"With second-form Cell as well, I liked him well enough. Actually, I had wanted him to play a more active role. But since I was told he looked stupid, I had no choice but to change him. So I made him into his cool-looking perfect form, which was to Kondō-san's liking."

“The offer to direct an animated version of Blue Dragon came in February of last year . Studio Pierrot approached me regarding it. I knew that Sakaguchi had been working on assembling staff to produce a game, although at the time Blue Dragon hadn't yet been formally announced. According to the materials, it was to be a fantasy world like Lord of the Rings, with a detailed world view and story. This may be my final anime, I'm a little worried . There's incredible pressure, but at the same time, there's a sense of accomplishment — that it's worth doing. Blue Dragon will be a masterpiece, not simply because I'm working hard on it, but because the staff is expecting nothing less.”

“Drunken Master . If I hadn't seen this movie, I would never have come up with Dragonball.”

“Akira Toriyama: That's a tough question. I thought of Piccolo first, and I wanted to draw him as a scary character, and it was only afterwards that I had to come up with a species. Since they have antennae, I thought they looked like slugs. So "Namekian" is a play on words, but I didn't think too deeply about it. I don't think they're plants, but they may be hermaphrodites.”

“Shōnen Jump: Several readers have asked if Namekians are plants. Of course, based on their names, they seem to be slugs... but they are green, they have a strange method of reproduction, and they live on water.”

“I was an avid anime watcher until I was about 10, when I moved to manga. I think I am influenced by Osamu Tezuka's and Walt Disney's works which I watched during that time, such as Tetsuwan Atom and 101 Dalmatians.”

“Actually, I have a lot of hobbies, but I've kept up with model-building the longest. In particular, I love military models.”