ChoppaEssay Preview: ChoppaReport this essayDragon Ball (гє‰Ð³Ñ”©Ð³‚ÒгєÑ-гєњгєјгє«, Doragon BÐ*ÐŒru?), created by Akira Toriyama in 1984, is an internationally famous media franchise. It consists primarily of one manga series, three different anime, seventeen animated feature films, an unofficial live-action movie, a collectible trading card game, a large number of electronic games, as well as other collectibles like action figures. An official live-action film has been currently in production as of 2002.
The narrative of the Dragon Ball manga received some of its inspiration and various characters from the Chinese folk novel Journey to the West, though it diverges from the novel very quickly. It follows the adventures of its lead character, Son Goku (based on the Monkey King of the folk legend, Sun Wukong) from his childhood into old age. Dragon Ball originally included action and comedy elements, as well a significant amount of science fiction, though the story became more sci-fi oriented over time.
Prior to ending a successful six-year run on his humor manga, Dr. Slump, in the Weekly Shonen Jump anthology magazine, Akira Toriyama started toying with the ideas that he would later apply into the Dragon Ball manga. In 1983, he wrote two chapters of Dragon Boy for the Fresh Jump anthology magazine. This story, left unfinished, merged in the comic style of Dr. Slump with an action-oriented plot. It included many elements which would be reused in the later series, including a very different kind of Dragon Ball. In 1983, Toriyama published The Adventures of Tongpoo, a sci-fi comic also featuring a Goku-like character and plot elements (such as “Hoi Poi Capsules”) which he would reuse later.
In 1987, Toriyama published The Ultimate Dragon Quest, a short story series, which was part of a series that continued Akira Toriyama’s previous humor series Dragon Boy, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GX, and Dragon Ball Z: Budokai.
In 1989, Toriyama and Masahiko Yasuyama started working on his Dragon Ball manga series. Yasuyama illustrated the manga along with a third character (namely, Jormungand) and it continued through the year. According to Jorg, Toriyama had asked Masahiko as a friend for lunch (he had just been fired from the magazine, and he was not happy with this), and the two decided to “make a project together.” Toriyama said “it was not the plan to have my old co-worker go and check out the comics so we could see what they were all about,” and began to sketch. They met up the next year and started working on a second manga project. In early 1991, Toriyama published his first Dragon Ball manga with a sequel titled, Dragon Ball Heroes and Dragon Ball Heroes II as well.
In 1997, Toriyama started a second Dragon Ball manga titled Dragon Boy and was released as Bleach, a first story arc published between 2000 and 2002. It took place after the events of Dragon Ball FighterZ, which was serialized into a limited series called, series 526, which contained 20 chapters in total. On the anime’s final episodes, you may see “Dragon Balls” being released for the first time as well as Akira Toriyama using the ending to “Dragon Ball Z”. After that, it was released in the series 4 and 5, with the final chapter featuring the Dragon Ball Warriors. After the Dragon Ball series, Dragon Ball Fusion: Dragon Ball Z is released as a TV series. The same series returns for an all-ages TV adaptation in 1998, which was the first time that Toriyama worked on Dragon Ball. The series had become his first television series following the arrival of the first Dragon Ball anime. In 1999, he published the third Dragon Ball Z manga in Dragon Ball Z: Budokai. There have been two more Dragon Ball anime installments in the series since that.
In 2002, Toriyama completed the third original Dragon Ball manga series, Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, in which he completed several chapters in all five manga series. In 2003, he began work on another manga which would serve as a companion piece to Dragon Balls. This story arc was adapted into a anime after the last Dragon Ball anime.
In 2011, Toriyama started a series on