Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama's last contribution to the manga was a drawing of Piccolo waving goodbye, and fans couldn't have asked for a better send-off
Mar. 28, 2024It’s included in the latest issue of Dragon Ball Super
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On the page, Goku, Gohan, and Piccolo arrive to collect Pan, Goku’s young granddaughter from kindergarten. As they walk away, Piccolo turns and offers a friendly wave that appears to be to the reader. As several posters have pointed out it feels, touchingly, like a farewell from Akira Toriyama himself.
The page draws extra resonance as it is known that former villain Piccolo was Toriyama’s favorite character in the long-running series.
While Toriyama stopped drawing full pages some years ago, he continued to write Dragon Ball Super, while also providing guidance and artistic corrections to his successor, fellow mangaka Toyotarou. Toyotarou has since confirmedon his own Twitterthat the addition of Piccolo turning and waving is indeed one such alteration, sketched in by Toriyama himself. You can see his corrections in the tweet below.
The page also included a tribute attributed to the English language team on Dragon Ball Super. It reads: “We’re all deeply saddened by the news of Toriyama sensei’s passing. His work is an inspiration to us all. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends, and all the fans who were touched by his work.”
A notice on the side of the page explains that the series will be on hiatus after April’s issue, though it doesn’t say how long for.
Meanwhile, another Toriyama project, Sand Land, has recently made its debut as an anime series,quickly gaining high praise from fans and critics. That show is streaming now onDisneyPlus and Hulu.
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Will Salmon is the Comics Editor for GamesRadar/Newsarama. He has been writing about comics, film, TV, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he has previously launched scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for over a decade. He sometimes feels very old, like Guy Pearce in Prometheus. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places and he runs the micro-label Modern Aviation, which puts out experimental music on cassette tape.
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