is an award-winning Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama. It was originally serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1984 to 1995; later the 519 individual chapters were published into 42 tankōbon volumes by Shueisha. Dragon Ball was inspired by the Chinese folk novel Journey to the West. It follows the adventures of Son Goku from his childhood through adulthood as he trains in martial arts and explores the world in search of the seven mystical orbs known as the Dragon Balls, which can summon a wish-granting dragon when gathered. Along his journey, Goku makes several friends and battles a wide variety of villains, many of whom also seek the Dragon Balls for their own desires.
The 42 tankōbon have been adapted into two anime series produced by Toei Animation: Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, which together were broadcast in Japan from 1986 to 1996. Additionally, Toei has developed seventeen animated feature films and three television specials, as well as a short-lived anime sequel titled Dragon Ball GT, which takes place after the events of the manga. From 2009 to 2011, Toei broadcast a revised, faster-paced version of Dragon Ball Z under the name of Dragon Ball Kai, in which most of the original version's footage not featured in the manga was removed. Several companies have developed various types of merchandising such as a collectible trading card game, and a large number of video games.
The manga series was licensed for an English-language release in North America by Viz Media, in the United Kingdom by Gollancz Manga, and in Australia and New Zealand by Chuang Yi. The entire anime series has been licensed by Funimation Entertainment for an English-language release in the United States, although the series has not always been dubbed by the same studio. In China, a live-action film adaptation was produced in 1989. In 2002, 20th Century Fox acquired the rights to produce an American-made live-action film that received a negative reception from critics and fans; the movie was released on April 10, 2009 in the United States.
Since its release, Dragon Ball has become one of the most successful manga and anime series of all time. The manga's 42 volumes have sold over 152 million copies in Japan and over 300 million copies worldwide. Reviewers have praised the art, characterization, and humor of the story. The anime, particularly Dragon Ball Z, is also highly popular in various countries and was arguably one of the most influential in boosting the popularity of Japanese animation in Western culture.
Plot summary
The series begins with a young monkey-tailed boy named
Son Goku befriending a teenage girl named
Bulma. Together, they go on a quest to find the seven Dragon Balls. Goku later undergoes rigorous (and humorous) training regimes and educational programs under the martial artist
Master Roshi in order to fight in the World Martial Arts Tournament, a competition involving the most powerful fighters in the world. Outside the tournaments, Goku faces diverse villains such as
Emperor Pilaf, the
Red Ribbon Army, and the Namekian
Piccolo Daimao. Several of the enemies and rivals Goku encounters eventually become his allies and close friends, including the desert bandit
Yamcha, his martial arts classmate
Krillin, the assassin
Tien Shinhan, the samurai
Yajirobe, and Piccolo Daimao's offspring/reincarnation
Piccolo Jr.
As a young adult, Goku meets his brother Raditz, who reveals to him that they are members of a nearly extinct extraterrestrial race called Sayians. The Saiyans had sent Goku to Earth as an infant to conquer the planet for them, but he suffered a severe head injury soon after his arrival and lost all memory of his mission, as well as his blood-thirsty Saiyan nature. Goku refuses to help Raditz continue the mission, after which he begins to encounter other enemies from space, most notably the Saiyan prince Vegeta, who becomes his rival due to Vegeta's obsessive desire to surpass Goku in strength, though in the process, he too eventually becomes Goku's ally. Goku also encounters Frieza, the galactic emperor responsible for the destruction of the Saiyan race, whose actions cause Goku to transform into a fabled Super Saiyan. After an epic battle on the planet Namek (which shortly after, explodes), Goku defeats Frieza, avenging the lives of billions across the galaxy.
Some time later, a group of androids from the former Red Ribbon Army appear, seeking revenge against Goku. During this time, an evil life form called Cell emerges and, after absorbing two of the androids to increase his power, holds his own fighting tournament to decide the fate of the Earth, but is eventually defeated by Goku's first child Son Gohan. Seven years later, Goku is drawn into another battle for the universe against a magical monster named Majin Buu. After many battles, Goku destroys the evil original Majin Buu and the good part of Buu settles down with them. Ten years later, at another World Martial Arts Tournament, Goku meets the evil Buu's human reincarnation, Uub. Leaving the match between the two of them unfinished, Goku takes Uub away on a journey to train him as the Earth's next defender.
Themes
At its core,
Dragon Ball maintains the central tenets of the
Weekly Shōnen Jump core philosophy of "friendship, struggle, and victory". As the series shifts from a "heart warming" story into a more action-oriented piece, the protagonists go through an unending cycle of fighting, winning, losing and improving. They continue this cycle by using miraculous devices to achieve life after death and continue to learn lessons as they defeat their challengers.
