Akira Toriyama Created Battle of Gods in Response to Dragon Ball Evolution

The long and short of it here is that a new theatrical film was already in the works at Toei Animation without Akira Toriyama, with a script by Yūsuke Watanabe and character designs by Tadayoshi Yamamuro.

It was only at the insistence of Akira Toriyama’s original editor, Kazuhiko Torishima, that Toriyama took a look at what they were cooking and — in part prompted by his experience with the American live-action film Dragon Ball Evolution — Toriyama took more authorial control, rewriting the existing script and throwing out existing character designs.

Akira Toriyama did not himself “create” Battle of Gods (and by extension, neither did he personally “create” Dragon Ball Super) as a result of the content, audience response to, or his treatment during the creation of Dragon Ball Evolution.

More on all of that below, but it’s perhaps important that we outline a few key concepts and factual states-of-being:

The Key Player: Kazuhiko Torishima

Kazuhiko Torishima was Toriyama’s original editor at Shueisha, managing him from his debut up through the Saiyan arc of Dragon Ball (at which point Yū Kondō took over as his second of three total editors during Dragon Ball‘s serialization). It should be no surprise that Torishima went on to larger roles at Shueisha, later becoming the Editor-in-Chief of V-Jump for its proper launch in 1993, and Editor-in-Chief of Weekly Shōnen Jump itself from 1996-2001.

Torishima then went on to even larger roles at Shueisha, including Director of Business starting in August 2004, Managing Director in August 2009, and onward again to Senior Managing Director in August 2010 through 2015. After this point, Torishima went on to take senior leadership roles at Hakusensha and Bushiroad.

Longtime Kanzenshuu readers will of course know the stories behind the ever-changing antagonists of what became the Cell arc of Dragon Ball. Even when Torishima was no longer Toriyama’s direct editor, he still provided feedback. As Toriyama shared in the Shenlong Times #2 pamphlet’s roundtable discussion (distributed with copies of Daizenshuu 2: Story Guide):

You’re terrible to say that, Torishima-san. Right around then was when the Androids No. 19 and No. 20 appeared. You weren’t my editor or anything anymore, but you specifically called me to say, “I thought that the enemies had finally come, but aren’t these just a geezer and a fatso?” (laughs) In truth, I hadn’t had plans for anyone but No. 19 and No. 20 to appear. But there was no helping it, so I brought out No. 17 and No. 18. Then you called me up and said, “What, this time it’s just some brats?” So I brought out Cell. (laughs)

Even when he was no longer Toriyama’s editor, Torishima was still a mentor, friend, a guiding force to Toriyama and his works. This relationship continued during and long beyond Dragon Ball itself.

Creations With or Without Toriyama

Considering how prominent both Shueisha and Toei — not to mention Bandai Namco when it comes to video games — promote the fact that Toriyama is involved in anything he so much as contributes a character design to (nevermind write an entire script for), one might be tempted to think that these companies “can’t” make something Dragon Ball without at least Toriyama’s personal blessing.

The fact is: that’s not true.

Circa 2008, Bandai was hoping they could convince their animation partners at Toei to create a new series. If one reads between the lines a little bit, and knowing that Dragon Ball Heroes was on the horizon for a 2010 launch, it’s easy to see how they might have been looking for a nice multi-media blitz with different tentpoles supporting each other. Indeed, this was one of Kazuhiko Torishima’s main initiatives — the “cross-media production method” (クロスメディアによる制作手法) — by which the different partners collaborate together on products that feed back into and support each other.

Unfortunately for them, Toriyama was not yet on board, and so everyone went in a different direction… not because they had to, but perhaps because it seemed like the right thing to do without the original author’s blessing. Dragon Ball Heroes certainly still came a couple years later, but in the meantime — at the suggestion of Torishima — Toei instead did a “refresh” of the original Dragon Ball Z television series, resulting in Dragon Ball Kai for a 2009 Japanese television broadcast.

We know all this due to Torishima’s own candid comments from an interview series done in conjunction with Kazé’s home video release of Dragon Ball Kai in France:

So, now to talk a little bit business. There’s this company called Bandai that was having trouble increasing its profits. And since we’ve worked together with them on Dragon Ball for a long time, I was wondering what we could do to help them earn more money for us. Then, a Bandai representative asked if we could make a new Dragon Ball animated series. But, as expected, Toriyama-san said that he didn’t want to write a new story.

So we talked it out with Bandai and we reached a conclusion. And what do I mean by this? Well, Dragon Ball was a big hit, and when the animated series began, after a while, it started catching up with the original serialization. But the thing is: the plot of the animated series cannot go beyond the comic it’s adapting. So we had no choice but to stretch the series out by doing things like turning one or two pages of comic material into 30 minutes of animated material.

That means that in a 30-minute episode, only five or ten minutes were adapted directly from the manga, and the rest had to be completely original material. In other words, some sections of the Dragon Ball animated series were nothing more than padding out the original comic. I saw the series numerous times, and when I saw it again when the DVD sets came out, I noticed that all those added scenes really ruined the pacing.

