Any influence of Fist of the North Star on Dragon Ball's original production?

[NeoKING]

And most notably, it had a VERY sizable impact on one Osamu Tezuka. Yup, THAT Osamu Tezuka. Even by the time Garo had first debuted in the mid-1960s, Tezuka was already the most prolific mainstream artist working in the manga/anime industry. Tezuka was well known to have fallen head over heels in love with the Gekiga art style and its associated works within the alternative/underground manga scene and in the pages of Garo in particular. To incredibly vast degrees. To the point where Tezuka would start his own Gekiga/alt-manga-focused publication COM.

The influence that those works would have on Tezuka's later manga can in no way be overstated, and they are largely credited for the more "grown up" storytelling and subject matter of a lot of Tezuka's latter works.

The impact that this style of manga would have on mainstream manga artists would in no way be solely relegated to Tezuka (though he played a BIG role in mainstreaming it) - another prolific mainstream manga artist by the name of Go Nagai would also become a devoted fan and incorporate it heavily into his own work - and very soon Gekiga and the overall sensibilities of Garo-style alternative manga would become the new mainstream: for awhile at least.

Mainstream manga publications, including yes Weekly Shonen Jump, would begin courting over alternative manga artists en masse, and very soon what used to be a countercultural niche became a big, big part of the face of manga for over the next two or three decades. In a lot of ways, the rise and fall of Gekiga and alt-manga as a mainstream movement very eerily mirrors the mainstream rise (and subsequent fall) of hardcore punk and grunge music in the late 1980s and 1990s in the United States.

Fist of the North Star, and other similar titles like it (from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure to City Hunter to Rokudenashi Blues, Guyver, and an endless amount more, including historical titles like Barefoot Gen), all owe their entire existences and bursts of popularity to this whole movement of manga art and its rise to prominence during the late 1960s into the 1970s.

This explains why so much popular manga of that time would often be depressing as hell with their stories. The aesthetics would look “cute” but the stories or endings of these stories were often bittersweet.

[Misu]

To help further clarify:

Fist of the North Star was absolutely, 100% considered Shonen in its original run. And it was hardly unique in this regard.

Shonen as a demographic in manga and anime was overall a great, GREAT deal more risque and artistically diversified from the late 1960s up through to the mid-1990s. What people largely think of today as "Shonen" (the "Big Three" dominant era where Naturo, One Piece, Bleach, and their assorted ilk basically singularly define the landscape for most), where a large amount of the most popular material has been greatly homogenized, has only really existed as the dominant status quo of the demographic since around the late 1990s/turn of the 2000s or so.

Prior to that point though, the anime/manga landscape overall (Shonen included) was a great, great deal different. Almost unrecognizably so for a millennial-aged fan (or younger).

A lot of this comes down to the rise (and subsequent fall) in popularity and dominance of Gekiga and alternative manga. Gekiga refers to a particular style of manga and anime art, which is heavily axed a great deal more on realism and extreme detail rather than simplistic, minimalist, cartoon-like features. This style of manga art has its roots in underground/countercultural manga art of the 1960s. During that same decade, a manga publication known as Garo became a central hub for cutting edge "outsider" manga artists with medium-challenging and expanding ideas and ways of drawing and conceptualizing manga storytelling.

It cannot in anyway be overstated what a MASSIVE impact Garo had on manga for the subsequent 30+ years of the medium's history following its debut. For several decades, Garo had cultivated (or otherwise impacted) some of the greatest and most landmark artists of the medium's history, from Suehiro Maruo to Sanpei Shirato (who helped found Garo), Murasaki Yamada, Yoshiharu Tsuge, Tadao Tsuge, Yoshihiro Tatsumi (who literally coined the term "Gekiga" to differentiate this style of manga art from more mainstream, commercial fare), and on and on and on down a mind-blowing who's who list of definitive, medium-defining artists.

And most notably, it had a VERY sizable impact on one Osamu Tezuka. Yup, THAT Osamu Tezuka. Even by the time Garo had first debuted in the mid-1960s, Tezuka was already the most prolific mainstream artist working in the manga/anime industry. Tezuka was well known to have fallen head over heels in love with the Gekiga art style and its associated works within the alternative/underground manga scene and in the pages of Garo in particular. To incredibly vast degrees. To the point where Tezuka would start his own Gekiga/alt-manga-focused publication COM.

The influence that those works would have on Tezuka's later manga can in no way be overstated, and they are largely credited for the more "grown up" storytelling and subject matter of a lot of Tezuka's latter works.

