<onlyinclude>is a Japanese media franchise created by Akira Toriyama. The series follows the adventures of protagonist Son Goku from his childhood through adulthood as he trains in martial arts. Along his journey, he makes several friends, becomes a family man, discovers his alien heritage, and battles a wide variety of villains, many of whom, like him, seek the mystical orbs called the Dragon Balls in order to summon a wish-granting dragon.
The original manga, written and illustrated by Toriyama, was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1984 to 1995, with the 519 individual chapters collected in 42 volumes by its publisher Shueisha.Dragon Ball was originally inspired by the classical 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, combined with elements of Hong Kong martial arts films. Dragon Ball characters also use a variety of East Asian martial arts styles, including karate and Wing Chun (kung fu).
Toriyama's manga was adapted and divided into two anime series produced by Toei Animation: Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, which together were broadcast in Japan from 1986 to 1989 and 1989 to 1996, respectively. Additionally, the studio has developed 21 animated feature films and three television specials, as well as an anime sequel series titled Dragon Ball GT (1996–1997) and two anime midquel series titled Dragon Ball Super (2015–2018) and Dragon Ball Daima (2024–2025). From 2009 to 2015, Dragon Ball Z Kai aired as a revised version of Dragon Ball Z that follows the manga's story more faithfully by removing most of the anime-exclusive material, known as filler.
Several companies have developed various types of merchandise based on the series, leading to a large media franchise that includes films (both animated and live action), collectible trading card games, action figures, collections of soundtracks, and numerous video games. All these have contributed to making Dragon Ball one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
The Dragon Ball manga has been published in over 40countries and the anime has been broadcast in more than 80countries. The manga's 42 collected volumes have over 160 million copies sold in Japan and sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. Dragon Ball has been praised for its art, characterization, humor, and broad audience appeal. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential manga series of all time, with many manga artists citing Dragon Ball as a source of inspiration for their own now-popular works. The anime, particularly Dragon Ball Z, is also highly popular around the world and is considered one of the most influential in increasing the popularity of Japanese animation in the Western world. It has had a considerable impact on global popular culture, referenced by and inspiring numerous artists, athletes, celebrities, filmmakers, musicians, and writers around the world.
Setting
Earth, known as the and designated as "Planet 4032-877" by the celestial hierarchy, is the main setting of the Dragon Ball series, as well as related media such as Dr. Slump, Neko Majin, and Jaco the Galactic Patrolman. It is mainly inhabited by , a term used inclusively to refer to all of the intelligent races native to the planet, including humans, anthropomorphic beings, and monsters. Starting from the Dragon Ball Z series, various extraterrestrial species such as the and have played a more prominent role in franchise media.
The narrative of Dragon Ball predominantly follows the adventures of the Saiyan Son Goku; upon meeting Bulma at the beginning of the series, the two embark on an adventure to gather the seven Dragon Balls, a set of orbs that summon the wish-granting dragon Shenlong. Goku later receives martial arts training from Kame-Sen'nin, meets his lifelong friend Kuririn, and enters the to fight the world's strongest warriors. When Piccolo Daimao, and later his offspring Piccolo, tries to conquer the planet, Goku receives training from Earth's deities to defeat them. Goku later sacrifices his life to save the planet from his estranged brother Raditz, but is revived after training in the afterlife under the tutelage of the North Kaio to combat the other incoming Saiyans, Nappa and Vegeta. He later becomes a Super Saiyan and defeats the powerful alien tyrant Frieza; this sets the tone of the rest of the series, with each enemy the characters face becoming stronger than the last, requiring them to attain further training.
Dragon Ball Super establishes that the franchise is set in a multiverseSOS from the Future: A Dark New Enemy Appears!, Funimation dub composed of twelve numbered universes, with the majority of the Dragon Ball series taking place in . Each universe is ruled by a number of benevolent and malevolent deities, respectively called Kaioshin and Gods of Destruction who are appointed by a higher being called Zeno, the watcher of the multiverse.
Production
Akira Toriyama was an avid fan of Hong Kong martial arts films, particularly Bruce Lee films such as Enter the Dragon (1973) and Jackie Chan films such as Drunken Master (1978), and wanted to create a manga inspired by the films of the genre. This led to Toriyama creating the 1983 one-shot manga Dragon Boy, which he later redeveloped into Dragon Ball. Toriyama loosely modeled the plot and characters of Dragon Ball on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, with Goku being Sun Wukong ("Son Goku" in Japanese), Bulma as Tang Sanzang, Oolong as Zhu Bajie, and Yamcha being Sha Wujing. Toriyama wanted to write a story with the basic theme of Journey to the West, but with "a little kung fu" by combining the novel with elements from the kung fu films of Chan and Lee. The title Dragon Ball was inspired by Enter the Dragon and later Bruceploitation knockoff kung fu films, which frequently had the word "Dragon" in their titles, and the fighting scenes were influenced by Jackie Chan movies. Since it was serialized in a shōnen manga magazine, he conceived the Dragon Balls to give it a game-like activity of gathering something, without thinking of what the characters would wish for. His concept of the Dragon Balls was inspired by the epic Japanese novel Nansō Satomi Hakkenden (1814–1842) from the late Edo period, which involved the heroes collecting eight Buddhist prayer beads; Toriyama adapted this into collecting seven Dragon Balls.
