Dragon Ball

With the recent passing of acclaimed manga artist, Akira Toriyama, fans of his work are looking back on his track record and seeing just how influential he was to pop culture, especially with his hit series, Dragon Ball. While he has had other mangas and created other properties, Dragon Ball is easily his biggest success, originally starting off as a serialized shōnen manga which ran from 1984 to 1995, before exploding into a massive media franchise with the creation of the insanely popular anime which helped introduce Western audiences to Japanese animation during the 1990s. Being one of the most successful and best-selling manga series of all time, this re-imagined take on the Chinese novel, Journey to the West, gave way to iconic action set pieces, beloved characters that hold a special place in the hearts of many, and ideas and visuals that have been so ingrained into pop culture that they have been reference a countless number of times and resulted in future manga writers concocting their own trailblazing series. While the anime, Dragon Ball Z, is the most well-known branch of this franchise, a lot of Western audiences were not aware that it was in fact a follow-up to the original story, which was displayed in its own anime which ran from 1986 to 1989. In an isolated hut in the middle of nowhere lives a young boy with a tail named Son Goku (voiced by Stephanie Nadolny), who meets a teenage girl named Bulma (voiced by Tiffany Volmer) who informs him about her quest to find these mystic orbs known as Dragon Balls, which have the power to grant a wish if all seven are found. With Goku having one of the balls, the two set off on a quest to find the rest of them, coming across some friends along the way including a shape shifting pig named Oolong (voiced by Bradford Jackson), a dessert bandit named Yamcha (voiced by Christopher Sabat) and an old martial arts hermit named Roshi (voiced by Mike McFarland). Throughout the course of this journey and beyond, Goku will evolve beyond a simple wild boy and form into a martial arts prodigy, facing various dangers including an army with plans of world domination, fellow martial artists that have blood on their fists, and even a demonic lord from the past who hopes to wipe out humanity for good. This Toei animated series didn’t have as big as splash as its more action-heavy successor, but this early venture does have enough charm, creativity, and excitable passion to make it worth searching out. It definitely has its problems like an inconsistent quality between arcs, characters that lack personality, and a tone that can be hard to deal with at times, but overall, you can see why this would become such a monumental franchise.

Originally  conceived through a deal that Toriyama made with his publishers, Shueisha, where he could conclude his other popular manga series, Dr. Slump, if he created another serial for them to continue releasing, Dragon Ball takes a lot of components from the Journey to the West story including characters, ideas, and even basic narrative outline, but injects its own style of cartoonish wackiness alongside a heavier focus on high-spirited adventure and goofy combat to result in it becoming distinctly its own. Despite what the franchise would grow into, Dragon Ball is not a battle manga, but rather an explorative journey that incorporates traditional philosophies about bettering oneself through specific acts of maturity, kindness and preservation, resulting in a much slower-pace, quiet, and overall smoother ride than its sequel series. For such a noticeable difference, Dragon Ball is quite effective in this tone, allowing for a relaxing adventure that allows for a lot of bizarre situations, charming people to interact with, and a world that does feel quite unique and creative since it houses a lot of strange creatures and mythic scenarios. Considering the series is split across several arcs and each one continues on from each other just with a new focus at the centre, the quality of these seasons is going to be a little up and down. The first storyline which involves finding the dragon balls for the first time is honestly very well handled, with great pacing with almost no fluff to pad things out, a cast of characters that, while not phenomenal, work well with the story that unfolds, and does a good job showing the inventive and surreal things that inhabit this world (one of the main threats is a talking mobster rabbit who turns whoever he touches into carrots). Other highlights include a story where Goku fights a mercenary to avenge a fallen friend, which also has perfect pacing and a great lesson surrounding his training which feels perfectly in line with most martial arts teachings, and any time the show focuses on a tournament, where it can house several new characters and therefore a variety of fights and usually contains a personal narrative angle that works as a pretty good hook. With that said, the rest of the arcs, while not terrible, do contain a lot of the negative components that come with the series, and therefore are dragged down because of it. The focus on this world-dominating army never feels that intimidating or impactful due to boring characters, no sense of stacks or conflict, and a first sign of bad pacing where it takes too long to get things done, a conflict with a fortune-teller also proves to be quite uneventful and slow-moving, and even the conflict involved with a demon overlord doesn’t feel as climatic or big as it should due to the consequences not feeling as shocking as they should (it’s a little hard to worry about the death of big characters when this universe has an easy reset button on life). You can see the strengths and flaws in Toriyama’s writing style when watching this whole show, as while he has a lot of great ideas that he often borrows from other known properties and can create an imaginative distinct environment, he’s not the best at world building or constructing a coherent narrative that has a solid beginning-middle-and-end. Things pop up as the show continues that don’t feel planned out, characters don’t evolve so much as they change when it’s depending for them to (if they even do at all), and since you can feel the shift in tone from small-scale gag manga, to climatic shōnen manga, you can tell when he is a little out of his element, not only because a lot of the talent that worked on the anime for Dr. Slump (a much lighter gag-heavy series) worked on this anime (including the two main directors, Minoru Okazaki and Daisuke Nishio, and one of the show writers, Toshiki Inoue) but also with how threats never feel as dangerous as they should. The series, despite labeling itself as a comedy, is also never really funny and at worst, features things that are borderline offensive to have to watch (especially whenever it highlights anyone within the black community). At best, the show is lightly charming and can be entertaining when it doesn’t force the need to repeat a gag that wasn’t funny to begin with, but thankfully this quality goes away as the show keeps growing.

