Chainsaw Man Creator Redraws Classic Dragon Ball Cover

A classic Dragon Ball cover has been redrawn by Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto.

Scans of the new art were shared online by Shonen Jump News - Unofficial on Twitter. The cover is the fourth entry in publisher Shueisha's Dragon Ball Super Gallery Project, which tasks the creators of other popular manga series to redraw one of Akira Toriyama's classic Dragon Ball covers in their own style. A new cover will be revealed every month until Nov. 2024, when the franchise will celebrate the 40th anniversary of its original publication. The previous three artists to participate in the project were Naruto's Masashi Kishimoto, Bleach's Tite Kubo and Beelzebub creator Ryuhei Tamura.

The Chainsaw Man creator remade the cover to Dragon Ball's second volume, which features Goku and Bulma riding on some kind of bird-like creature. Fujimoto presents a different angle on the scene, along with a somewhat more realistic representation of the series' protagonists.

Fujimoto is best known for creating the surreal comedy-horror series, Chainsaw Man, which was first published in 2018. The critically acclaimed series was one fo the top 10 best-selling manga of 2021, despite being on a break for the year. The series takes place in a world where humans live alongside devils, and tells the story of Denji, a young man who is brutally murdered but comes back to life after making a pact with his chainsaw devil pet. The manga is currently being adapted into an anime series by MAPPA, the animation studio behind Yuri!!! on Ice and Attack on Titan: The Final Season. In addition to Chainsaw Man, Fujimoto is also known for the 2016 dystopian thriller Fire Punch, as well as the universally lauded one-shot manga Look Back, which was released earlier this year.

Dragon Ball originally debuted in 1984, and was created by artist and writer Akira Toriyama. The series has since become one of the most successful and influential anime and manga franchises of all time. It is the third best-selling manga series in history, with over 260 million copies in circulation worldwide, ranking just below Eiichiro Oda's equally celebrated One Piece and the long-running spy drama Golgo 13. The series' second anime adaptation, Dragon Ball Z, is widely credited with helping to popularize anime with mainstream audiences around the world during the late 1990s and early '00s. Goku's adventures continue to this day with the on-going Dragon Ball Super manga. The franchise release its latest theatrical feature, entitled Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, in 2022.

Source: Twitter