It’s official, Dragon Ball Super is finally coming back in 2025. Following Akira Toriyama’s passing in March, the Dragon Ball Super manga went on an indefinite hiatus, and the finale of Chapter 103 felt like a fitting send-off to the legendary mangaka’s lifework. Fans have been eager to see the return of Super in any capacity, whether it be a continuation of the manga or Part 2 of the anime adaptation, which now has plenty of material to work with. Fans will have to wait a bit longer for the anime, but the manga has at least been confirmed to return in February 2025.
At Jump Festa 2025, it was announced that Dragon Ball Super would come back with a special one-shot story written by Toyotarou on February 20th. This is such a huge development because the future of Super as a series was uncertain following Toriyama’s death, alongside the apparent finality of Chapter 103’s story arc. Even though there were undoubtedly a lot of loose ends in Super’s story, many fans had come to terms with the very real possibility that the Dragon Ball Super manga had ended. The continuation of Super with this new one-shot is amazing news, though it comes with the unfortunate caveat of this one-shot not being exactly what fans of the series were hoping to see from the beloved series’ long-awaited return.
The Dragon Ball Super Manga Returns with a New One-Shot in February
Toyotarou’s new one-shot will be released in the April issue of V-Jump, which releases February 20th (V-Jump magazines typically come out two months before the month in their title). The one-shot will feature a new side-story starring Goten and Trunks as they were during Toyotarou’s manga adaptation of the Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero film. Interestingly, it will also feature a somewhat new character who was only ever hinted at before but never seen in action: Clean God. Clean God was first introduced in the High School Saga, which served as an extremely brief lead-up to the Super Hero Saga in the manga. Centered on Goten and Trunks’ escapades as the superhero duo Saiyaman X-1 and Saiyaman X-2, the High School Saga was a fun and brief detour that gave Gotenks some much-needed development.
Like Saiyaman X-1 and X-2, Goten and Trunks clearly took inspiration from Gohan’s Great Saiyaman alter ego, but they also had an environmentally friendly gimmick that was apparently inspired by a popular fictional superhero in the Dragon Ball universe known as Clean God. Goten and Trunks were huge fans of Clean God, with Trunks even attempting to invite Mai on a date to see the new Clean God movie. While any new Super news is great to see, the last thing most Dragon Ball fans would probably have wanted was a brief one-shot starring an obscure side character like Clean God. The potential for more Goten and Trunks content, however, is intriguing, as the pair were infamously underutilized in the earlier arcs of Super.