According to Bunshun Online, Dragon Room head honcho Akio Iyoku has stepped down from Shueisha and established his own company, Capsule Corporation Tokyo. Supposedly he wants Shueisha to keep DB’s manga publishing rights but for CC Tokyo to handle DB games/anime/etc.
As you might imagine, Shueisha is reluctant to part with DB to any extent, and negotiations are still ongoing. According to this article, anyway. Shueisha has apparently confirmed that Iyoku is stepping down, but not confirmed any of the particulars so far.
Bunshun Online reached out to Toriyama and asked if he would be working with Iyoku in future, but Toriyama said he couldn’t comment publicly, only through Shueisha. He also said the company name “Capsule Corporation Tokyo” was Iyoku’s idea, not his own.
According to an anonymous Shueisha employee, Iyoku wants to bring two of his former Dragon Rook subordinates along with him to his new company: the office chief representative and the deputy office chief (a woman and man dubbed X and Y). Both are apparently big Iyoku fans. Huh?
Bunshun Online also asked Iyoku himself for an interview, but he simply said there was nothing he could talk about. And that’s apparently all for now. Well, actually there seems to be more behind a paywall. Ugh.
Main takeaways from the paywall portion of the article: per anonymous Shueisha staffers, Iyoku’s possessive attitude towards DB was seen as a problem, and there was talk in June 2022 of moving him to a non-DB related position. But he essentially refused and got to stay with DB…
Then in May of this year, he set up Capsule Corporation Tokyo, with a written goal of managing IP content creation and distribution for individual and group creators…a clear sign he wanted to start up his own DB business (again, per anonymous Shueisha people)
More people reached out to for comment: Kazuhiko Toriyama, who told them to ask Iyoku or Shueisha instead. As we’ve seen, Iyoku said nothing. Meanwhile, Shueisha president Marue Horiuchi said he’d heard Iyoku was quitting, but declined to comment on Shueisha/CC Tokyo matters.
And as mentioned earlier, Toriyama likewise declined to make any comment beyond saying the company name “Capsule Corporation Tokyo” was Iyoku’s idea. Toriyama himself was surprised to hear it (which I guess does mean he’d heard of the company before, if nothing else)
And that’s about it. Well, also it says Iyoku and Toriyama first met 30 years ago while both were working on Dragon Quest, and so have a close trust. Has this DQ connection been mentioned before? I can’t remember.
(Also, not related to DB, but thanks to this article I learned that Shueisha’s current president and CEO Marue Horiuchi was also the original editor for Kochi-Kame back in the day. Neat, huh?)
((Ugh, above I wrote “Kazuhiko Toriyama” when of course I meant Kazuhiko Torishima, the guy who served as Toriyama’s first editor. Actually, that’s a typo I’m surprised I don’t make more often))
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