Production
Wanting to break from the Western influences common in his other series, when Akira Toriyama began work on
Dragon Ball he decided to loosely model it on the classic Chinese novel
Journey to the West. He also redeveloped one of his earlier
one shot manga series,
Dragon Boy, which was initially serialized in
Fresh Jump and released in a single
tankōbon volume in 1983.
The fighting techniques were initially unnamed, but the series editor felt it would be better to name them all. Toriyama proceeded to create names for all of the techniques, except for the
Kamehameha which his wife named when Toriyama was indecisive about what it should be called.
After the first chapters were released, readers commented that Goku seemed rather plain, so his appearance was changed. New characters (such as Master Roshi and Krillin) were added and martial arts tournaments were included to give the manga a greater emphasis on fighting. Anticipating that readers would expect Goku to win the tournaments, Toriyama had him lose the first two while continuing his initial goal of having Goku be the champion and hero. After Cell's death, he intended for Gohan to replace Goku as the series protagonist, but then felt the character was not suited for the role and changed his mind.
Toriyama based the Red Ribbon Army from a video game he had played named Spartan X in which enemies tended to appear very fast. After the second tournament concluded, Toriyama wanted to have a villain who would be a true "bad guy." After creating Piccolo as the new villain, he noted that it was one of the most interesting parts of the stories and that he, and his son, became one of the favorite characters of the series. With Goku established as the strongest fighter on Earth, Toriyama decided to increase the number of villains that came from outer space. Finding the escalating enemies to be a pain to work with feeling it was too simple, he created the Ginyu Force to add more balance to the series. During this period of the series, Toriyama placed less emphasis on the series art work, simplifying the lines and sometimes making things "too square." He found himself having problems determining the colors for characters and sometimes ended up changing them unintentionally mid-story. In later accounts, Toriyama noted that he didn't plan out the details of the story, resulting in strange occurrences and discrepancies later in the series.
Media
Manga
Dragon Ball
Written and illustrated by
Akira Toriyama,
Dragon Ball was initially serialized in the manga anthology
Weekly Shōnen Jump starting on December 3, 1984. In 2004, the chapters were re-released in a collection of 34
kanzenban volumes, which included a slightly rewritten ending, new covers, and color artwork from its
Weekly Shōnen Jump run. Toriyama also created a short series,
Neko Majin, that became a self-parody of
Dragon Ball. First appearing in
Weekly Shōnen Jump in August 1999, the eight chapter series was released sporadically until it was completed in 2005. These chapters were compiled into a "kanzenban"-style package for release in Japan on April 4, 2005.
The Dragon Ball manga was licensed for release in English in North America by Viz Media which has released all 42 volumes in both censored and uncensored forms. Viz released volumes 17 through 42 under the title Dragon Ball Z to mimic the name of the anime series adaptated from those volumes, feeling it would reduce the potential for confusion by its readers. They initially released both series in a monthly comic book format starting in 1998, and later began collecting them in graphic novels. The first 10 volumes of both series were re-released from March to May 2003 under the "Shonen Jump" format, with Dragon Ball being completed on August 3, 2004 and Dragon Ball Z finishing on June 6, 2006. In June 2008, Viz began re-releasing the two series in a wideban format called "VIZBIG Edition," which collects three individual volumes into a single large volume.
In 2006, Toriyama and One Piece author Eiichiro Oda teamed up to create a single chapter crossover of their individual hit series. Entitled Cross Epoch, the chapter was published in the December 25, 2006 issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump.
A manga adaptation of illustrated by Ooishi Naho, was published in the March 21, 2009 and April 21, 2009 issues of V Jump.
Dragon Ball SD
A spinoff manga titled
Dragon Ball SD, written by Ooishi Naho, has been published in Shueisha's
Super Strong Jump magazine beginning in December 2010. A television series will be launched on cable in late 2011 - early 2012. A second issue was released in April 2011. This manga is a retelling of Goku's adventures as a child, with many details changed.
Dragon Ball Heroes
Ooishi Naho will also write another spin-off,
Dragon Ball Heroes, which is based on the Japanese arcade video game of the same name and will be released in the July 2011 issue of V-Jump.
Anime series
Dragon Ball
Toei Animation produced an anime series based on the manga chapters, also titled
Dragon Ball. The series premiered in Japan on
Fuji Television on February 26, 1986 and ran until April 12, 1989, lasting 153 episodes. The re-dubbed episodes aired on Cartoon Network from August 20, 2001 to December 1, 2003. Funimation also broadcast the series on
Colours TV and their own Funimation Channel starting in 2006.
