On Wednesday, July 31, 2024, @WSJ_manga, a well-known Twitter user and reliable source for anime and manga news, announced the next contributor for the Dragon Ball Super Gallery Project. The chosen contributor is none other than Masanori Morita, the mangaka behind Blues and the author and illustrator of Rookies.
“Morita’s involvement will be one of the final pieces to the project, which was designed to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Akira Toriyama’s original manga series, Dragon Ball. Tragically, Toriyama passed away in March 2023 at the age of 68 from an acute subdural hematoma. The series officially reaches its 40-year milestone in November 2024.”
Dragon Ball Super Gallery Project enlists lesser-known manga artists for upcoming installment
Despite being a highly acclaimed creator in Japan, Morita remains relatively unknown among Western fans in the Dragon Ball Super Gallery Project. This is due to the fact that his most famous works, such as Rookies and Blues, have not been officially translated for release in the West. Although Blues has been adapted into an anime, Rookies has not, adding to Morita’s enigmatic status among Western audiences.
Morita’s entry will follow author and illustrator Yoshihiro Togashi’s as the 37th in the project, making it the 38th overall. Togashi is widely recognized for his role as the creative mind behind the popular manga series Hunter x Hunter and Yu Yu Hakusho, having written and illustrated both.
With the inclusion of Morita and Togashi’s contributions, the gallery project now only requires four more entries. The project’s goal is to pay homage to the manga’s 40th anniversary by replicating all 42 volume covers from the original series. In anime context, these volumes encompass both the original anime and its Z continuation, as they were published under the umbrella of the former as a single continuous series.
Despite his close relationship with Toriyama, Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, has not yet made a contribution to the Project. Many fans believe that he will be the final entrant, similar to how Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto, who also had a mentor-student dynamic with Toriyama, was the first to join in August 2021.
Toriyama’s acclaimed manga series first debuted in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in November 1984, and ran until its completion in May 1995. The 519 chapters of the manga were compiled into the aforementioned 42 volumes, all of which have been translated into English. The current Super manga series, which Toriyama contributed to, will be carried on by his chosen collaborator, Toyotaro, since its serialization in June 2015.
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