I bought Dragon Ball: A Visual History! (some notes)

[KBABZ]

As the title says, I was visiting a Japanese book store in New York and bought the A Visual History art book! It's translated into English, and I have a few notes after reading through it. First, Mr. Satan is called Hercule. Ugh. But secondly, on Page 57 is Toriyama's thoughts on developing Dragon Ball for the 1989 "Dragon Ball Z Anime Special Sealed Fold Out", as described on the page. Here, Toriyama depicts Dragon Boy in a panel. Then, the next panel below it says:

"Shockingly, people loved Dragon Boy, so I ended the quirky Dr. Slump and got to work on a new, martial-art-sy serialization".

I'm not sure if this is at all present in the original Japanese version, but this translation pretty much has Toriyama states that he ending Dr. Slump as a deliberate reaction to Dragon Boy's popularity so he could start Dragon Ball! Either I missed something, or this is some previously unknown context surrounding the end of Slump and the start of DB! It's pretty fascinating.

I also thought it was interesting seeing the translations of Toriyama's Complete Illustrations blurbs on page 125. In particular, the blurb for Book 3 has him say of the original Dragon Ball anime:

"Honestly, I remember disliking it, since it had this Dr. Slump-esque softness and naivete to it. But plenty of people loved how cutesy the anime used to be."

Again, something may have been lost in translation, but this implies that the more tension-filled, serious tone that the Z half has is closer to Toriyama's preferences. It also has potential dovetailing with the information we learnt earlier this year about how the Z title change (as A Visual History calls it) brought with it a (seemingly) more serious tone. It may have been something Toriyama supported the notion of, perhaps??

Lastly, I find it rather amusing that in the translation for the Complete Illustrations Book 6 blurb, he says that he's never been to a theatrical screening of any of the movies, and that his daughter "won't even bother to watch the anime when it shows up on TV. Whatever." I wonder if things have changed since 1995 when he wrote that!

[VegettoEX]

Almost a great find...! But yeah, we already knew about it.

In his Dragon Ball Landmark interview from 2004, Toriyama explicitly details that he wanted to be done with Dr. Slump, and the only reason Torishima was going to let him finish it was if he started up some kind of kung-fu story:

I was incredibly happy that Dr. Slump became popular, but at any rate, weekly serialization is hard, and coming up with material got more and more difficult… I was always wondering how I’d be able to end it. Then, I was told, “You can end it as long as you start a new serial three months after it’s ended.” So, while drawing the end of Slump, I drew a kung-fu one shot since I liked kung-fu movies. I firmed up the material for Dragon Ball from there. I think that, by nature, I’m more inclined towards gag[-manga]… but solely because it meant I wouldn’t have to make each chapter self-contained, I decided to do a story-manga.

Toriyama tells the story a few more times after that over the next decade, basically in the same way.

We have a massive "Dragon Ball Prototypes" section that I'd love for more people to be aware of and check out. Lots of great details, and in particular, a lot of stuff that I don't believe has ever been translated before (I'm sure folks have seen some of the images, but not the text that accompanies them). Within there, we also have individual pages for "Dragon Boy" chapters one and two, as well as "The Adventure of Tongpoo". Each of those pages details those particular chapters, but also sources interviews to provide even more context. We also did a two-part podcast series about all this (#0440 and #0441), so there's stuff to listen to in addition to reading!

[KBABZ]

We have a massive "Dragon Ball Prototypes" section that I'd love for more people to be aware of and check out. Lots of great details, and in particular, a lot of stuff that I don't believe has ever been translated before (I'm sure folks have seen some of the images, but not the text that accompanies them). Within there, we also have individual pages for "Dragon Boy" chapters one and two, as well as "The Adventure of Tongpoo". Each of those pages details those particular chapters, but also sources interviews to provide even more context. We also did a two-part podcast series about all this (#0440 and #0441), so there's stuff to listen to in addition to reading!

Oh I knew about this section, but somehow I missed the specific context of Toriyama wanting Dr. Slump to be done with, and that the creation of Dragon Boy gave him the motivation to do so!

I guess the rest was already known too??