Funimation began releasing their in-house dub to Region 1 DVD box sets on March 18, 2003. Each box set, spanning an entire saga of the series, included the English dub track and the original Japanese audio track with optional English subtitles. However, they were unable to release the first thirteen episodes at the time, due to Lionsgate Entertainment holding the distribution rights to their original dub of the same episodes, having acquired them from Trimark after the company became defunct. After Lionsgate's license to the first thirteen episodes expired in 2009, Funimation remastered and re-released the complete Dragon Ball series to DVD in five individual season box sets, with the first set released on September 15, 2009 and the final set released on July 27, 2010.
Dragon Ball Z
With the ending of
Dragon Ball, Toei Animation quickly released a second anime series, . Picking up where the first left off,
Dragon Ball Z is adapted from the final twenty-six volumes of the manga series on Weekly Shonen Jump from 1988-1995, it premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on April 26, 1989, taking over its predecessor's time slot, and ran for 291 episodes until its conclusion on January 31, 1996.
In 2006, Funimation remastered the episodes in 16:9 widescreen format and then began re-releasing the series to Region 1 DVD in nine individual season box sets, with the first set released on February 6, 2007 and the final set released on May 19, 2009. These sets were notable for including the option of hearing Funimation's in-house dub alongside the original Japanese music, an option that had previously not been available. Other options included hearing the in-house dub with the American soundtrack composed by Bruce Faulconer, and a third option included watching the original Japanese version, with the original Japanese soundtrack and English subtitles. In July 2009, Funimation announced that they would be re-releasing Dragon Ball Z in a new seven-volume DVD set called the "Dragon Boxes." Based on the original series masters with frame-by-frame restoration, the first set was released on November 10, 2009. Unlike the season box sets, Funimation's "Dragon Box" release is presented in fullscreen 4:3 format.
Funimation and Toei released a statement in January 2011 confirming that they would stream Dragon Ball Z within 30 minutes before their simulcast of One Piece. The simulcast premiered on January 15. Dragon Ball Z is now being streamed on Hulu and Toonzaki, containing the English dub with the Japanese music and uncut footage, as well as subtitled Japanese episodes.
Dragon Ball GT
Produced by Toei Animation, premiered on Fuji TV on February 2, 1996, and ran until November 19, 1997. Unlike the first two series, it was not based on the original
Dragon Ball manga. The series lasted 64 episodes.
Dragon Ball Z Kai
In February 2009, Toei Animation announced that it would begin broadcasting a revised version of
Dragon Ball Z as part of the series' 20th anniversary celebrations. The series premiered on Fuji TV in Japan on April 5, 2009, under the name , with the episodes remastered for
HDTV, featuring updated opening and ending sequences, and a rerecording of the vocal tracks by most of the original cast. The footage was also re-edited to more closely follow the manga, resulting in a faster moving story, and damaged frames removed. As such, it is a new version created from the original
Dragon Ball Z footage.
On March 9, 2011, Toei announced that due to Kenji Yamamoto's score for Dragon Ball Kai infringing on the rights of an unknown third party, the score for remaining episodes and replays of previous episodes would be replaced. Later reports from Toei claimed that with the exception of the series' opening and closing songs, as well as eyecatch music, Yamamoto's score was replaced with Shunsuke Kikuchi's original score from Dragon Ball Z. The series concluded with the finale of the Cell arc as opposed to including the Buu arc, which served as the ending of both the manga and original Dragon Ball Z series. It was originally planned to run 98 episodes, however due to the Tōhoku offshore earthquake and tsunami, the final episode of Dragon Ball Kai was not aired and the series ended on its 97th episode in Japan on March 27, 2011.
Like all other Dragon Ball-based anime, Funimation Entertainment licensed Dragon Ball Kai for an English-language release, under the title Dragon Ball Z Kai and featuring most of the voice cast from their in-house dub of the original Dragon Ball Z series. The series made its U.S. premiere on Nicktoons on May 24, 2010. In addition to Nicktoons, the series also began airing on The CW's Saturday-morning programming block, Toonzai, on August 14, 2010. Both the Nicktoons and Toonzai airings are edited for content, though the Toonzai version is edited even more so than Nicktoons', most likely due to The CW being a broadcast network. However, in addition to the TV airings, Funimation is also releasing bilingual Region 1 DVD and Blu-Ray box sets of the show. These box sets contain the original Japanese audio track with English subtitles, as well as the uncut version of the English dub, which does not contain any of the edits made for the TV airings.
