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Akira Toriyama created Dragon Ball as a departure from Western influences, loosely inspired by the Chinese novel Journey to the West, following the earlier one-shot Dragon Boy. The series features Goku's journey as a martial artist in search of the Dragon Balls, which can grant wishes when assembled. Over its 11-year publication, the tone evolved from humorous fantasy to incorporate more action and sci-fi elements, reflecting reader preferences.

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18 views2 pages

Main Articles

Akira Toriyama created Dragon Ball as a departure from Western influences, loosely inspired by the Chinese novel Journey to the West, following the earlier one-shot Dragon Boy. The series features Goku's journey as a martial artist in search of the Dragon Balls, which can grant wishes when assembled. Over its 11-year publication, the tone evolved from humorous fantasy to incorporate more action and sci-fi elements, reflecting reader preferences.

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Main articles: Dragon Boy and The Adventures of Tongpoo

DBMangaLogo

Logo for the Dragon Ball manga

After the success of his previous manga Dr. Slump, Akira Toriyama wanted to break from the Western
influences common in his other series. When he began work on Dragon Ball, he decided to model it
loosely on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West.

Dragon Ball was a redeveloped version of a one-shot manga series he made: Dragon Boy, which was
initially serialized in Fresh Jump and released in a single tankōbon volume in 1983. This short work
combined the comedic style of Dr. Slump with a more action-oriented plot and paid homage to
famous martial art actor Jackie Chan. Toriyama notes that his goal for the series was to tell an
"unconventional and contradictory" story.

Originally not all that popular when first released, after the Emperor Pilaf arc, Akira decided to write
in a World Martial Arts Tournament, a trend in manga that was very popular at the time. Akira
Toriyama had also been told by his editor, Kazuhiko Torishima, that Goku was considered "quite
bland", and thus Master Roshi was brought back and Krillin was introduced in the series.[1]

Plot and Evolution

Main article: List of Dragon Ball manga chapters

SaiyanTail

Kid Goku as seen in the manga

A unifying component of the plot accompanying Goku's progression as a martial artist is his search
for the eponymous Dragon Balls. They are one component of the universe, but are not the focus of
most of the plot lines of the title. The Dragon Balls themselves are seven magical orbs which are
scattered across the world. When assembled, they can be used to summon Shenron, the dragon who
will grant one wish within its limit. After the wish is granted, the Dragon Balls are scattered again
across the world and become inert for one year. In times past, it would take generations to search
the world and gather the Dragon Balls. At the beginning of the story, however, a 16-year-old genius
girl named Bulma invents a Dragon Radar to detect the Dragon Balls and makes the process far easier
than it was originally intended to be.

The story of Dragon Ball unfolds gradually over 11 years of publication. The tone and the style of the
stories gradually changes to reflect the tastes of the readers and the editors of Shōnen Jump in
Japan. The early volumes of the manga (chapters 1-134) are primarily humorous fantasy stories, but
they contain some minor sci-fi elements, much like Dr. Slump. Notable fantasy elements include not
only the monkey boy Goku and the Dragon Balls themselves, but also many talking animal
characters, unlikely martial art techniques, and identifying characters as gods and demons. Despite
the fantasy elements, the world does contain highly advanced technology including hoi-poi capsules,
space-saving capsules which are pocket sized but can store almost any object (including cars, planes
and even houses) and other "near future" objects. The overall mood of the earlier volumes is light
with few deaths and an emphasis on adventure and humor.

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