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New Translation: 1989 DBZ Anime Special “Dragon Call” Production Staff Comments
Published by 19 April 2016, 1:30 PM EDT

Following up on (and jumping backward from!) our translation of the “Super Anime-jin” roundtable discussion from the second Dragon Ball Z Anime Special “mook” (magazine/book) in 1991, today we are adding another translation to the archive: the “Dragon Call” column from the first Dragon Ball Z Anime Special in 1989.

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The column — whose title is a play on “Love Call”, Japanese-English phrase for expressing your heartfelt feelings towards someone or something — features comments from eight key production staff members:

  • Kenji Shimizu, Fuji TV Production
  • Keizō Shichijō, Planning
  • Kōzō Morishita, Planning
  • Takao Koyama, Series Organizer / Scenario Writer
  • Daisuke Nishio, Series Director
  • Minoru Maeda, Chief Animator
  • Minoru Okazaki, Episode Director
  • Yūji Ikeda, Chief Designer

The “mook” itself was released 04 October 1989, and the staff look forward to the major changes coming to the anime with the introduction of Vegeta and Nappa.

With regard to Toriyama’s writing style and comedic timing, Series Organizer & Scenario Writer Takao Koyama stated:

In terms of the way of making the gags as well, I do escalating gags, or rather, I make each gag run into the next, one after another, but Toriyama-sensei‘s gags, on the other hand, are more restrained, and good at getting you at just the right point. So, at the time of Dr. Slump, I was taught by Shichijō-san that “you don’t have to force the laughs”, and that was just an incredible culture-shock.

Similar to comments he would echo two years later, Chief Animator Minoru Maeda commented on his difficulties with drawing Piccolo, and how that contrasted with drawing Goku at the time:

Even so, I couldn’t draw Ma Junior well (laughs), and as a result, he left an unexpectedly weak impression. I suppose the reason why Goku is easy to draw in contrast to that might be because I’m obsessed with how to express Goku’s manliness.

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW TRANSLATION

This interview has been archived in our “Translations” section.

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