Dragon Ball Z and Its Impact on Japan

In February 4 1980, Dr Slump, a gag manga about a little robot girl, launched Akira Toriyama’s, creator of Dragon Ball, career. Nowadays, many are not familiar with the successful series, but one can’t deny that it was the beginning of a renaissance in anime. 

Years later, Akira Toriyama wanted to develop a brand new series. He was a fan of Jackie Chan’s martial arts films, so he wanted to make something similar. This inspired him to create Dragon Boy in 1983. which was later remade into the now iconic Dragon Ball series.

At the time, Akira modeled the characters and story after the Chinese tale Journey to the West, with the main character, Goku, being designed after Sun Wukong. The story follows Goku and his friends in search of seven magical, wish-granting orbs known as dragonballs. Akira didn’t plan for the series to go any longer than a year, but he was pleasantly surprised with the love his series garnered. 

After years of work, Dragon Ball became an ongoing, successful franchise loved by many around the world, especially in Japan. No one could predict the impact a simple story about a monkey boy would have on a country. Throughout the 1980s-1990s, the series is credited as the cause of manga’s growth in popularity. During its initial run, it sold by the millions weekly, and over the years, broke new records at the time with billions of sales.

For the 10th anniversary of the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2006, Dragon Ball was voted as the third greatest manga of all time. The following year, a survey was held and Goku was voted as the strongest anime character of all time. Goku’s journey for ever growing strength gained the admiration of many young boys everywhere.

As time went on, many other popular manga artists, (such as the authors of One Piece, and Naruto), revealed they drew inspiration from Goku for their own main characters. 

Dragon Ball has had a profound impact on Japan. Dragonball’s merchandise, art, themes and the manga/anime itself can be found all over Japan to this day. In 2015, the Japan Anniversary Association declared May 9th as “Goku Day.” This was apparently due to the fact that the Japanese numbers for five and nine can be pronounced as “Go” and “Ku”. Similarly, Dragon Ball became popular in many other parts of the world; the series itself is a gateway to Japanese manga. Many American series and games reference Dragonball, and Goku appears in many Thanksgiving parades. To this day, there are still manga, anime, video games and merchandise made for the franchise, and it’s still as popular as ever. 

Sadly, on March 1st of this year, Akira Toriyama passed away due to an acute subdural hematoma. A private funeral with his family was held a week before the public knew of his passing. Fans around the world mourned his death. His work was a vital influence in the entire Japanese manga scene, and fans will never forget the impact he made. Without Dragonball, we likely wouldn’t have many classics such as Naruto, One Piece, Attack on Titan and more. His work impacted many around the world, thus he will never be forgotten.