‘Dragon Ball GT’ Producer Reveals How The Series Got Approved

By now fans are aware that Dragon Ball GT was the first series in the franchise without direct involvement with original creator Akira Toriyama, but they’ve been wondering how the series came to be exactly.

The reason Dragon Ball GT was approved was, well, because of the studio’s desires to continue to capitalize on the Dragon Ball Z’s popularity.

In a recently translated interview for a 2005 Dragon Box release in Japan, Dragon Ball GT producer Kozo Morishita admitted the series was conceived as way to keep the series going stating that “The original manga had wrapped up while Dragon Ball Z was still being broadcast, but among myself and others involved there was no sense of ‘this is the end.’ We the staff and of course the TV station and sponsors all wanted the Dragon Ball series to continue in the golden timeslot of 7:00P.M. every Wednesday. That’s how much momentum and popularity the series had.”

Morishita elaborates on this with “when word was sent to Toriyama-sensei and the Weekly Shonen Jump editorial department that we wanted to make a new series, after some initial meetings the viewpoint emerged that it would be preferable to do a completely original story, separate from the original manga. Certainly that way…Toriyama-sensei could enjoy it too, and there was also the opinion that it would be terribly disrespectful not to make it a separate work from sensei‘s original manga…In other words, a style of Dragon Ball that wouldn’t drag out Dragon Ball.”

While Dragon Ball GT was initially conceived as a way just to keep the series going, it was finally approved because it strived to be much different than Dragon Ball Z or Toriyama’s original work.

Dragon Ball GT is often discounted by fans because of its lack of involvement from original series creator Akira Toriyama. Because of this, most fans deemed the series as non-canon. An original anime series produced by Toei Animation, the series takes five years after the events of Dragon Ball Z and has Goku revert to childhood thanks to a wish placed on a new set of Dragon Balls with black stars. Because of this Goku teams with the now teenage Trunks and Pan and travels across space to find them.

Toriyama would later have a hand in Dragon Ball Super, which serves as a true sequel series filling in the ten years after the defeat of Majin Buu. Dragon Ball Super currently airs on Crunchyroll Saturday evenings at 7:15 p.m. CST. Adult Swim airs the English dub during its Toonami block Saturday evenings at 11:30 p.m.

via Kazenshuu