Anime films
Seventeen anime films based on the
Dragon Ball series have been released in Japan. The first three films were based on the original
Dragon Ball anime series. The remaining films included thirteen
Dragon Ball Z films and one tenth anniversary special (also based on the first anime series). However, the films are generally either alternate re-tellings of certain story arcs or extra side-stories that don't fit in with the same timeline as the series. Funimation Entertainment has licensed and released all of the films to home video in North America.
Specials
Three television specials based on the metaseries were released in Japan. The first,
, was released on October 17, 1990. It is a
prequel to the series, set years before the start of the manga and details how Goku's father,
Bardock, discovers that Frieza is planning to kill all the other Saiyans, and his efforts to stop him. The second special,
was released on March 24, 1993. Based on an extra chapter of the original manga, it is set in a parallel universe where most of the series characters are killed by the evil androids and focuses on Bulma and Vegeta's son
Trunks.
, released on March 26, 1997, is set 100 years after the end of
Dragon Ball GT. It features one of Goku's descendants who begins looking for the Dragon Balls in order to help his sick grandmother,
Pan.
Two other specials were also released in Japan. A two-episode original video animation (OVA) series titled , based on the Famicom video game of the same name, was released in 1993 and was set during Dragon Ball Z. Another special, , premiered at the Jump Super Anime Tour on November 24, 2008. The special is set two years after the defeat of the evil Buu and has Goku and his friends facing against new enemies, Abo and Kado, and meeting Vegeta's younger brother, Tarble and his wife, Gure.
Video games
The
Dragon Ball franchise has spawned multiple video games across various genres and platforms. Earlier games of the series included a system of card battling and were released for the
Nintendo Entertainment System following the storyline of the series. Starting
Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the
Sega Saturn and the
PlayStation most of the games were from the
fighting genre including the series
Super Butoden. The first
Dragon Ball game to be released in the United States was
for the PlayStation on July 31, 1997. For the
PlayStation 2 and
PlayStation Portable games the characters were redone in 3D
cel-shaded graphics. These games included the and the .
was the first game of the series developed for the
PlayStation 3 and
Xbox 360. A
massively multiplayer online role-playing game called
Dragon Ball Online is currently playable. It has been stated that Akira Toriyama has been working on character designs for this project for several years, and the game is available in Japan and South Korea.
Soundtracks
Myriad soundtracks were released to the anime, movies and the games. The music for the first two anime
Dragon Ball and
Z and its films was directed by
Shunsuke Kikuchi, while the music from
GT was directed by Akihito Tokunaga and the music from
Kai was directed by Kenji Yamamoto. For the first anime, the soundtracks released were
in 1985 and
in 1991 although they were reissued in 2007 and 2003, respectively. For the second anime, the soundtrack series released were
Dragon Ball Z Hit Song Collection Series. It was produced and released by
Columbia Records of Japan from July 21, 1989 to March 20, 1996 the show's entire lifespan. On September 20, 2006 Columbia re-released the Hit Song Collection on their Animex 1300 series. Other CDs released are compilations, video games and films soundtracks as well as music from the English versions.
Live-action films
A live-action
Mandarin Chinese film adaptation of the series,
, was released in
Taiwan in 1989. and began production on an American live action film entitled
Dragonball Evolution. Directed by
James Wong and produced by
Stephen Chow, the film was released in the United States on April 10, 2009. The film was largely considered a failure by both critics and
Dragon Ball fans, and it only grossed $57 million at the box office.
Art books
There are two companion books to the series, one called
Dragon Ball GT Perfect Files, released in May 1997 and December 1997 by
Shueisha's
Jump Comics Selection imprint. It include series information, illustration galleries, behind-the-scenes information, and more. They were out of print for many years, but were re-released in April 2006 and this edition is still in print.
The other was Dragon Ball - The Complete Illustrations, first published in Japan in 1995, which was then translated and printed in 2008 by VIZ Media for the English-speaking fans. It contains all the 264 coloured illustrations Akira Toriyama done for the Weekly Jump magazines' covers, bonus giveaways and specials, and all the covers for the 42 tankōbon. It also includes an interview with Akira Toriyama on his work process.
In Japan it was originally released as Volume 1 of the 7 part Daizenshuu series.
Collectible cards
There has been collectible cards, based on the
Dragon Ball,
Dragon Ball Z, and
Dragon Ball GT series, released under Bandai. They feature various scenes from the manga and anime stills, plus exclusive artwork from all 3 series.
They were previously released in other countries, like
Taiwan and
Singapore, before making its debut in the United States in July 2008.
