The "Dragon Ball Genkida Matsuri" event, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the popular manga "Dragon Ball" by the late Akira Toriyama, was held at Makuhari Messe (Mihama Ward, Chiba City) on January 25th, and Masako Nozawa, the voice actress for the main character Son Goku in the anime, made an appearance. The 89-year-old Nozawa revealed the "secret to her vitality."
The event featured a surprise appearance by Ino Akio, executive producer of the "Dragon Ball" series, as well as Yamadera Koichi, who plays the God of Destruction Beerus. Yamadera said of Nozawa, "She's super kind and super energetic. I've never heard her say 'I'm tired.' I thought she was a Super Saiyan." Nozawa replied, "She doesn't think about negative things like not feeling well, she thinks of everything as positive. I have negative feelings too, but I put them away or throw them away."
When the topic turned to acting, Nozawa said, "I become the character. When I enter the studio, I become Goku. I would like to play a beautiful woman just once. Because it's all men, I stop speaking in feminine terms. Even when I think, 'What is it?' I end up saying, 'What the heck?'"
At the event, it was announced that a new anime series, "Dragon Ball Super: Galaxy Patrol," will be produced, and that an "enhanced version" of "Dragon Ball Super," "Dragon Ball Super: Beerus," will be broadcast on Fuji TV in the fall of 2026. Nozawa, who has voiced Goku for around 40 years since the TV anime began in 1986, declared with enthusiasm, "I'll do my best!"
The original Dragon Ball manga was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump (Shueisha) from 1984 to 1995, and the TV anime adaptation began in 1986. The total number of copies of the comics published worldwide exceeds 260 million.
In recent years, the Dragon Ball Super series, originally conceived by Toriyama, aired from 2015 to 2018, followed by the animated feature films Dragon Ball Super: Broly in 2018 and Dragon Ball Super: Super Heroes in 2022, both of which were hits, and the series has continued to be loved around the world for over 40 years. The all-new TV anime series Dragon Ball DAIMA, which aired from October 2024 to February 2025, also attracted a lot of attention.
