On the 1st of March, the legendary renowned author of an ever-lasting franchise Dragon Ball, passed away due to acute subdural hematoma, as stated by multiple sources. Akira Toriyama’s death happened back in March 1, although it has only been reported as of 8th March. With a wave of mourning fans gathering in social media sites, forums and subreddits – a pivotal question comes into being – Will Dragon Ball continue now that Akira Toriyama is dead?
Will Dragon Ball Continue?
Before answering, we must lay some valid questions. Such as –
- Who owns the rights to Dragon Ball?
- Can Toei, Shueisha and Bandai Namco continue the Dragonball Franchise?
- What about the standalone Dragon Ball Daima which was being animated by Akira Toriyama’s own studio named Bird?
We will tackle these questions and hopefully answer them by the end of this article.
Information ; Dear Friends and Partnershttps://t.co/85dXseckzJ pic.twitter.com/aHlx8CGA2M
— DRAGON BALL OFFICIAL (@DB_official_en) March 8, 2024
To skip you the difficulties, we conclude by the end of this article that yes, Dragon Ball is likely to continue as a Game, as a Manga, and Anime, but Dragon Ball Daima is likely not to. We give some examples and reasons as to the same.
Differentiating Dragon Ball with and without Akira Toriyama
To answer the question, one needs to be introduced with one simple concept – mainly that Dragon Ball as a franchise can be mainly divided into early and later works. The later period (2000 and beyond, including the movies) was mostly the boon of TOEI Animation combined with Shueisha wanting to continue a franchise that already had in its grasp a majority of the Western audience. Perhaps no other series had taken hold of the Western audience as much as the English dub of Dragonball Z.
Today, Dragon Ball is not one series (Anime or Manga), but a composite of multiple works. Let us look at how many platforms it has been released into:
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As of today, Dragon Ball as a franchise has grown beyond Akira’s Penmenship. When trying to answer if Dragon Ball will continue, one must take into account “which parts of Dragon Ball exactly?”
- There are firstly, Game series such as the upcoming Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 4 or simply DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO.
- There is the Manga of Dragonball Super which is proceeding at quite an adequate pace.
- There have been announcements and gossip about a continuation season for Dragon Ball Super Anime.
- There is obviously a whole new set of English dubs spreading through Funimation in the West.
- And then there is Dragonball Daima, which was supposed to be Akira Toriyama listening to fans who said “We don’t want Dragonball Super, we want the original Dragonball back”. The reasons for this were many, the nerfed-down childish Goku whom a non-Super Saiyan Krillin could beat, being a major constituent.
Now who owns the right to Dragon Ball?
It seems that Dragon Ball as a franchise is not unified under one legal entity, and yet is divided into multiple fragments owned by different companies. We looked at the following credible forum discussion for hints.
- As of now, we do know that TOEI already has rights for animating mostly anything based on Dragonball.
- Shueisha holds the rights to the manga that are published in their published magazines.
- Bandai Namco holds the rights to produce games based on the series.
- Funimation holds the rights for English Dub distribution, primarily in the US. Although with Funimation and Crunchyroll merging, now the rights will probably transfer to Crunchyroll.
- However, Dragonball Daima was the work of Bird Studio, which is owned by Toriyama himself.
But to summarise, Shueisha is the primary rights holder for Dragon Ball, having established the Dragon Ball department. Toei possesses the anime rights, while Bandai handles merchandise, and so forth. Toriyama and Bird Studio do not possess the series in that capacity. Toriyama, as the creator, deserves credit, but he lacks control over the creative license.
Which parts of the Dragon Ball franchise will continue and which will not?
This leads us to answer the original question: how much influence will Akira Toriyama’s death have on multiple of these franchise parts? The main series taking a hit seems to be Dragon Ball Daima: and it is most likely that it will not continue.
The Dragon Ball games likely to continue
Now this is the major enquiry, primarily, how much was Akira involved in each of them? Because the deduction is simple – if the author had not been involved in any of the above-mentioned platforms of the franchise, it is more or less given that, that particular platform will continue.
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We do know for better or worse that the games were merely based on Akira Toriyama’s original story.
- For example the latest hit after Xenoverse 2, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot was the brainchild of writers Yasuhiro Noguchi, Shinsaku Sawamura and director Akihiro Anai combined with a lot of other producers and composers.
The gaming department in itself, is quite different from other fields such as Manga or Anime. Given that the games have already been in production even prior to Akira’s death, the license to do is not dependent upon the creator’s (in this case, the original creator of the story) death.
Bandai Namco likely won’t stop producing the games, and quite honestly they have no reason to do so to begin with.
What about Dragon Ball Super?
