Todd Blankenship
herms98.bsky.social
Todd Blankenship
@herms98.bsky.social
Pinned
It’s November 20th in Japan, which means Dragon Ball has officially reached its 40th anniversary. In case you weren’t paying attention and/or born at the time, here are some highlights from the first 40 years of DB history… #DragonBall40th
While the DBS manga remains on hiatus, next month’s V-Jump will include a special poster by Toyotaro celebrating the 10th anniversary of the manga’s debut (plus a DB Legends 7th anniversary card). But again, no new chapter next month.
May 20, 2025 at 3:14 PM
With Daima done and Kinnikuman between seasons, I’ll be taking a social media hiatus for awhile. Take care everyone.
April 11, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Kinnikuman Perfect Origin Arc, ep.22: a great end to the Warsman/Polarman fight, and a somewhat abrupt but still good end to the season as a whole. See you again in Season 3! Whenever that is… #Kinnikuman #ep22
April 4, 2025 at 2:53 PM
I thought DBS vol.24’s “Toriyama’s World Forever” image looked familiar, and sure enough it’s a collage of Toyotaro’s past drawings from his monthly “Toyotaro Drew It” column, which has featured many of Toriyama’s non-DB characters. Thanks to Magnificent Ponta for pointing this out.
April 3, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Toyotaro’s postscript for DBS vol.24 details the creation process of the ch.104 one-shot: originally this was a text prologue he got from Toriyama, which he revised and put into manga form. And now the Super Hero arc is really, truly done: “Look forward to future developments!”
April 3, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Kinnikuman Perfect Origin Arc, ep.20-21: personal tragedy makes for a nice pair of episodes, first with Robin going under, then with Warsman’s origin (adapted from a side-story rather than the manga’s Perfect Origin Arc, this might be the best ep yet) #Kinnikuman #ep20 #ep21
March 27, 2025 at 4:10 PM
This month’s V-Jump notes that the DBS manga will still be on hiatus next month. Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG Stories is likewise on hiatus but scheduled to start up again in the “July” issue (ie next next issue, due out in May)…so implicitly DBS isn’t scheduled to be in that issue either.
March 19, 2025 at 12:46 AM
In 1995’s Shenlong Times 2, Toriyama had a roundtable discussion with his three editors over the course of DB. He mentions how Yu Kondo critiqued Cell’s first two forms, and how earlier Kazuhiko Torishima had called him up to do the same for the androids. www.kanzenshuu.com/translations...
March 13, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Back in February, Daima’s executive producer Akio Iyoku was interviewed on the site Mantan Web. The article writer (not Iyoku himself) said how DB has “developed many different stories”, while Iyoku called Daima a direct continuation of the Buu arc. mantan-web.jp/article/2025...
March 8, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Dragon Ball Daima, eps.1~20: the production quality is consistently excellent, with fun new characters like Kuu and Duu (and underutilized ones like Degesu), a great spirit of adventure, but a repetitive final battle and somewhat slow pace throughout. 2.4/3 Demon Worlds. #DAIMA
March 7, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Actually, I think there might be an answer after all: the red letters hinted at Daima having 20 episodes (before this was announced), and ep20 aired near midnight right before March 1st, the anniversary of Toriyama’s passing. Were the letters meant to point towards this tribute?
Later today I’ll post my overly long Daima general review/wrap-up thread, but before that: I’ve officially thrown in the towel on extracting any message from the episode titles’ red letters. As I feared, it was simply about using all 20 dakuten letters and nothing more. #DAIMA
March 7, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Later today I’ll post my overly long Daima general review/wrap-up thread, but before that: I’ve officially thrown in the towel on extracting any message from the episode titles’ red letters. As I feared, it was simply about using all 20 dakuten letters and nothing more. #DAIMA
March 7, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Kinnikuman Perfect Origin Arc, ep.18-19: the central fight of Season 2 along with the origin myth that has now become the cornerstone of Kinnikuman lore. The latter is a bit shortened, but on the flipside we get a neat extended Robin flashback. RIP GR. #Kinnikuman #ep18 #ep19
March 5, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Doddorusie in katakana is ドッドルシー. Remove the extra ドッ and you get ドルシー/dorushī/dorusie, which is an anagram of シールド/shīrudo/shield. Neva says this chant when removing the light shields. So dorusie=shield. I really should’ve figured this out weeks ago.
March 1, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Dragon Ball Daima, ep.20: it’s the end, but the moment has been prepared for. The fight with Gomah is samey but looks amazing and is over soon enough for Kuu to ascend the Iron Throne, plus other fun wrap-up stuff. Thanks for everything Toriyama, and farewell. #DAIMA #ep20
February 28, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Kinnikuman Perfect Origin Arc, ep.16-17: hands down the saddest slinky death scene you’ll ever see. The overall animation quality feels below Season 1, but there’s still plenty of movement in the tag team attacks, and the voice work is uniformly great. #Kinnikuman #ep16 #ep17
February 26, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Thanks to the Super Warrior Sticker series, we now know that the official name for Gomah’s giant form is…Giant Gomah (ジャイアントゴマー). I’m certainly glad that’s finally settled. en.dragon-ball-official.com/news/01_3257...
February 24, 2025 at 1:12 AM
Dragon Ball Daima, ep.19: it’s nice seeing (and hearing) the cast as adults again, and Glorio gets some good moments triple-crossing Arinsu. Buff Gomah is beyond repetitive, but we finally get adult Super Saiyan 3 and 4. Plus more interesting facts about Vegeta. #DAIMA #ep19
February 21, 2025 at 8:50 PM
I’ve been doing threads on Kinnikuman Season 2 in two episode chunks, but this time around I’ll have to postpone and cover episodes 16, 17, and 18 all next week. #Kinnikuman
February 20, 2025 at 5:05 PM
In V-Jump, the final page of DBS ch.104 concludes with おわり/“The End”, and the preview for next issue gives no indication that it will contain a new DBS chapter. Viz’s English release though ends with “to be continued”
February 19, 2025 at 11:19 PM
Dragon Ball Daima, ep.18: Goku does some killer GT cosplay, which ultimately doesn’t matter because Gomah goes giant, which doesn’t really matter either, because red Porunga is all-powerful. Hard to take it all in, but the visuals sure are topnotch. #DAIMA #ep18
February 14, 2025 at 9:50 PM
#dbspoilers

The roughs are out for DBS ch.104, the special one-shot “Birth of Saiyaman X!” Earth faces a new threat: aliens hellbent on dirtying up the planet so it’ll be easy for them to live on. But a gold deck-brush wielding hero comes to the rescue. dragon-ball-official.com/news/01_3222...
February 13, 2025 at 1:48 AM
Executive producer Akio Iyoku discusses Daima’s origin: 6 years ago during DBS: Super Hero’s production, they decided to do a new TV series. At first Toriyama’s involvement was going to be minimal, but he really got into it and ended up creating most of it. mantan-web.jp/article/2025...
February 11, 2025 at 1:14 AM
Dragon Ball Daima, ep.17: Gomah does his best Jiren impression, while Kuu+Duu make the switch from enemy to ally in record time. It’s great seeing everybody (even the Tamagami) fighting together, but I would’ve liked a bit more of the Goku/Duu 1-on-1 fight. #DAIMA #ep17
February 7, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Kinnikuman Perfect Origin Arc, ep.14-15: Black Hole’s summoning of Pentagon looks pretty cool! The end of the Ramenman/Marvelous fight…doesn’t. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. Isn’t that what wrestling’s all about? #Kinnikuman #ep14 #ep15
February 6, 2025 at 4:15 PM