Articles
Dragon Ball Producer Finally Explains What Happened With Daima’s Lackluster Finale
Dragon Ball Daima might have started out strong, but it ended in a much weaker way than fans had been hoping for. The creative team behind it all has finally explained why, and it all came down to some poor planning for the anime’s release overall. Dragon Ball Daima was released to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the late Akira Toriyama’s original manga making its debut with Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. The series features the final story crafted by Toriyama himself, and ended up being a huge part of the canon as it takes place in between Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super.
But in the months since Dragon Ball Daima came to an end, the creative team behind the franchise has steadily revealed aspects about its production that have made things a lot clearer. Like the fact that it was originally going to be a project without Toriyama’s direct involvement, or that it was made with Dragon Ball GT in mind. But as the creative team behind it all talked about the finale itself (as spotted by @Venixys on X), it turns out that Dragon Ball Daima‘s story was really written as it was going on.
Dragon Ball Daima Team Talks Weaker Finale
As part of the commentary for Dragon Ball Daima‘s Blu-ray release in Japan, producer for the franchise Akio Iyoku explained that the story for the anime wasn’t completely done when it first began, “…in reality, the story wasn’t complete from the start when anime production began.” The producer continued with, “We had received about half of the original story, maybe up to Episode 9 or 10. And then, while production was already underway, we received the scripts from Toriyama-sensei for Episodes 10 onward and made those.”
“Since that’s how it went, we worked through production with a bit of nerves and suspense,” Iyoku explained of the situation before mentioning he was surprised in the direction the anime went, “Honestly, I didn’t think the story would go in this direction…” As Iyoku continued, he also revealed that the team worked on the finale itself over and over in order to better fit the flow as it really all seemed to be coming together as the episodes themselves were being developed.
What Actually Happened With Dragon Ball Daima’s Ending?
“As for the flow of the finale, we really redid it over and over. We were put to the test in finding the best sequence and content,” Iyoku revealed. But while the producer couldn’t go into too many details about how Dragon Ball Daima‘s finale almost ended differently, he did confirm that it did look different than he expected, “No, actually, for this part of the story — who would do what and the order of events — we changed those quite a bit, so that wasn’t the plan for the start.”
There were a ton of missed opportunities that Dragon Ball Daima didn’t capitalize on when it all came to an end, such as never following up on that tease about the Fusion Bug, and it all begins to make more sense as to why as Toriyama really was just crafting the story as they were making it. Rather than the anime team having a complete story to work through with each of its episodes, they were figuring out how the story was going as they were putting it together. With that context, the weaker ending is a little more forgivable.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
The post Dragon Ball Producer Finally Explains What Happened With Daima’s Lackluster Finale appeared first on ComicBook.com.