The manga of Dragonball Super is the child of Toyotaro who was doing the illustrations and the story was by Akira. There were occasions where Akira reportedly had stepped in during key manga chapters to help Toyotarou out, or so many sources claimed here and there.
The point being, it is likely that Dragonball Super will continue, firstly the manga and then its eventual anime adaptation. Given that both TOEI (for the Anime) and Shueisha (for the Manga) have creative license to work on it without Akira’s involvement. There are for example, multiple movies which did not involve creative writing by Akira. As such they can continue to employ other writers to compose more such works. Although whether such works will be considered ‘canon’ or not is quite up to a philosophical debate.
How much was Akira Toriyama involved in each of them?
A good investigation is whether Akira had passed down his intellectual property rights. The thing is, this is quite difficult to affirm. But we can draw some examples to say that Toriyama more or less had passed things down to three companies in this scenario. Akira was obviously also involved in other works besides Dragon Ball.
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The Astroboy and Berserk Example
Although technically a company (such as TOEI or SHUEISHA, or Even Bandai Namco) would require copyright permissions, how to permit copyright after the death of the author is not quite certain. The creator of Astroboy passed away in 1989, yet numerous movies and shows have emerged since then.
In fact, there were reports of a live-action Astroboy movie being in production as of three years ago. There is also the example of Pluto – a series by Netflix based on the author of the acclaimed Anime/Manga ‘Monster’, which is based on the Astroboy universe.
We also have an example of Berserk Manga being continued despite the author having passed away.
The Superman Example
At this point, we could draw towards the example of DC and Marvel. Typically, there is a creator who makes a certain character, and the publisher. The publisher could buy the rights to a character, which is what happened with Superman.
In a contract dated 1 March 1938, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster gave away the copyright to Superman to their employer, DC Comics (then known as Detective Comics, Inc.) prior to Superman’s first publication in April.
But Dragon Ball as a franchise has already been distributed with licensing to TOEI, Shueisha and Bandai Namco.
Dragon Ball Daima likely to not continue: here’s why
Akira Toriyama had recently been working on Dragon Ball: Daima, the trailer of which showed Akira being involved heavily with the character design, animation and story writing. This is in contrast to Dragon Ball Super which is mostly the child of Toyotaro and TOEI Animation wanting to extend the classical backing and audience base of Akira Toriyama’s Dragonball and Dragonball Z.
Now Dragon Ball Daima is the one taking the last straw. Firstly it was Akira’s own company, meaning all characters produced by the studio and their rights would belong to Akira. Almost every work by Studio Bird involved Akira heavily, relying less on other employees. Takashi Matsuyama is one of the only assistants with whom he worked closely.
Studio Bird was created way back in 1983, although it never garnered clout or heat enough to compete with corporate biggies (contemporary examples include Mappa and Madhouse, Ufotable, etc). Its most prominent works were on Dragon Quest games and series such as Sand Land, other than being heavily involved during the production of Dragon Ball Z movies, as sourced by Anime News Network. However given how Akira was about the only one working as his studio, it is more or less the same as saying Akira worked heavily during the production of DBZ movies.
Due to this very nature of Studio Bird, that Akira alone was heavily involved, leaves us feeling fearful that with him gone, the core of the studio is gone as well. Unless he had already passed on company rights, or found an heir to continue the studio, the major problem is that the studio itself could be disbanded.
Dragon Ball GT and Daima comparison steers strong
Notably, Dragonball GT was also considered a similar attempt as Dragon Ball Daima, which stood as an anime-only sequel and non-cannon ending to Dragonball Z way back in 1996.
For reasons many, fans think Dragon Ball Daima is GT 2. The reasons almost all simply come together into one main junction – that the trailer of Daima shows a ‘kid’ Goku and Vegeta, apparently made so due to some rare encounter with Shenron the wish-granting mythological dragon. One could more or less predict what Dragonball Daima would be afterwards, calling the parallels between GT and itself. What to take from this is mainly that Dragon Ball GT was never considered a canon.
With Akira Toriyama gone, even if Dragon Ball Daima is taken up by TOEI or even continued by Studio Bird alone, fans may never go on to consider it as a ‘canon’ and only see it as some stand-alone spin-off.
Concluding
Due to the nature of Bird Studio, with the mourning demise of Akira Toriyama, it seems a turbulent question of whether the studio itself will continue. As such, it is quite implicit in this scenario that Bird Studio and Dragon Ball Daima would require a saving grace to have any chance of continual. However, if Daima has already been produced comprising enough episodes for one season, then perhaps the first season itself could be broadcast. However, this seems only likely if TOEI steps in. If such changes do happen, we will keep you up to date. Thanks for reading!
SOURCES: Bandai Namco, Subreddit, Official Twitter,