Balls Aplenty: A Short History of Dragon Ball
- November 10, 2006 11:48 AM PST
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No one, not even its creator, could have imagined that a comic book about a monkey-tailed boy hunting for seven artifacts would become an international sensation. Yet some 20 years after the fact, the Dragon Ball series enjoys immense popularity and has spawned endless films, video games, toys, and other pieces of merchandise.
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The beginning
Dragon Ball debuted in the Japanese comic magazine Weekly Shonen Jump in 1984. The comic, created by writer and artist Akira Toriyama, starred a young, spiky-haired, 8-year-old boy named Goku and included a cast of wacky characters. Toriyama named the series after seven mystic artifacts (dragon balls) that Goku and his female ally Bulma spent a good amount of time searching for. These balls, when collected, would summon a giant dragon named Shenlong who would grant a person one wish.
Goku, was, of course, no ordinary boy. He would later be revealed as a Saiyan, a race of aliens known for their aggression. This explains Goku's monkey tail and his ability to turn into a giant beast (Oozaru) when he looks at a full moon. As a small child, Goku was sent to Earth, where the martial artist Gohan found and raised him. Initially, Gohan found the child to be hostile, but when Goku fell down a ravine and hit his head, his personality changed, and he became a good child-until, that is, he looked at the full moon, turned into a rampaging beast and stomped on his grandfather, killing him.
The manga series lasted 11 years in Japan and was so popular that it would be reprinted two separate times, one in a 42-volume set and another in a 34-volume set with a slightly reworked ending and some extras in the form of colored art and new covers.
Dragon Ball goes anime
Three Dragon Ball anime series followed. The first dealt with the tales of young Goku; it ran from 1986-1989 and had 153 episodes. The second series picked up where the first left off, but dealt with an adult Goku. It had 291 episodes during its 1989-1995 run, and told some stories that weren't included in the Dragon Ball manga. A third anime series, Dragon Ball GT, began in 1996 and ran for 60-plus episodes, but was largely considered to be a side-story to the original tales, as Toriyama only had limited involvement with it.
In Japan, a series of video games were created based on Dragon Ball and released for consoles such as the Bandai WonderSwan Color, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Game Boy Advance. The legend had taken roots, and its trip across the Pacific to American audiences was a foregone conclusion.
For American consumption, Toriyama's Dragon Ball series would be split up into two separate series: Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. Dragon Ball comics and cartoons dealt with Goku as a small child as he quested to find the dragon balls and become the greatest martial artist in the world. Dragon Ball Z tells the tale of an adult Goku, his wife Chi-Chi, and their sons Gohan and Goten, (as well as their various companions) who fight to save Earth from a series of seemingly endless alien invasions.
The Dragon Ball series can be further broken down into a series of storylines or sagas, with a huge, sweeping cast of recurring characters, many of whom are killed off, resurrected, or appear in multiple different forms. The manga, as done by Toriyama had six of these sagas. For the anime, the larger framework was kept intact, but new stories that hadn't appeared in the comic, such as the Garlic Jr. and Afterlife Tournament sagas were added.
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