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Scott M. Barnes

Arizona State University

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Son Goku or Kakarot a Saiyan from earth and all the man protagonist of the anime series

of Dragon Ball and the spinoff series like Dragon Ball Z and Super. A Saiyan (Alien Race) baby,

Kakarot sent to earth to kill all its inhabitants and to conquer it for their leader Frieza, Due to a

paranoia the home planet, Vegeta, was destroyed along with almost the entirety of the Saiyan

race. Kakarot is then found and raised by Grandpa Gohan who helps in stopping Goku

destroying the world. As the series expands and the sagas change the only thing that remains the

same and that is Goku’s want and need to become the strongest fighter that ever was constantly

training in life and even good amount of time in death (long story). I feel as the anime is of the

best to be made and many different reasons, I feel that this point can be proven especially

through the older sagas/series.

Akira Toriyama, a manga and anime creator/illustrator for japan created the first saga in

1986. Akira born in 1955 had always been inspired by other forces, as the sources range from

forms of literature to other show and on a few occasion real life situations. As for the main

characters he created for DB were loosely based on the main characters from the book; Son

Goku being based off Son Wukong, Bulma being Xuanzang, Oolong being Zhu Bajie, and

Yamcha as Sha Wujing. Superman’s background story is also somewhat used for Goku’s back

story; an alien baby is sent away to a distant planet to escape the fate of the destruction of his

home planet. Even Jackie Chan is partly the reason he made Dragon Ball to revolve around

martial arts with him being referenced as a younger version of Goku’s first master, Master Roshi.

According to an interview with Men’s No-No Magazine he found struggles in creating the series

with past manga Dr.Slump didn’t do as well as others at the time so he had decided to go more

towards the fighting aspect with Dragon Ball and it started to show a better reception. As the

sagas or arcs progressed it says he started to have problems determining the outcomes of the
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battles that take place in the story, he goes on to say "I was truly drawing without thinking about

that sort of thing, but when I got to the Majin Boo arc, I felt that there wasn’t anywhere to go

beyond it." In a way it felt as he didn’t know where to go anymore,