Todd Blankenship

Working out the story with Toriyama was mainly done via email, with them meeting in person about once every two months. It all started around spring 2017 when they provided Toriyama with several proposals for a new movie, which while mostly rejected did get him thinking.

Things sped up once it was decided to make the story about Saiyans. Toriyama provided an initial story in May 2017, which he worried was too short. It was expanded, but then became too long. Toei is now working on pulling it all together.

(Iyoku mentions that telling a complete story in 2 hours is possibly easier for Toriyama than doing the story for a long-running TV show, but this reference to 2 hours seems like a figure of speech rather than the literal run time of the final film)

One thing Toriyama told them to watch out for when auditioning a new character designer was if they could make a character look cool standing straight facing forward. It’s easier to make a character look cool facing to one side, but they often look awkward facing straight ahead.

So whether or not they could draw Goku's face was irrelevant, since if they had real artistic skill they could simply learn that later. First it was necessary to take care of the fundamentals.

Toriyama also thoroughly checked body balance, to see if candidates properly understood the body inside the martial arts uniform. In the end, Toriyama personally selected Shintani as the new character designer.

Iyoku says it’s one of their goals to deliver this film to fans all over the world, but it will still take time once the film is completed for it to be localized and debut overseas (so again, talk of a simultaneous worldwide release might be an exaggeration).