The Dragon Ball manga and anime series feature an extensive cast of characters created by Akira Toriyama, shown compete in tournaments using various superhuman abilities. The series' storyline follows the adventures of martial artist Goku as he searches for the seven spheres known as the Dragon Balls, used to summon a wish-granting dragon. During the course of the story, he encounters Tien Shinhan; Piccolo; Vegeta; and Frieza; and allies such as Trunks; Yamcha; Yajirobe; Bulma; and Krillin.

Akira Toriyama initially based most of the characters on those of the Chinese novel Journey to the West, and redeveloped one of his earlier one-shot manga series, Dragon Boy. To be creative with the character, Toriyama stated that he designed Goku not as a monkey like the Journey to the West character, but as a human-looking boy with a monkey's tail.

During this period of the series, Toriyama placed less emphasis on the imagery, simplifying the lines and sometimes making things "too square"; found problems determining the colors; and sometimes altered them mid-story. For the female characters, Toriyama created women he deemed "beautiful and sexy", but also "strong". Going against the normal convention that the strongest characters should be the largest in terms of physical size, he designed many of Dragon Ball's most powerful characters with small statures.