moments together.
Like meeting Masako Nozawa. Seriously.
MIKE (“VegettoEX”) is one of the co-founders of Kanzenshuu. He has gone to conventions.
Neo-Shonen
Written for Japanese boys, loved by boys and girls worldwide
Dragon Ball was one of a few Shonen Jump series to start bringing in a significant female fanbase. How did the “Golden Age” start changing audiences?
By Daryl Surat
I confess: I’m not as knowledgeable about the specifics of Dragon Ball as most of you reading this. But Dragon Ball has stayed alive and relevant for 30 years because of its influence on today’s shonen action adventure stories. For thanks to both the timing of its release, the longevity of its run, and the changes to its own formula throughout, Dragon Ball is the bridge between “classic” shonen of the past and the modern shonen of the present day (I’ll call it “neo-shonen”).
Akira Toriyama got his break in the early 1980s with Dr. Slump. Edited by Kazuhiko Torishima, its art style and often scatological-based gags epitomized the phrase “boys’ comics.” In 1984, once the duo started work on Dragon Ball, the early wacky antics of Son Goku were cut from the same cloth. Why, just look at the edits that had to be made to get it released in English!
But beyond the pages of Son Goku’s adventure, other gears were in motion. Under the editorial guidance of Nobuhiko Horie—the basis for “Mad Holy” in Blue Blazes!—1983’s Fist of the North Star set the gold standard for “battle manga,” from its character archetypes, narrative beats, and (lest we forget) being forced to continue for 109 additional chapters due to popularity despite concluding its story in chapter 136. Then in 1985, City Hunter—also edited by Horie—proved a surprise success among female readers, thanks in large part to its art style and interplay between the male and female leads. A similar thing happened in 1986 with Saint Seiya, and (oddly enough) 1988’s Bastard!! Dragon Ball would have to adapt to keep from being surpassed.
(Yes, 1981’s Captain Tsubasa was instrumental in giving rise to BL as we know it now, but we’ll omit that for now because those fans weren’t exactly sending in reader surveys to the publishers!)
With the way Weekly Shonen Jump operates, the editors may as well be un[der]credited series co-writers/creators. Editorial reigns were handed over to Yu Kondo, a former shojo manga editor who knew how to keep girls interested without alienating the target boys demographic. Penis and poop jokes faded away in favor of planet-destroying battles. Little Son Goku grew up, married and had children, but in his adulthood became [someone who could totally beat] Superman [but NOT Kenshiro]. New characters such as female fighter Android 18 and the handsome (by Dragon Ball standards, anyway!) Vegeta and Trunks were introduced.
By the early 1990s, Nobuhiko Horie became Shonen Jump Editor-in-Chief and a massive turnover in editorial staff occurred. Jump reached its peaks in circulation thanks to titles deliberately crafted to appeal to boys and girls, like Slam Dunk and Rurouni Kenshin. Incidental to this, Dragon Ball changed again; its final three years were edited by Fuyuto Takeda. By this point, Son Goku’s child Son Gohan was now a high school teenager who fought crime as a superhero while being in a relationship with the tomboyish Videl.
Today, Horie’s influence on Dragon Ball and Jump in general (Fist of the North Star and City Hunter aside) has been downplayed from the official record since he left Shueisha to form his own publishing company, Coamix. But he did make one undeniable contribution to ensuring Dragon Ball remains relevant to English-speaking anime fans in 2014: had Horie not launched the now-defunct Raijin Comics, a weekly manga anthology translated into English, there would’ve never been an English edition of Shonen Jump for Dragon Ball to be re-serialized in! Yep, Shueisha started the entire initiative out of spite, and they put Goku front and center on the cover to lead the charge with then-fledgling series One Piece—the spiritual amalgamation of Dragon Ball, Fist of the North Star, and Rurouni Kenshin—in the corner. The recently-concluded Naruto started shortly after, in Issue #2. The primary image on most of these covers? You guessed it. A more empirical case for Dragon Ball being the bridge to shonen manga’s present you will not find.
DARYL writes for Otaku USA magazine and is one of the hosts of the Anime World Order podcast at: animeworldorder.com
Toriyama World
The world of Toriyama’s makes all readers its denizens. But what is its defining characteristic...?
