Akira Toriyama's Journey: How Dragon Ball Was Born

airator Dragon Ball is renowned across the globe as one of the most successful manga series of all time the series is now over 35 years old and has remained a part of popular culture an adventure for everyone striving to better themselves in 1984 Aira Tama finished his biggest and most successful work at the time Dr slump what he did not know was that the success he had with aeli and her friends would pale in comparison to his next work but why did toram McCrae drag ball in 1983 Toriyama knew that he was nearing the end of Dr slump wanting to end it soon he was told that he could ended only if he would have something new to serialize within 3 months and still during publication of Dr slump the then 28-year-old Akira Toriyama spent the time thinking about what to create next he ended up in many meetings with his editor at the time kazuhiko torishima Toriyama was obsessed with martial arts films and in particular Jackie Chan's Drunken Master he mentioned this to torishima who told him to give Kung Fu action manga a try the stubborn mangaa refused explaining that the things I like and the things I want to draw are different so I don't want to torishima pushed him to try it even if Toriyama insisted that he's more inclined to a gag manga but after such a long time creating self-contained stories each chapter Toriyama decided to not only give martial arts stories a try but to make his next manga a continuous serialized story it was decided and Toriyama began to work on a concept but he couldn't simply jump into new things he first needed to test the waters with a Proto Dragon Ball as torama explains I drew a one shot called Dragon boy that got an incredibly positive response from the readers so I decided to go that route for my next serialized work Dragon boy was a two-part manga about Tang Tong a young martial artist who is sent on a journey to return a princess to flower country he is given a Dragon Ball an artifact that can bring forth a mini dragon this story served as toriyama's dipping his toes into the martial arts pool and many of the concepts would be used later for example the setting and scenes like Master roshi being hit in the head with a blade similarly that same year he also published The Adventures of tongpo this one shot manga served as another way for Tama to test things out things such as capsules designs and even events like the protagonist being shot at a first meeting all eventually carried over to Dragon Ball Dr slump was very much a western inspired series Tori has a big love for many things American like movies but it was time for change so we wanted to have the story operate in a very different world from that of Dr slump so the opposite of California for me was something like China I wanted to make the whole thing completely different in fact the opposite of Dr slump the protagonist wouldn't be a girl but a boy move the setting from Cali California to China changed the focus from Comedy to story they looked into one of the most important literary Works in Asia for inspiration Journey to the West Journey to the West is a Chinese novel from 1592 that features The Monkey King Sun Wukong Tor Shima explained that after Dragon boy was successful he decided that Journey to the West would give the story a good structure as they could use stuff like the magic cloud and staff and because this was an uncommon subject for manga the time this would make them stand out but Toriyama took the suggestion of Journey to the West a little too literal he made the main character a literal monkey and a lot of the elements from Journey to the West remained unaltered for example the pck from Journey to the West Was intact meanwhile the female companion was a cowgirl and in some iterations of this early idea the monkey rode on a rocket regardless there was something special Brewing but this was not it torishima and even toriyama's own own wife thought it was too similar to Journey to the West and rejected it torishima thought that there needs to be a very strong emotional connection from the reader to the protagonist that they see themselves as that character so if the protagonist in Dragon Ball was a monkey which was the original plan then no one could relate to that the flying rocket remained in the next iteration but that was about it the Monkey King was turned into a human with Spike hair dressed as a school boy while the cowgirl became a gun wielding City girl pieces of Dragon Ball as we know it begin to take shape in particular Goku looks almost as he will in the final draft Toro was dead set on the name for the main character Son Goku one of the main problems with this draft was the fact that there was no Edge to Goku and he looked Bland I wanted him to have some kind of distinguishing characteristic the protagonist and dragon boy had wings so I wanted a distinguishing characteristic in that sense where you could tell it was him just by looking so I gave Goku a tale so even if he was hidden behind a rock if you could still see his tail you'd know that it was Goku Goku was son Wukong Bulma was tripitaka ulong was Zu beiji and Yamcha was sha wujing sorry for the mispronunciation the parallels to Journey to the West were apparent so those changes were necessary thus Goku along with the main cast were finalized there were very few changes between this art and the final version in particular Bulma was given her true name based off of women's underwear and made sexier to comply with the editor the mans the idea of the new versions for the Dragon Balls was also born around this time though originally there were eight rather than seven according to Toriyama he decided to subtract one because Nano satomi haken an epic Japanese story published from 1814 to 1842 had a story involving eight beats though he was influenced by the story he did not want it to be too similar it is worth noting that Toriyama went on an unrelated trip to China with his wife during his break from writing manga and he said that that experience came in handy thus on November 28th Dragon Ball was born it All Began on weekly Shonen Jump issue 51 from 1984 the first chapter was named Bulma and Son Goku when it came time to select the voices for the cast Tama had quite a say on a few characters mazako noaga auditioned and she was handpicked by the author he has even said that whenever he sees Goku now he hears most Za's voice The only voice that was specified by him was Krillin as Toriyama wanted him to be played by mumi Tanaka and he got his wish the anime began on the 26th of February 1986 while the manga was 63 chapters in the rest as they say is history Toriyama would go on to have great success in particular starting from the 21st tenichi Budokai Arc but there is one more piece of the puzzle I wanted to mention Dragon Ball wouldn't be the same without the most iconic technique the hameha I believe torama explained it best I thought I'd see if I could express Key Energy which can't be seen with the naked eye in a boy's magazine sort of way when no one was around I did a variety of poses and decided on one that looked cool which was that pose incidentally for the name Kamehameha I was wondering whether there was a decent name along the lines of something something ha when my wife said as a joke Kamehameha would be fine wouldn't it so I used it as is of course it's taken from King kameha of Hawaii the manga lasted for 519 chapters until May 23rd 1995 where Goku's story concluded in the pages of weekly Shonen Jump number 25 of 1995 the Final Chapter was appr properly titled bye-bye dragon world but that wasn't the end of Dragon Ball just yet the anime would continue until January of next year only to be renewed the next month with a TV Original Dragon Ball GT for which Toriyama made a lot of the designs for even after the anime ended Dragon Ball lifted on largely through video games and sadly a horrific liveaction film by the name of Dragon Ball Evolution however not everything was bad that came from the film the disappointment in that movie prompted Toriyama to be more involved in the series even helping in the creation and reworking of the then at the time in production Battle of Gods this led to a Resurgence of Dragon Ball that has lasted till this day including things such as Jacko the galactic patrolman Resurrection F Broly and the Dragon Ball super anime and manga though Toriyama may not be drawing Dragon Ball anymore he does help with ideas and designs for the Dragon Ball super Manga and Anime and has been mentoring the current artist of Dragon Ball toyotaro tldr he really wanted to end Dr slump and was forced into martial arts manga don't forget to like comment and subscribe to smugstick unless you want to be destroyed Lord beerus that's hardly fair but also don't forget to click the Bell icon to get notified when he uploads new videos [Music] he

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Id: m6nUnPrpVGs

Length: 9min 10sec (550 seconds)

Published: Sat May 01 2021