“The worst movie ever made,” according to the guy who helped launch Dragon Ball’s success.
When Dragon Ball Evolution came out in 2009, fans were curious to see what a live-action version of the legendary anime would look like. What they got instead was a total disaster that’s still talked about today, mostly in disappointment. Now, Kazuhiko Torishima, the former Weekly Shonen Jump editor who worked directly with Dragon Ball during its rise, has finally said what many fans have felt for years.
In a recent podcast, Torishima didn’t sugarcoat anything. He called Dragon Ball Evolution “the biggest failure in the history of Shonen Jump.” And this isn’t coming from just any critic, this is from someone who helped build the Dragon Ball brand from the ground up.
Shueisha Didn’t Spend Enough And Lost Control
According to Torishima, the main reason Evolution failed so badly comes down to one thing: lack of control. Basically, Shueisha, the publisher of Shonen Jump, didn’t invest enough money to have any real say in how the movie was made.
He mentioned they should’ve put in around 5 billion yen (about $50 million USD at the time). That kind of cash would’ve let them be involved in the big decisions, like the script, casting, and the overall direction. But they didn’t. And because of that, they had no way to stop the project from going off the rails.
Why didn’t they invest more? Torishima said it was because Shueisha had a bad experience back in the ’80s with a film called Beiju, My Friend, which flopped hard and made the company overly cautious about funding future film projects. That fear stuck around for years and shaped how they handled Dragon Ball Evolution.
They Wanted a Western Breakthrough
So, if they were so cautious, why go forward with the movie at all? Well, Dragon Ball was already huge in Japan, but Shueisha was aiming to grow the brand internationally. Around that time, Shonen Jump was launching in North America, and a big Hollywood movie seemed like a smart way to attract attention.
Torishima said he even spoke to some U.S. lawyers about it. They warned him that without those “final product rights”, rights that come with bigger investments, Shueisha would have no control over how the movie turned out. And that’s exactly what happened.
Directed by James Wong, with Justin Chatwin as Goku, Dragon Ball Evolution loosely followed the original plot: Goku searching for the Dragon Balls while fighting Piccolo (played by James Marsters). But that’s where the similarities ended.
Fans and critics both slammed the movie for changing character personalities, messing up backstories, and completely missing the tone of the anime. The humor, action, and heart that made Dragon Ball special were gone.
Box office numbers? Globally, the movie made about $56.5 million, which doesn’t sound terrible at first glance. But in the U.S., it opened with less than $5 million, and the second weekend saw a massive 65% drop. With a reported budget of $30 million (not including marketing), Evolution likely didn’t turn a real profit.
The One Good Thing That Came From It
Ironically, the backlash to Evolution helped bring Dragon Ball back to life. The failure reportedly motivated original creator Akira Toriyama to return and take a more hands-on role. That led to the release of Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods in 2013, a movie that was much better received.
Even Justin Chatwin, who played Goku, later apologized publicly for the film after Toriyama’s passing in March 2024, showing how deeply the movie affected everyone involved, not just the fans.
Torishima’s Final Word
Torishima still considers Evolution more than just a bad movie. For him, it’s the worst thing Shonen Jump has ever allowed to happen. And with a Dragon Ball theme park now under construction in Saudi Arabia, he hopes the people behind it take real steps to keep the quality high and protect the series from repeating history.
His main point: If you’re adapting something people already love, you need to be able to shape how it turns out or risk losing what made it special in the first place.
