Dragon Ball Cover Redesigned by KochiKames Osamu Akimoto

For Dragon Ball's 40th anniversary, series covers are being redesigned by master mangaka like Osamu Akimoto, creator of KochiKame: Tokyo Beat Cops.

Another mangaka is paying tribute to Dragon Ball leading up to its fortieth anniversary - Osamu Akimoto, known for his work on the best-selling series KochiKame: Tokyo Beat Cops, is the latest creator to redesign a cover of the beloved series. However, his take is different from the covers that have been released thus far within the Dragon Ball Super Gallery.

KochiKame: Tokyo Beat Cops (often referred to simply as KochiKame) began serializing in 1976 in Weekly Shonen Jump. The final chapter bringing the series to a close released in 2016, totaling two hundred and one volumes. It ran for forty years - a milestone Dragon Ball is coming up on and will likely surpass. KochiKame is the story of Kankichi Ryotsu, a police officer in Tokyo, who is the star of many misadventures. At the time the series ended, it was one of the top ten best-selling manga of all time. Akimoto has now used his artistic talents to put a twist on Dragon Ball, in a different way than Naruto's Masashi Kishimoto and Bleach's Tite Kubo did with their artistic tributes.

Osamu Akimoto has re-envisioned Dragon Ball Volume 28. This volume typically features Master Roshi (or Kame Sennin) on a bike. Kishimoto and Kubo both drew characters created by Dragon Ball's mangaka, Akira Toriyama. Akimoto instead replaces Master Roshi with Kankichi and Hayato Honda. Hayato often gets roped into schemes with Kankichi and the motorcycle featured in the cover is his. Hayato emulates Master Roshi in this cover by wearing a similar hat and wearing a turtle shell similar to the one that Kame Sennin wore early in the series. Kankichi has been given a tail to match Goku's early appearances. Check out the cover courtesy of @WSJ_manga.

DRAGON BALL Volume 28 by Osamu Akimoto (Kochikame). This is part of the DRAGON BALL Super Gallery Project to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the series. Every month, different mangaka will redesign one of the 42 covers of the series until November 2024. pic.twitter.com/aVad2UfSDk

This is the third cover released in the anniversary series of redesigned Dragon Ball covers and it certainly puts a different twist on the works released thus far. Instead of stylizing Toriyama's characters, Akimoto tweaked the cover's scene to include his own. While this initially seems strange considering the pattern established by the two previously revealed covers, it also speaks to the crossover relationship that has occurred between the two series in the past. In KochiKame's vol. 69, Frieza, Appule, and Zarbon make an appearance, and Kankichi was said to be kicked to Planet Namek. Continuing this gag, a special chapter was released in 2006 for KochiKame's thirtieth anniversary that crossed over with Dragon Ball. It did, in fact, place Kankichi on Planet Namek, tagging Frieza for illegal spaceship parking. He even had an interaction with Goku.

Volume 28 - also known as Dragon Ball Z Volume 12 - concludes the Frieza arc, with Goku's infamous foe bringing his father to Earth. It is also the debut of Trunks, with the very brief Trunks Saga and the start of the Androids Saga. The cover doesn't allude to these events and neither does Akimoto's tribute for his entry in the Dragon Ball Super Gallery. In fact, Trunks did not appear on a cover until volume 30, which hasn't yet been redesigned by another mangaka. If Osamu Akimoto's KochiKame crossover cover is anything to go by, there is a lot of potential for what renditions could be coming in the future - after all, Dragon Ball's fortieth anniversary is still in the distance with many covers yet to be unveiled.