentioned I wanted to do it as a spinoff. I think I mentioned that several years ago. Then when we were thinking about focusing on someone besides Goku and doing something different, the first thing that came to my mind was my idea of a story about Trunks. I thought that maybe this was finally my chance to do it…” 

Everything fame together perfectly, as Toyotarou got his chance to tell a Trunks-focused story, and Toriyama added the detail that could tie it to the larger main narrative that was taking shape: 

“It actually wasn’t going to be about superheroes at first, but Toriyama had the idea of making Trunks a superhero. It was a great idea. So Trunks and Goten became superheroes.” 

Toyotarou concludes that while he didn’t originally think of Trunks as the superhero type (based on his “cool” persona), he trusted in what the maestro of Dragon Ball had to say. Toriyama laid out a lot of new details about Trunks and Goten, to help establish who these teenage versions of the boys were in this timeline. Like so many other fans of Dragon Ball Z, Toyotarou had a firm vision of the Future Trunks character from DBZ – a character who was hardned by the harsh timeline that was overrun by Dr. Gero’s androids. Same goes for the alternate Future Trunks Dragon Ball Super introduced, whose timeline was ruined by Goku Black/Zamasu. 

Now we’re seeing a version of Trunks in a happier version of the world, where his life is much more of a Peter Parker/Spider-Man story that is going to be a new experience for us all. 

Dragon Ball Super has new manga chapters free online.