How does Dragon Ball Super's anime release before the manga? The anime is currently being released way faster than the manga according to my sources. In most cases of anime production (correct me if I'm wrong). But there is a mangaka (in this case toriyama-sensei) who creates content for the story called canon and releases that content via manga. Once a manga gets licensed and published by a major studio like Funimation or Bandai it becomes an anime, gets toys, games, t-shirts etc. But how is it that Dragon Ball Super is actually ahead of it's own manga?
The reason is that this time around, the anime series is the original work, while the manga is the adaptation.

This is of course in contrast with the original Dragon Ball series, which were written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama and published in Weekly Shōnen Jump, and only latter adapted into anime.

The precedence of the anime in the case of Dragon Ball Super has been widely reported, even though the first issue of the manga was published first (June 20, July 5 the first episode of the anime). Here are some sample sources (limited to 2 links for new user, I'll edit later)


Dragon Ball Super TV Anime Gets Manga Adaptation 2015-05-18
Dragon Ball Super getting companion manga 2015-05-19
DB Super getting ahead of manga? 2016-04


Also, the manga series is credited to Toyotarō, both story and art (see for example here), with Akira Toriyama credited variously with original concept/story, or as original creator. Wikipedia goes as far as to say "Written by Akira Toriyama / Illustrated by Toyotarō", but that seems to be an overstatement. The cover art of chapters 1 reads: "Manga by Toyotarō. Created by Toriyama Akira".

This means that it is unlikely that the manga has any particular input from Toriyama, other that the one that goes to the storyboard and the animation team.