March 2024 Toyotarō Interview (21 March 2024)

Yes! I still don’t have a lot of time to play, but I want to start playing more!

I want to give the drawing a feeling of depth, so instead of using animation paint, I instead went for a brush paint. I was asked to draw a picture of Ultra Instinct “Omen”, so to match the “feel” of that form, I drew everything, including the aura.

I tried to look for a pose that I hadn’t used before but that also conveyed a sense of solemnity. I started by trying to draw him like he was just about to start the Kamehameha pose, and it hit all the boxes I was looking for, so I just went with that. In the first draft, his legs were touching the ground, but I realized that it gave him a much more solemn look if I made him float, so I changed it. As a result, you don’t really associate this pose with the Kamehameha one, but I think it ended up as something that’s both mysterious and solemn.

I generally always like to both ink and do the final touches, so those were my favorite parts this time around, too. I thoroughly enjoy the feeling of dipping the pen in ink and then moving it through paper, so I will use analog drawing forever. Oh, but I also really liked to put that final blue glow. That’s when the illustration really comes together. I love it.

You could, obviously, try to see who’s the strongest, but I think what’s really interesting is trying to look out for the differences in their fighting styles and ways of thinking! Please see it for yourselves in the magazine!

Chapters 88-90 were a sort of prologue that I wanted to do, which I then drew after Toriyama-sensei revised it. Afterwards, in chapters 91-100, you obviously get the main material already present in the movie, and then the epilogue in chapters 101-103 was based on a scenario that I asked Toriyama-sensei to write. I revised a few bits of dialogue and some story beats here and there, but for the most part, the content is as Toriyama-sensei envisioned it. I’m incredibly thankful that I got to draw this story arc to its conclusion. Please enjoy the manga version of the “Super Hero Arc,” which has a bit of a different feel from the movie version!