By Kei17
I am recognized by everyone, including myself, as having a serious case of Dragon Ball addiction. You could even say that I’ve given over a certain portion of my life to Dragon Ball. Even so, up to now, there was something I couldn’t come up with an answer for within myself, no matter how much I’d fret about it: while I like the the Freeza and Artificial Human arcs, with their more serious story elements, I felt like there was something lacking to their stories.
The topic of “what point Dragon Ball should have ended at,” or “Toriyama-sensei intended to end it at the ____ arc,” is a conversation that’s unfolded between fans regardless of country or culture. And, the arcs that always get brought up as potential candidates are the aforementioned two. Even looking at the wider world, the Freeza arc in particular is the most popular story out of the entire Dragon Ball series, and it is certainly also a part that carries a large role in terms of plot, bringing the story involving Goku’s roots to a conclusion. Toriyama-sensei’s depiction of action was well-honed, and when looking at Dragon Ball as a battle manga, I believe it had reached a peak. The subsequent Artificial Humans arc then brought to fruition the generational shift from Goku to Gohan. Gohan, who had a whiff about him of a changing of the guard since his debut, yet remained in a vaguely defined position, at last has his talents blossom, and surpasses Goku to become the hero of the next generation. Writing like this, these two arcs can certainly be thought of as just right for cutoff points at which to end the story. However, there was something about them that just wouldn’t sit with me. It was only just recently that I realized what it was.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but while I’m a huge Dragon Ball and Toriyama fan, I had actually never properly read Dr. Slump. There was, of course, the simple fact that I wasn’t of that generation, so I had fewer chances to come into contact with it, but the bigger reason is that I thought it was just too old for me to be able to enjoy. However, I recently resolved that as a proper Toriyama fan, I should read everything, so I read it all in one go. As I had anticipated, there were many points that felt dated; as I read, however, I felt an indescribable sense of relief as I became wrapped up in the easygoing world of the series. Dr. Slump is essentially a madcap comedy, but its most distinctive characteristic is the way that pure, innocent Arale-chan, for whom anything can happen with her jaw-dropping strength, gets the universe caught up in all sorts of crazy antics. After getting Dr. Norimaki wrapped around her finger, it’s on to the people of Penguin Village, until finally, everything—up to and including aliens—gets pulled into Arale’s orbit. A surprisingly large number of characters appear, and the series’ world spreads out endlessly, but even so, the destination is always a pure, innocent worldview that ought to be called something like the “Arale World.” I felt the same thing reading Dr. Slump as I did when I saw Battle of Gods. The story spreads out endlessly, and both Goku and his opponent keep getting stronger and stronger. But in the end, everything is subsumed into the character of Goku, and the tale ends together with an indescribable sense of relief and a warm heart. I think that this is the result of everything showing up as-is in the work of the man known as Akira Toriyama himself: his abundance of ideas, his purity, and his astounding openness to let everything fall into his own world. That is the “Toriyama World.”
Returning to the discussion of the Freeza and Artificial Human arcs, in short, what these are definitively lacking is none other than that “Toriyama World”-ness. Certainly, there is an expansion of the world and a sense of scale due to the abundant ideas characteristic of the author, and se
rious battles are probably another big draw of Toriyama works. But the things that occur in these two arcs are essentially “clashes with the outside.” Even though there are large developments and conclusions in the story and the background of the characters, for the dénouement, it’s all decisive breaks and partings, and one can’t find any of the things that might be called the openness, or inclusiveness, of Toriyama’s works. The key is in how “it’s wrapped up neatly as a story, yet that’s not really what this work is about.”
Thinking about it now, it all makes sense: the fact that I like the way that both the Buu arc and Battle of Gods end, and conversely, why I felt an intense discomfort at the end of GT, which punctuates the end of Goku’s tale. Dragon Ball should be a tale about the character of Son Goku and his world. People should always gather together through a variety of events, drawn in by Goku, and it should always end with Goku’s innocent smile and a sense of expectation for an even further expansion of the story. And also, that’s just the involvement between the author, and us, the recipients, as-is. We are attracted by the ever-expanding, innocent Toriyama World, which gets the globe caught up in