The character of Goku has almost evolved past the limits of popular manga character and has practically become a staple for Japan the same way Mario has been for the country, featuring in avenues and areas even outside of his franchise to a level that proves he’s become a cultural icon. While the character feels a little stagnant and not the most engaging in Dragon Ball Z where his role was moreso to be the always on-top hero rather than the central character, that isn’t the case in Dragon Ball, and he actually works quite well here. Seeing this plucky and optimistic, yet socially naïve child grow is honestly pretty effective, and his cheery nature, willingness to help others and overall pleasant attitude and constant desire for betterment makes for a really entertaining lead. Even if he isn’t a character that goes through arcs or has much depth to him, he is very likeable, which can’t really be said for the rest of the cast. The point of an ensemble is feeling like each piece is providing something useful to reach the common end goal, but for most of this show, a good chunk of the supporting characters are practically useless and don’t provide any support in any of the conflicts (even getting to the point where their main involvement in a final fight is just them going to the battlefield and reaching it once it’s done). This wouldn’t be as big a deal if they served a purpose outside of fighting or functioned as emotional support, but not only do very few of them do that and only serve for comedic relief, but most of them are at best generically bland, and at worst incredibly irritating and unlikeable. The cast throughout the show’s life keeps growing, but in spite of that, none of these characters ever change, so their one notes stay the same the whole time and since some of these traits aren’t very appealing, it can be hard to tolerate them. Some of them are okay like a fellow warrior named Tien Shinhan (voiced by John Burgmeier) whose arc of changing from a dark assassin to a honorable fighter is probably the only piece of nuance any character has in this series,  but he comes in pretty late. Characters like Bulma and Master Roshi do have nice moments, but their bad qualities are so horrendous to deal with that they are a pain to sit through sometimes (Roshi’s perviness borders on rapey several times throughout this show and it isn’t okay), Yamcha is kind of just a ‘’fall guy’’ role and he works fine at it, but there isn’t much else to him to really work with, and everybody else is just meant for one off gags and sometimes not even that (to the point that on occasion, one off characters often have more agency and personality than some of the long-lasting faces). Most of the villains aren’t that effective either and range from pathetically boring and unfunny, like the intro villain, Pilaf (voiced by Chuck Huber) and his henchman who keep appearing despite being terrible characters, or just very generic maniacal threat like the demon King Piccolo (also voiced by Christopher Sabat) who’s weird mannerism and oddly modern tone of voice keep this character from being the ancient evil threat he’s built up to be. Some of the villains are okay like a cutthroat mercenary named Tao (voiced by Kent Williams) and an effeminate army general named Blue (voiced by Sonny Strait), both of whom juggle comedic foil and legitimate threat decently enough, but they aren’t given a lot of time to develop or stay around outside of their one arcs.

As the show progresses, as do the visuals, but that weirdly causes a few more problems. The look of the show is quite nice, with a soft color palette, creative landscape design that has a grounded nature but features a lot of mystical odd elements to liven it up, and a world that inhabits a lot of unique creatures and a production quality that doesn’t just take from Japanese iconography, but also several other Asian-based countries, resulting in a world that would’ve felt delightfully different for the time period. It’s a world that does feel its own and not one that has been fully replicate since, being a place where people can live alongside humanoid animals and even dinosaurs, where mythical beings and spiritual places are as much real as they are legends, and where things like magical floating clouds that only carry those with pure hearts, robots with very wholesome characteristics, and a child with a tail that transforms into a gigantic ape beast, are just pare the course. The animation is pretty nice too, nothing overly incredible to begin with, but has a nice retro look that feels scratchy yet filled with care and detail (a staple of Toriyama’s visual design). However, a strange problem arises once the show includes more action and gets some genuinely great animated moments, featuring great line work, fluidity, and expressions. With this upgrade means that it often follows with less-than-impressive visuals that look quite cheap, stiff, and not very interesting from a layout perspective, and this would only become an issue after the animation increased in quality as before it remained at perfectly adequate. There aren’t a lot of fights in the series which is ironic given how synonymous it is with the franchise, but for this period, it took more from classic Hong Kong martial arts films rather than superhero theatrics. Some are good, but its hard to find any that are great, especially when compared to what comes after. The music for this series is honestly a perfect encapsulation of everything that makes this show enjoyable to watch. Most of the tracks composed by Shunsuke Kikuchi are upbeat, catchy, used in the right moments to illicit the right amount of hype, and do a good job at balancing this feeling of adventure and child-like wonder, but also climatic weight that brings an almost bygone ancient feel to it, like listening to a legend from long ago. The opening and ending themes seem to capture both aspects of the show quite nicely as well, with the opening theme doing a great job providing a fun, upbeat, and cool-sounding theme that’ll get you ready to go on an adventure, and the ending theme providing a softer, relaxing even nostalgic note that closes the show in a soothing way, it’s a very well handled score all around.

With how big of a brand Dragon Ball has become, its no wonder Akira Toriyama’s passing was such a brutal shock to everybody, whether they were a fan of Dragon Ball or not. While there definitely are flaws throughout all the variations of Dragon Ball whether on page or on screen, no one can deny the impact it left on pop culture and just how many of its scenes, ideas and even characters have lasted long past any expected period. Dragon Ball Z will always be the name that people latch to when thinking of his work, but if you take a dive back to the past and see where this monkey kid got his start at, Dragon Ball is also a nice series to check out as well. It does stumble a few times, most of the characters aren’t that great, and from a pure engagement level, Z has a lot more impactful moments, iconic fights and bigger set pieces, but Dragon Ball has a calming atmosphere, a likeably adventurous spirit, a very solid handling of its main character, and a very enjoyable world that was and still is pretty creative. Both shows have their strengths, and both are worth checking out for entirely different reasons. The man left behind something special, and it’s safe to say that people aren’t going to forget the amazing wish that he granted for them.