Reception
Manga
Dragon Ball is one of the most popular manga series of all time, and it continues to enjoy high readership today. By 2000, more than 126 million copies of its
tankōbon volumes had been sold in Japan alone. By 2007, this number had grown to pass 152 million in Japan and 200 million worldwide. It is the "quintessential mainstream manga" driven by an unending story. Its immense popularity resulted in the series being continuously extended, first through the use of acrobatic devices that regularly kept the series from falling into the routine characters and story lines, then by having the central characters surpass death itself using miraculous devices. In
Little Boy: The Art of Japan's Exploding Subculture Takashi Murakami notes that
Dragon Ball's "never-ending cyclical narrative moves forward plausibly, seamlessly, and with great finesse." Manga artists, such as
Naruto creator
Masashi Kishimoto and
One Piece creator
Eiichiro Oda, have stated that Goku inspired their series' main protagonists as well series structure. When
TV Asahi conducted an online poll for the top one hundred anime, the
Dragon Ball series came in place twelve.
Animerica felt the series had "worldwide appeal" that uses dramatic pacing and over the top martial arts action to "maintain tension levels and keep a crippler crossface hold on the audience's attention spans". Anime News Network praised the story and humor of the manga to be very good due conveying of all the characters's personalities. They also remarked Viz's translation to be one of the best ones of all the English editions of the series praising the lack of censor. Rationalmagic.com remarked the first manga volume as "a superior humor title". They praised Goku's innocence and Bulma's insistence as one of the funniest parts of the series. Writer Jason Thompson commented that the series popularity comes from a formula that Toriyama used in various story arcs from which he describes as "lots of martial arts, lots of training sequences, a few jokes." Yet, he noted that such formula became the model for other manga from the same genre such as Naruto.
Anime
The anime adaptations have also had different positive reviews.
Dragon Ball Z was listed as the 78th best animated show in IGN's Top 100 Animated Series, and was also listed as the 50th greatest cartoon in
Wizard magazine "Top 100 Greatest Cartoons" list. T.H.E.M. Anime Reviews considered the series characters are different from stereotypes characters and noted that they have much more development and in its sequels. However, they criticized
Dragon Ball Z for having long and repetitive fights, though they remarked the show has good characterization. Anime News Network considered Trunks's storyline to have an actual storyline with characters having more motivation than the common plot of the series.
IGN commented that
Dragon Ball GT "is downright repellent" mentioning that the material and characters have lost their novelty and fun. They also criticized the character designs of Trunks and Vegeta as goofy. Anime News Network has had negative comments of
Dragon Ball GT. They mentioned the fights from the series are a very simple childish exercise and that many other anime were so much better. The plot of the series has also been criticized for giving a formula that was already used on its predecessors. On several occasions the
Dragon Ball anime series has topped Japan's DVD sales. The first episode of
Dragon Ball Kai earned a viewer ratings percentage of 11.3, ahead of
One Piece and behind
Crayon Shin-Chan. Although following episodes had lower ratings,
Dragon Ball Kai was among the top 10 anime in viewer ratings every week in Japan for most of its run.
References
External links
Official Toei Animation's Dragon Ball website
Official Toei Animation's Dragon Ball Z website
Official Toei Animation's Dragon Ball GT website
Official Toei Animation's Dragon Ball Kai website
Official FUNimation's Dragon Ball website
Official FUNimation's Dragon Ball Z website
Official FUNimation's Dragon Ball GT website
Official FUNimation's Dragon Ball Z Kai website
Official Madman's Dragon Ball Z website
Category:1984 comic debuts
Category:Akira Toriyama
Category:Works based on Journey to the West
Category:Bangsian fantasy
Category:Chinese mythology in anime and manga
Category:Japanese mythology in anime and manga
Category:Manga of 1984
Category:Martial arts anime and manga
Category:Science fiction anime and manga
Category:Shōnen manga
Category:Viz Media manga
Category:Funimation Entertainment
Category:Geneon
Category:Supernatural anime and manga
Category:Science fantasy anime and manga
Category:Comedy-drama anime and manga
Category:Internet memes
![Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi SDCC 2011 Trailer [HD]](http://web.archive.org./web/20110819051941im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HAzCouSThtg/0.jpg "Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Tenkaichi SDCC 2011 Trailer [HD]")
![Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Tenkaichi Goku vs SSJ Goku Gameplay [Beam Clashes Confirmed!]](http://web.archive.org./web/20110819051941im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AsHJ3WYJaMg/0.jpg "Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Tenkaichi Goku vs SSJ Goku Gameplay [Beam Clashes Confirmed!]")
