"Dragon Ball Super" anime has started adapting the Super Hero arc, bringing the manga and anime's storylines together. But creator Akira Toriyama made a major contribution to the manga's story that nobody expected.
The anime's storyline follows the events of the "Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero" movie, while the manga features its last few storylines while elaborating on the story and characters from the film. But there's one key element from the Super Hero that Toriyama contributed, and it was making Trunks a full-blown superhero.
In his regular updates on the official "Dragon Ball" site, the franchise's artist-writer Toyotarou revealed how the "Super Hero" manga story came about. He said that when he met with the mangaka and other staff, they discussed how Goku and Vegeta had been the main characters for so long with large-scale, intergalactic stories that they wanted to scale down and make them simpler.
From there, Toyotarou saw a chance to finally roll out the Trunks story he had been keeping for years. He wanted to make Trunk the main lead even before the "Super Hero" came out, though he wasn't sure if it would fit the story.
He then planned to make it a spinoff, but when they were thinking of focusing on another character besides Goku in "Dragon Ball Super," he thought of Trunks' story. "I thought that maybe this was finally my chance to do it," he continued, via ComicBook.
Everything came timely as after Toyotarou got his chance to focus the story on Trunks this time, Toriyama added a major detail that could tie this storyline to a much-bigger main narrative already taking shape. The creator made Trunks a superhero, making Trunks and Gotten the superheroes in the manga today.
The artist also discussed the difference between the Present and Future Trunks. In the same interview, Toyotarou described Future Trunks as a much different version of his younger self, not as traumatized as his future self.
Hence, Future Trunks is a "completely different character," making it hard for him to draw the two characters. Their lives are also dramatically different, so he wants readers to separate them and make them two other individuals.
The Present Trunks is far different from Future Trunks, considering their responsibilities are not the same at all. When Future Trunks returned to "Dragon Ball Super," he could already transform into a Super Saiyan 2 and gained a new transformation during a fight against Goku Black. However, it remains to be seen if Present Trunks can reach the same heights without any issues coming his way.
