Quotes

I'd want to be born once more as myself, but more talented.

I'm a lazy person, but if I'm not absent-mindedly doing something, I can't really relax. I can't just veg out.

I use a G-Pen from Zebra. Different people have different preferred pen nibs. I don't put much force on it when I draw, so I'll generally use a single nib for about three chapters.

I think comics are faster to draw with a pen and then fill and tone by computer. But my illustrations are all done via computer. I even draw the lines on a tablet.

After graduating from high school, I worked at an advertising agency as a designer. After I left, I spent a year doing nothing in particular. At age 23, I drew my first comic.

Inside me, 'Dragon Ball' became a thing of the past, but later, I got upset at the live-action film, revised the script for the anime film, and complained about the quality of the TV anime. I guess, at some point, it became a work that I like so much that I can't leave it alone.

In manga, nothing actually moves, and you just have to draw the poses in each panel, but in anime, you have to draw the movements between those poses.

There's how, basically, Son Goku from 'Dragon Ball' doesn't fight for the sake of others but because he wants to fight against strong guys. So once 'Dragon Ball' got animated, at any rate, I've always been dissatisfied with the 'righteous hero'-type portrayal they gave him.

Saiyans don't have much of a concept of 'family.'

I wanted to change up the tempo and setting of my comics in the sense of giving them some variety, for one thing. So where, for 'Slump,' the art was very America-esque, in the case of 'Dragon Ball,' I made it as Chinese as could be.

There have been times when I didn't quite make my deadline.

It's a secret, but when I decided to apply to 'Shonen Magazine,' it was already past the deadline, so I had no choice but to go with 'Shonen Jump.' My motivation for becoming a cartoonist was... to put it bluntly, the ¥100,000 prize money.

I really like the story of Bardock, Goku's father. It's quite dramatic and the kind of story I absolutely wouldn't draw if it were me. It was like watching a different kind of 'Dragon Ball' in a good way, so I thought it was nice.

With things like 'Dragon Ball,' in the case of fight scenes, I'd take the panel layout across two pages when the book is opened and alter it by angling them, and making them bigger or smaller, to give movement to the panels themselves.

With manga, in my art style, I don't do much in the way of techniques to create depth. But even though I don't do depth techniques through my art, I am conscious of depth itself.

I am not at all particular about things like hair styles and colors. Especially with women, changing their hairstyle or color is a bit too commonplace, don't you think?

Basically, I'm always coming up with ideas for mixing the things I want to draw with things targeted at children.

When I got into the second half of 'Dragon Ball,' I had already become more interested in thinking up the story then in drawing the pictures. Then I started to not place much emphasis on the pictures.

It was very easy to convince me to take on the job of character designer for 'Dragon Quest.'

I'm not good at doing the same thing over and over again.

Designing characters for 'Dragon Quest' is fun but difficult work.

I'm personally not terribly interested in designing wholesome characters, so I don't have many variations to offer.

Since I'm a contrarian, I don't want to go along with what everyone else thinks.

I guess I like Piccolo the most after all. Out of all the enemies, Piccolo Daimao is the one I like most, and even after that, I like Piccolo the most.

I like Piccolo about the same as I like Goku.