Summary
Jujutsu Kaisen creator Gege Akutami has put his own spin on the iconic Dragon Ball manga cover for issue #41, as part of the Dragon Ball Super Gallery Project. Akutami’s cover art, depicting Buu smiling at Piccolo, was featured on the back cover of the November 2023 issue of Saikyo Jump. The Dragon Ball Super Gallery project involved various mangakas redesigning the covers of tankoban volumes of the series each month, with Akutami being the 28th artist to participate.
In an interesting addition to Dragon ball Super project showroom, Jujutsu Kaisen creator Gege Akutami gets the chance to showcase his iconic manga. While Akutami and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama have very different creative minds, they both share a love and skill for depicting deliciously engaging fight scenes.
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Dragon Ball, Jujutsu Kaisen author Gege Akutami has redrawn the cover of Dragon Ball volume #41. Akutami’s finished work appears on the back cover of the November 2023 issue of Saikyo Jump. Saikyo Jump is the sister publication of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. You can see the cover depicting Buu laughing at Piccolo in a post by user X Shonen Jump News.
Saikyo Jump launched the Dragon Ball Super Gallery in August 2021 to celebrate the series’ upcoming 40th anniversary in November 2024. According to Dragon Ball Wiki, Akutami talked about his interest in Dragon Ball and the opportunity to join the Dragon Ball Super Gallery:
Whenever I went to a pub that a friend of my dad’s used to run, the only reason I could wait for the adults to drink without a peep was because they had it all. Dragon Ball volumes are available to read. To think that, 25 years later, I could be involved in a project like this fills me with such profound emotions that I think it transcends the concept of “profound” at this point.
Manga artists unite to celebrate Dragon Ball
Each month, over the 40-month period from the start to the end of the project, a different mangaka will present their interpretation of the Dragon Ball Tankoban volume cover. These volumes, printed in 2009, were themselves updates to the original 1990s volume 42 covers. It is important to note that due to Dragon Ball’s distribution in the United States dividing the original story into Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z – the episode numbering for Dragon Ball Super Gallery is different. For example, the redrawn cover of Dragon Ball Volume #17 for American fans is the redrawn cover of Dragon Ball Z Volume #1.
General preferences for fighters and facial expressions
The index of creators and artists who have participated in the project reads like a list of the best and brightest in the manga industry. The first entry in the project was submitted by none other than Naruto/Boruto creator Masashi Kishimoto. Other notable characters who have participated in the project include Demon Slayer’s Koyohru Gotouge, Spy x Family’s Tatsuya Endo, and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure’s Hirohiko Araki.
For fans of fighting manga, few participants are more appealing than Akutami. This is because Akutami and Toriyama are two of the best in the business when it comes to visually recreating fights and the facial expressions of fighters. So, even without the cover redrawing, comparisons between the two have long been a topic of discussion among their fandoms.
Akutami is the 28th mangaka to contribute to the project, meaning he only has 15 covers left to choose from. However, the covers of Volume #30 (DBZ Volume #14) and Volume #41 (DBZ Volume #25) seem particularly suitable for comparison. Akutami ended up taking the cover of Volume #41 and taking it in a much different direction than Toriyama’s classic 3×3 character portraits. Currently, fans of both Dragon ball And Jujutsu Kaisen it will finally be possible to compare the artistic expressions of both creators – side by side.
Source: Shonen Jump News, Dragon Ball Wiki
Super Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball Super is a sequel to the original Dragon Ball series as well as the fan-favorite Dragon Ball Z anime. Dragon Ball Super takes place ten years after the defeat of Majin Buu and follows Goku and his friends on all-new adventures. Like previous seasons, Dragon Ball Super was praised throughout its 131 episodes.
