Scriptwriter King Ryū recently announced via his personal “Behind the Mask” website that Toei Animation has charged him with the responsibility of series composition for the Dragon Ball Super TV series beginning with the “God of Destruction Champa” story arc.
King Ryū is in charge of series composition for the new chapter, the God of Destruction Champa story arc:
Thank you for supporting King Ryū all this time.
A lot has happened, and so for the duration of this new chapter, the “God of Destruction Champa Arc” (*from beginning to end), King Ryū will be in charge of series composition.
After the “Battle of Gods” and “Revival of ‘F'” story arcs, which were based on movies, this “God of Destruction Champa” story arc will be the start of a totally new work. Both the story and characters spring from Akira Toriyama-sensei’s pen, a Dragon Ball nobody has ever seen before. In order to be faithful to the scenario sensei has given us, and also to make an anime series that everyone can enjoy, I shall do my very best to make this series together with director [Kimitoshi] Chioka.
The first episode of the “God of Destruction Champa arc” (episode 28) airs 24 January 2016.
Thank you all very much.
King Ryū is the pen name of an unknown scriptwriter for the Japan Creative Management Company. He made his debut as a scriptwriter in 2014 for Marvel’s Disk Wars: Avengers, eventually being appointed the role of series composer. Following the finale of Disk Wars in March 2015, King Ryū was hired as a script writer for Dragon Ball Super, writing the script for the second episode and numerous others following that. With this announcement, it is no surprise that King Ryū is currently listed as the scriptwriter for six of the first seven episodes of the “God of Destruction Champa” story arc.
When Dragon Ball Super debuted in July 2015 it did not have a series composer, as is common with most TV series adaptations. While the series composer is typically responsible for determining and establishing the overall plot of the series, it appears, as King Ryū mentions, that the first two story arcs were merely based on the movies and therefore there was no need for a series composer. It should be noted that as of this post King Ryū has not been officially credited as the series composer in the TV series.
Thanks to Sodhi and JacobYBM for giving us the heads up.
UPDATE: King Ryū’s blog post announcing his appointment as series composer has since been removed.
4 Comments
I think Toriyama’s involvement with the 1st 2 arcs was limited to the major plot points like Vegeta reaching Ssjb on his own rather then using the ritual.
However that could’ve been something that was going to be mentioned during the tournament but they decided to move it up to keep things fresh.
I like that this probably means that there is at least a vision going on. The Golden Freeza Arc was pretty good, but a lot of plotpoints (Ginyu, Gotenks etc) were set up right, but then the next episode sort of removed the whole thing completely again, making it pretty meaningless. At least now things are set up and are at least paid off in a later episode. 🙂
” (…) with the implication that original author Akira Toriyama had little to no involvement with the TV adaptations of the recent theatrical films he had written.”
This confirms it, but it wasn’t really that hard to figure out. Toriyama’s said multiple times before that he doesn’t like to dwell in the past and that he doesn’t even like to re-read what he wrote before, so for him to take scripts he wrote a mere two years ago and rewrite them himself seems extremely out-of-character for him.
Then again, on the message revealed back at the Super showcase event, Toriyama wrote:
““Dragon Ball Super” is a complete continuation of the Majin Boo story arc. It’s got a bit of post-battle aftermath, continues with the “Battle of Gods” arc where the God of Destruction Beerus appears (…)”
If he specifically mentions a “post-battle aftermath”, then it’s possible he had some involvement with the original episodes preceding both the Battle of Gods arc and the “Resurrection F” arc, even if with nothing more than general ideas and/or rough drafts. I honestly think he wouldn’t make that specific reference if he had no involvement whatsoever with those particular episodes, however minor that involvement might have been. If he hadn’t, he would probably just talk about the new material he wrote, perhaps while making a passing reference that the recent movies were also being adapted for television.
I have a question, if the first 2 arcs are based on the movies which is why they didn’t need a series composer, why did the original DB, DBZ, and DBKai anime series need series composers? They were based on the original manga, like Super was based on the 2 movies, and they followed the manga much more closer than Super did with the movies.