The impact that this style of manga would have on mainstream manga artists would in no way be solely relegated to Tezuka (though he played a BIG role in mainstreaming it) - another prolific mainstream manga artist by the name of Go Nagai would also become a devoted fan and incorporate it heavily into his own work - and very soon Gekiga and the overall sensibilities of Garo-style alternative manga would become the new mainstream: for awhile at least.

Mainstream manga publications, including yes Weekly Shonen Jump, would begin courting over alternative manga artists en masse, and very soon what used to be a countercultural niche became a big, big part of the face of manga for over the next two or three decades. In a lot of ways, the rise and fall of Gekiga and alt-manga as a mainstream movement very eerily mirrors the mainstream rise (and subsequent fall) of hardcore punk and grunge music in the late 1980s and 1990s in the United States.

Fist of the North Star, and other similar titles like it (from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure to City Hunter to Rokudenashi Blues, Guyver, and an endless amount more, including historical titles like Barefoot Gen), all owe their entire existences and bursts of popularity to this whole movement of manga art and its rise to prominence during the late 1960s into the 1970s.

So what made the wheels finally come off and relegate this stuff back into (in some ways, very needlessly) niche obscurity? Honestly, a ton of various factors, some cultural and most economic. Dragon Ball's meteoric success often gets a whole ton of the blame heaped onto it: I myself personally have always found that while it does share a good deal of the blame, I personally think putting most of all of it onto DB's shoulders is overstating and oversimplifying things and minimizes a host of other factors.

Chiefly though, I've always thought it came down primarily to economics and the capitalistic hunger for ever increasing profits. Dragon Ball gets a lot of blame from folks because it set an insane precedent that manga publications sought desperately to replicate in the wake of its ending, and the chase for more dollars in an increasingly unreasonable stratosphere of profit standards did a lot to help push this sort of manga and anime back out of the mainstream and back into the underground.

That being said though, I do also put at least SOME degree of blame on fans as well, at least here in the Western world, for just a general lack of historical awareness or curiosity. This type of manga and anime has had enough of a cultural impact in Japan that its almost impossible for it to have ever fully faded from the public view or consciousness, but the abject utter and complete lack of almost ANY awareness for a lot of this stuff (at least until relatively very recently in the last maybe 7 or 8 years or thereabouts) on the part of millennial Western fans throughout the entire 2000s and a good bulk of the 2010s can in no small part come back to just plain sheer fucking laziness and a lack of basic intellectual curiosity for anything outside of a very narrow nostalgic comfort zone. Particularly since a lot of this stuff has always been in no way whatsoever hard to find in manga & anime circles, *especially* with a tool as comprehensive and omnipresent as the internet readily available to most.

In any case, while stuff of this ilk like Fist of the North Star that were once ultra-popular has been "grandfathered in" into the 21st century (albeit now as Seinen, rather than Shonen: its long been very, VERY commonplace for such titles that once fell under the Shonen demo to be rebranded as Seinen in the wake of the 2000s), for the past 20+ years or so, its been exceedingly more difficult for this type of material to find mainstream success: in Japan, and even WAY more so in the West. There's been a few notable outlier exceptions throughout, and even fewer of them under the Shonen demographic, but nothing that in any way matches this style's heyday in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s.

Tbh shounen hasn't changed that much outside of jump. Stuff like Alice in borderland is still published as shounen

[Saiya6Cit]

To answer your question yes.

It was the glorious 80s, the world will never be like that again, they were shonen manga at the right time at the right place.
I have not read that manga myself but it looks worthy of checking it out.

in the Western world, for just a general lack of historical awareness or curiosity.

Well it is a society based on consumerism of the most popular trendy thing so...

[DragonBallFoodie]

My feeling currently is that Kinnikuman (space wrestling tournaments) and Urusei Yatsura (space comedy) had the greatest influences on the DB manga.

[Ssj3Engels]

I am glad that my totally-non-pretentious-thread sparked such an interesting discussion. Well done, Kanzenshuu E-friends. That was quite unexpected.

[DBZAOTA482]

Hokuto no Ken was a pioneer of the "battle shonen" format alongside Kinnikuman and Ring Ni Kakero.

Toriyama's editor told him to follow that format so HnK had its influence but it's purely coincidental.

[NoAKAsNeeded]

Hokuto no Ken was a pioneer of the "battle shonen" format alongside Kinnikuman and Ring Ni Kakero.

Toriyama's editor told him to follow that format so HnK had its influence but it's purely coincidental.

Now you KNOW you tryna bait Kunzait with this.