Translations Archive

What are the secrets of Dragon Ball’s birth? We went and asked Toriyama-sensei himself.

Goku

How was Goku born?

When I came up with Dragon Ball, I thought I would try to combine the Kung-Fu movies of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee1, which I loved so much that I’d watch them on video even while I was working, with the classic Journey to the West2 to make an enjoyable manga. Naturally, the name “Son Goku” comes from the Monkey King of Journey to the West, as well. The reason Goku has a tail is also because I gave him a monkey motif. Only, in the original Journey to the West, they’re heading for India, but for Dragon Ball, I changed the ultimate objective to the easier-to-understand “gather seven orbs called ‘Dragon Balls’ in order to grant a wish” when starting the serialization. Be that as it may, my interest gradually shifted towards the growth and growing strength of the boy Goku, and it diverged more and more from the original concept based on Journey to the West.

1Kung-Fu movies of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee — Hong Kong films where a hero skilled at Chinese martial arts (Kung-Fu) has an active role and looks cool. Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee are stars of those Hong Kong films. They often strike a pose and say things like “Acho!“; this originally started with Bruce Lee. — Hong Kong films where a hero skilled at Chinese martial arts (Kung-Fu) has an active role and looks cool. Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee are stars of those Hong Kong films. They often strike a pose and say things like “Acho!“; this originally started with Bruce Lee. 2Journey to the West — An old Chinese story. It’s the story of how a great Buddhist monk, accompanied by the Monkey King [Sun Wukong], Pigsy [Zhu Bajie], and Sandy [Sha Wujing], heads to India in order to obtain sutras. The Goku of this story is a prankster. Whenever he does something bad, the Vajra Band [Jin’ganglun], which was placed on his forehead by the monk, squeezes hard; he makes use of an extending staff [Ruyibang / Nyoibō], the cloud somersault [Jindouyun / Kinto’un], and Sage Wizardry [Xianshu].

Why does Goku’s hair turn gold when he becomes a Super Saiyan?

I decided on the design for the Super Saiyan for, to be honest… a simple reason that will leave you saying “What?”. I always have only a single person, Assistant-kun3, helping me with my work. That Assistant-kun’s time was always taken up doing the black fill4 of Goku’s hair, so the biggest reason was in order to save time. Because when he became a Super Saiyan, we wouldn’t have to do the black fill. It also had the effect of making it easy to tell from his appearance that Goku had gotten stronger, so it killed two birds with one stone. Only, at the time, it was considered that his strength would increase 50-fold when he became a Super Saiyan, but that was a bit of an exaggeration. My feeling as the creator is that, while drawing it, I felt that it was about a 10-fold change from what it was up to that point.