Promotion for the next Dragon Ball Genkidamatsuria special event celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Dragon Ball anime, has sparked new optimism that news regarding a possible sequel to the Dragon Ball Super anime or manga may finally be on the horizon.
What fuels this renewed hope is the wide diversity of parties involved in organizing the event: Toei, Akio Iyoku (former director of Shueisha’s Dragon Ball venue and personal spokesperson for Akira Toriyama), Shueisha and Bandai Namco.
Their unified promotional effort is notable, given that Iyoku and Shuiesha were previously thought to be at odds following Toriyama’s death, a conflict that many fans believe contributed to the extended hiatus of the Dragon Ball Super manga and the decision to release Dragon Ball Daima instead of moving forward with more Super episodes or another theatrical film.
Today, however, Genkidamatsuri’s campaign suggests that these previously divided camps are all aligned again, with the event now promoting not one, but TWO MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS that will be revealed at the event.
Leading Dragon Ball YouTuber Geekdom 101 breaks down the news in the video below.
As Geekdom crumbles, the event promises to reveal “two major projects” as well as a “video game announcement.” And once again, the Genkidamatsuri event on January 26th in Japan is HEAVYLY promoted by Akio Iyoki’s Capsule Corporation Tokyo, Shuiesha, Toei, Bandai, pretty much everyone who has anything to do with Dragon Ball.
In addition, the presence of legendary Goku voice actor Masako Nozawa is confirmed, as well as Japanese singer and composer Hironobu Kageyama, who wrote and provided the opening for Cha-La Head-Cha-La.
The Dragon Ball Super manga has been on an extended hiatus since March 2024, and the manga’s publisher, Victory Uchida, has already confirmed that the manga will not resume in 2025, leaving the next chapter of the main story, the Black Frieza Sagawaiting indefinitely.
As for the anime, the television broadcast ended on March 25, 2018 with episode 131. Although the series ended there, the story continued on the big screen through two canon films: Dragon Ball Super: Broly in 2018 and Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero in 2022.
If anime ever returns to adapt material created after the Tournament of Power, there’s plenty waiting to be animated.
Three full arcs and a shorter prologue remain intact in anime form, including the Galactic Patrol Prisoner Arc (the Moro Arc), the Granolah the Survivor Arc, and the Super Hero Arc, which would largely retell the 2022 film.
That’s about 62 chapters of the manga that could be animated, which could theoretically be about 70-80 new episodes, as the Dragon Ball Super anime previously adapted about 0.5-1.0 chapters of the manga per episode.