Toriyama originally thought the manga would last about a year or end once the Dragon Balls were collected. He stated that although the stories are purposefully easy to understand, he specifically aimed Dragon Ball at readers older than those of Dr. Slump. He also wanted to break from the Western influences common in Dr. Slump, deliberately incorporating for Chinese influences and scenery and referencing Chinese buildings and photographs of China his wife had bought. Toriyama wanted to set Dragon Ball in a fictional world largely based on Asia, taking inspiration from several Asian cultures including Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Central Asian, Arabic and Indonesian cultures. The island where the Tenkaichi Budōkai is held is modeled after Bali (in Indonesia), which he, his wife and assistant visited in mid-1985, and for the area around Bobbidi's spaceship, he consulted photos of Africa. Toriyama was also inspired by the jinn (genies) from The Arabian Nights.
During the early chapters of the manga, Toriyama's editor, Kazuhiko Torishima, commented that Goku looked rather plain. Although the series debuted with an unusually high-profile launch, including five consecutive color pages, it was not initially very popular.渡辺彰則編「鳥山明的超会見」『ドラゴンボール大全集 第2巻』集英社、1995年8月9日、262-264頁。。 At the beginning of its serialization, the series benefited from readers' expectations following Toriyama's previous hit Dr. Slump and strong editorial support. However, its popularity gradually declined, and it ranked as low as 15th in the magazine's reader surveys. Its table-of-contents placement also declined, appearing 7th for Chapter 7 and 12th for Chapter 31, leading to concerns that the series might be canceled.
To combat this, he added several characters such as Kame-Sen'nin and Kuririn, and created the Tenkaichi Budōkai martial arts tournament to focus the storyline on fighting. It was when the first Tenkaichi Budōkai began that Dragon Ball truly became popular, having recalled the races and tournaments in Dr. Slump. Anticipating that readers would expect Goku to win the tournaments, Toriyama had him lose the first two while planning an eventual victory. This allowed for more character growth as the manga progressed. He said that Muscle Tower in the Red Ribbon Army storyline was inspired by the video game Spartan X (known as Kung-Fu Master in the West), in which enemies appear in quick succession as the player ascends a tower (the game was in turn inspired by Jackie Chan's Wheels on Meals and Bruce Lee's Game of Death). He then created Piccolo Daimao as a truly evil villain, and as a result named that arc the most interesting to draw.
Once Goku and company had become the strongest on Earth, they turned to extraterrestrial opponents including the ; and Goku himself was retconned from an Earthling to a Saiyan who was sent to Earth as a baby. Frieza, who forcibly took over planets to resell them, was created around the time of the Japanese economic bubble and was inspired by real estate speculators, whom Toriyama called the "worst kind of people". Finding the escalating enemies difficult, he created the Ginyu Force to add more balance to the series. When Toriyama created the transformation during the Frieza arc, he was initially concerned that Goku's facial expressions as a Super Saiyan made him look like a villain, but decided it was acceptable since the transformation was brought about by anger. Goku's Super Saiyan form has blonde hair because it was easier to draw for Toriyama's assistant (who spent a lot of time blacking in Goku's hair), and has piercing eyes based on Bruce Lee's paralyzing glare. Dragon Ball Z character designer Tadayoshi Yamamuro also used Bruce Lee as a reference for Goku's Super Saiyan form, stating that, when he "first becomes a Super Saiyan, his slanting pose with that scowling look in his eyes is all Bruce Lee." Toriyama later added time travel during the Cell arc, but said he had a hard time with it, only thinking of what to do that week and having to discuss it with his second editor Yu Kondo. After Cell's death, Toriyama intended for Gohan to replace Goku as the series' protagonist, but later felt the character was not suited for the role and changed his mind.
Going against the convention that the strongest characters should be the largest in terms of physical size, Toriyama designed many of Dragon Ball most powerful characters with small statures, including the protagonist, Goku. Toriyama later explained that he had Goku grow up as a means to make drawing fight scenes easier, even though his first editor Kazuhiko Torishima was initially against it because it was rare to have the main character of a manga series change drastically. When including fights in the manga, Toriyama had the characters go to uninhabited locations to avoid difficulties in drawing residents and destroyed buildings. Toriyama said that he did not plan the details of the story, resulting in strange occurrences and discrepancies later in the series, including changing the colors of the characters mid-story and few characters having screentone because he found it difficult to use. After the completion of Dragon Ball, Toriyama continued to add to its story, mostly background information on its universe, through guidebooks published by Shueisha.