Dragon Ball Director Wanted Fans to See New Anime as Buu Saga Sequel

Dragon Ball DAIMA’s clear position in the Dragon Ball timeline has finally been revealed by the series’ director and producer. Akio Iyoku, owner of Capsule Corp Tokyo and longtime editor of Akira Toriyama, confirmed, alongside director Yoshitaka Yashima that DAIMA is, in fact, a direct and canonical follow-up to DBZ’s “Buu Saga.”

In newly translated commentary included in the Dragon Ball DAIMA Blu-ray box set, series co-directors Aya Komaki, Yoshitaka Yashima and producer Akio Iyoku spoke about the creation of the latest Dragon Ball anime. As the group dissected the fan-favorite introductory sequence depicting classic DBZ scenes from the “Buu Saga,” they inevitably explained why the staff felt including those scenes was necessary to begin with. Ultimately, it was to properly convey to both new and veteran Dragon Ball fans alike that DAIMA is a proper “Buu Saga” sequel in the truest sense.

Dragon Ball Exec Confirms That Akira Toriyama Intended DAIMA to Connect to DBZ’s Buu Saga

Dragon Ball DAIMA’s timeline starts in the aftermath of the “Buu Saga,” and the first episode of the anime conveys this in a very specific way. Viewers see important events from the “Buu Saga” taking place on a screen which is being watched by Demon King Gomah and his loyal subject, Degesu. The anime staff took great pains to recreate these scenes both accurately and with a more modernized flair, which Aya Komaki hoped would make DAIMA feel like a “new Dragon Ball.” However, it wasn’t just about the aesthetic.

In the discussion, Iyoku goes on to explain that one of the main purposes of this introductory sequence in DAIMA “was to convey that it connects directly after the Buu saga.” Iyoku confirms that, according to Dragon Ball DAIMA co-director Yoshitaka Yashima, DAIMA is meant to follow right after the “Buu Saga.” As Yashima would further add, “Reading the sensei’s original outline, I understood that it was set after the “Majin Buu” saga, but honestly, I was still wondering how it would really unfold afterward – since the sensei’s outline only went halfway – what kind of story would take shape.”

This is further corroborated by Iyoku during the commentary for Dragon Ball DAIMA Episode 20. “The story wasn’t complete from the start when anime production began,” he said. “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.”

As a direct “Buu Saga” sequel, this would place Dragon Ball DAIMA just before Dragon Ball Super in the overall Dragon Ball chronology. While this fact seemed obvious due to storyline clues, the lack of a Super Saiyan 4 Goku or Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta in Dragon Ball Super has contributed to ongoing debate about how DAIMA and DBS fit together. However, importantly, Akira Toriyama wrote and detailed the entire script of Dragon Ball DAIMA himself, proving this story to be as canonical as any.

Given the combination of in-story cues, Toriyama’s own personal involvement in writing the storyline and the director’s statements, it’s clearer than ever that Dragon Ball DAIMA is the most canonical continuation of the story after DBZ’s “Buu Saga.” At this point, it’s up to Dragon Ball Super to prove where it fits into Dragon Ball DAIMA’s sequence of events, and not the other way around.