From the beginning, the main motive of Dragon Ball has always been the best possible portrayal of battles and fights between the vast array of characters that have been featured in the series. However, along with the fights, the series also carries a balanced proportion of humor, excitement, satisfaction, and happiness.
While these combinations of themes have kept Dragon Ball on top, Akira Toriyama, the creator of the series, once revealed that there was one Dragon Ball movie that he felt was too battle-focused and did not give much attention to other themes of the series. This movie was Dragon Ball Super: Broly, and it was released in 2018.
This is also the reason why he chose to take a different route with Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero and make it lighter by focusing more on traditional aspects like daily life situations. This also helped Toriyama take a little time off from drawing battle and action sequences more and more.
Akira Toriyama’s Opinion About Dragon Ball Super: Broly
An interview with the Dragon Ball creator was included in the Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero movie pamphlet during the release of the movie in 2022 and it was later translated by @Herms98 on X. In this interview, Toriyama was asked about what he felt when he was asked for a follow-up to Dragon Ball Super: Broly and what was on his mind while he supervised it.
Toriyama stated:
The previous film, “Broly”, focused on battles of next-level strength. If we had just kept going on like that and made the next movie another battle film, it seemed like we would lose Dragon Ball’s cheerful spirit. So this time around, I figured I should return things to a somewhat lighter route, with character-based daily life, which is then threatened by a crisis which results in a big battle.
According to the mangaka, Dragon Ball Super: Broly was entirely based around the different forms of battles that featured in the movies, including characters like Goku, Vegeta, and Broly. If they had followed the same pattern with Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, they would have lost the jolly nature of the Dragon Ball narrative.
Akira Toriyama Was Moved By Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero
While talking about the narrative of Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Akira Toriyama mentioned that although the team focused more on the cheerful and daily life scenarios in the movie, these aspects helped in creating a profound experience in terms of battle scenes in the traditional Dragon Ball sense.
Toriyama revealed:
Those battle scenes are wonderful, as is traditional in this series, and I’m always very moved by them. Thanks to that, I can just write “and now these two characters have a big battle” in the original script, and rest easy knowing that this will get turned into an incredible battle. Naturally, this time around the battles are more amazing than ever. You won’t be able to take your eyes off them!
The manga creator revealed that, although he was not the one who created the battle and action sequences in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, he was proud of them.
And he was right about that, as the movie became the second-highest-grossing Dragon Ball film to date and earned a lot of fame and recognition.
You can watch the Dragon Ball movies on Crunchyroll.
