Toyotarou

Toyotarou is the official artist of the Dragon Ball Super manga, the ongoing serialized retelling and expansion of the Super anime era. He joined Shueisha in 2012 after asking directly for the job, and he landed the Super assignment only after drawing two sample pages that Akira Toriyama personally approved. From the God of Destruction Beerus arc through the Tournament of Power, Moro, Granolah, and beyond, the monthly manga has been his responsibility, often running ahead of or alongside the anime and sometimes telling meaningfully different versions of the same story.

Before Super, he drew Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission, a spin off tied to the arcade card game, and created the manga adaptation of the 2015 film Resurrection F. He has also drawn Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 The Manga and the Dragon Ball Super Divers manga, anchoring him as one of the most visible living Dragon Ball artists working today.

Toyotarou was a Dragon Ball obsessive long before any paycheck was involved. He has said he drew Dragon Ball characters after breakfast as a kid, and he is widely believed to be the artist who previously worked under another name in doujinshi circles, most famously credited with a fan made Dragon Ball AF project around the year 2000. That background shows in his polished grasp of Toriyama's shapes, expressions, and posing, a pastiche sharp enough that Toriyama himself signed off on it.

As of the Universe Survival Saga he also took on character design duties for Dragon Ball Super, sometimes working solo and sometimes collaborating with Toriyama on final looks. The list of designs he contributed is deep: the Gods of Destruction Belmod, Heles, Rumsshi, Liquiir, Giin, Arak, and Mule, along with the angels' world, plus headline new characters like Merus, Moro, and the sniper Saiyan Granolah, whom Toyotarou has called his favorite design he has ever come up with.

Beyond the main manga, Toyotarou runs a long running series of promotional illustrations on the official Dragon Ball website, often credited as Toyotarou Drew It, spotlighting obscure characters who never really appeared in Super. Over time he has redrawn Android 8, Launch, Tambourine, Tapion, Super Janemba, Bardock, Paragus, Broly, Zarbon, Pikkon, Colonel Silver, and dozens more, turning the feature into a love letter to deep cut Dragon Ball lore.

He has named the Frieza first Super Saiyan moment as his favorite scene in the franchise and the Galactic Patrol Prisoner finale as his favorite battle to draw. With Toriyama gone, Toyotarou now stands as the most direct steward of the Dragon Ball manga line, a former fan artist entrusted with keeping Goku and Vegeta on the page.