So I remembered that feeling and thought to myself: “What if we just cut out all the filler scenes and edited the series to make it more faithful to the original comic?” And when we tried doing that, we immediately noticed that the pacing was so much better. And we also took the opportunity to clean up and remaster the film. It didn’t look quite as good as something made nowadays, but it was much better, and the sound was completely re-recorded from scratch. This meant that things like sound effects or the voice actors’ lines were much cleaner. So we did that, and when the broadcast started, it was received quite well. And at the same time, Bandai also released a new card game and it was a really big hit, so everything turned out quite well.

That is how Dragon Ball Kai came to be and why we made it in the first place.

This brings us to the 2013 theatrical film, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods… which was in the works before Toriyama became involved!

Toriyama provided a new interview for the film’s theatrical guidebook, in which he describes how he came to learn about and become involved with the film:

I think it was around 2011? It all started when I came to Tokyo, and my first editor, Torishima-san, suddenly handed me the scenario and said, “read this!”… I guess? At that time I had no idea what it was, and when I asked Torishima-san what the scenario was for, I heard for the first time about how it was going to be made into an animated movie. (laughs)

…

Originally, I was only supposed to check over the scenario, but ended up doing more and more of all this other work. (laughs)

These changes included the revision of Beerus from a lizard that planted the seed of evil in Saiyans into his Egyptian/Cornish Rex-inspired design, Super Saiyan God from a bulky and caped hero into the streamlined form, scaling back the overwhelming “good vs. evil” scenario to one that included camaraderie and friendship, and even specific details such as changing the scenario from Kuririn and No. 18’s wedding to Bulma’s birthday party, as well as swapping in the Pilaf gang for what was originally going to be a random band of thieves.

From here, various films and story arcs within the Dragon Ball Super branding have been a combination of Toriyama-original ideas and Toriyama-scripted-by-editorial-suggestion… but that is a topic for another “Rumor Guide” entry!

It’s worth noting that even the (as of this article’s publication) forthcoming Dragon Ball Daima series — something heavily touted as having extreme involvement and attention to detail from Toriyama himself — was apparently another example of something not originally being from the man himself.

In Toriyama’s posthumously-released comment in support of his Tokyo Anime Award Festival 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award, he stated:

Apparently, Dragon Ball Daima, which will unfold starting in 2024, was originally supposed to be made as an anime-original series without my input, but as I gave advice here and there, I ended up getting majorly-involved. This time, I’ve created not only the story, but the world, the characters, the mechs, all sorts of things. It will be a smorgasbord of different things, and not just intense action, so I’ll be pleased if you can enjoy watching it.

The Evolution Factor

Knowing that the various partners can and have put Dragon Ball items into production with or without Toriyama’s involvement, you may be wondering how Dragon Ball Evolution fits into this picture. After all, the common assumption that Toriyama “made” Battle of Gods as a result of Evolution clearly isn’t true… so what is true?

The truth of the matter, as almost always in these situations, sits a little closer to the middle.

In the Japanese theatrical program for Evolution‘s original premiere in 2009, Toriyama provided the following comment (itself adapted from an earlier trailer comment):

As the creator, as far as the scenario and characterization are concerned, I get a feeling of “Whaa?”, but the director, everyone in the cast, and the crew on-set are ultra high-caliber.

Maybe it’s correct for both me and all the fans to appreciate this as a “new Dragon Ball” in a separate dimension.

With the power on-set, perhaps it will even have become a great masterpiece!

I am greatly anticipating it!!

It’s a fairly bog standard Japanese creator comment: overall positive, while not necessarily over-committal. It’s probably the best they could have asked for!

Things changed a few years later, where a newly-candid and emboldened Toriyama stated as part of his Battle of Gods theatrical program:

By the way, the battle scenes in the second half are particularly overwhelming! I was moved because the presentation exceeded my expectations. While I had expected, “It probably won’t be any good,” it was greatly different from a certain country’s live-action movie, which really was no good. Just as you’d expect, Japan’s animation is superb! Everyone on the staff, you really did a great job!!

Toriyama took it even further in an Asahi Shumbun Digital interview in support of Battle of Gods, where he stated:

Also, at the time of the Hollywood movie, the live-action Dragon Ball, the script had too little of a grasp on the world and its characteristics, and on top of that, it had a conventional content that I couldn’t find interesting, so I cautioned them, and suggested changes; but in spite of that, they seemed to have a strange confidence, and didn’t really listen to me. What came out in the end was a movie I couldn’t really call a Dragon Ball that lived up to my expectations.

That being the case, there were parts where I wanted to show some spine, with a world and story only the creator could draw.

It’s easy to see how things start being twisted from “Toriyama was not respected while working on Evolution” to “Toriyama made Battle of Gods because of Evolution!”… but that really isn’t the truth.

Toriyama’s scorn isn’t even necessarily restricted to things he had little involvement with. In his introductory comment for 2016’s Dragon Ball 30th Anniversary Super History Book, Toriyama stated:

I had put Dragon Ball behind me, but seeing how much that live-action film ticked me off, and how I revised that script for the anime movie, and complained about the quality of the TV anime, I suppose somewhere along the line it’s become a series I like too much to ever leave alone.

Here Toriyama is referring to Dragon Ball Evolution, then Battle of Gods, and then Dragon Ball Super.

Conclusion

Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods was already in the works at Toei Animation — without Akira Toriyama — with a separate scriptwriter and character designer. Due to external prodding, Toriyama came in, rewrote the script, redesigned the characters, and the rest is history.