"The Anime and Me"

Discussion regarding the entirety of the franchise in a general (meta) sense, including such aspects as: production, trends, merchandise, fan culture, and more.

Moderators: Kanzenshuu Staff, General Help

User avatar
Dayspring
Kicks it Old-School
Posts: 7753
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:00 pm
Location: Quebec, Canada

"The Anime and Me"

Post by Dayspring » Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:49 am

Inspired by the thread containing rare scans, I decided to show you all "The Anime and Me," a mini-manga by Toriyama where he talks about the origin of Dragonball and his relation in regards to the anime. It was an insert of "Dragonball Z Anime Special," 1989. And no, I have no idea why random sections of the daizenshuu think Dragonball is two words. The French changed the names to "Sangoku" because otherwise the it would get pronounced "Sowngoku" with a silent W. Why they consistently left the surname on in the manga is beyond me.

Quality disclaimer: this was originally only scanned to test the abilities of my scanner, hence the slant and chopping of it. For those who are easily insulted by such (you know who you are), deal with it.

Image
1: Hello everybody. My name is Akira Toriyama. I am the author of the Dragonball series. As I've been asked to write about something, I thought it the best thing to do would be to explain how the series was born.

2: While I was still drawing Dr Slump, I would often watch Jackie Chan videos. Enthralled with these films, it often occured that I would watch them numerous times while I worked.

Some ideas started forming deep in my soul and so I talked about them with my editer...

3: So he told me to write a manga about kung-fu, preferably a really short one. I started to draw with spirit, and I finished by inventing a story with the title, dramatically enough, of "Dragon Boy".

He resembles close enough to Goku, except that he has a pair of wings and no tail.

4: I never imagined that Dragon Boy would be so popular once it debuted. I therefore decided to stop Dr Slump so that I could turn around and start fresh, creating a manga about martial arts. Dragonball was born.

Intertude: I am stopping to go eat breakfast. :P
Captain Christopher Pike wrote:The away team will consist of myself, Cadet Kirk, Mr. Sulu, and Ensign Olsen.
Freeza Heika wrote: for the land of the cool, and the home of the Appule
The Geeky Gentleman: For all your comics, movies, TV and other geeky needs.

User avatar
Bejiita
OMG CRAZY REGEN
Posts: 803
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 2:45 pm
Location: London, England, UK

Post by Bejiita » Wed Dec 21, 2005 2:07 pm

Very very nice.

I can't read French so that translation is quite handy, I'm sure there are more of these little comics in the Daizenshuu 7 that need translating, and I am not the man to do that. But this is all interesting stuff. Most people probably haven't seen these pictures at all, let alone translated versions of them.

Nice going.
My DB Fan manga:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=19169 [The new version]
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1942]Chapter 1
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2685]Chapter 2
Photo's I've taken of the nearby neighbourhoods where I live in South London: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8306850@N08/

SuperFusion
Beyond Newbie
Posts: 204
Joined: Sun Aug 29, 2004 2:13 pm
Location: Miami, Florida

Post by SuperFusion » Wed Dec 21, 2005 2:41 pm

The Dragon Ball Manga books have stuff like this.. but the one I have is Akira talking about how he loves the summer. wtf :?

Nice goin'

User avatar
lost in thought
Advanced Regular
Posts: 1018
Joined: Tue Nov 30, 2004 5:01 pm
Location: Cudahy, Wisconsin
Contact:

Post by lost in thought » Wed Dec 21, 2005 4:17 pm

Neat little strip. I am glad you didn't try to replace the text within the images for your translation this time, after the quality rape of last.

User avatar
Dayspring
Kicks it Old-School
Posts: 7753
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:00 pm
Location: Quebec, Canada

Post by Dayspring » Wed Dec 21, 2005 4:36 pm

Second installment. I meant to do it all now, but my water-heater seems to have exploded just in time for Christmas vacation. :cry:

Image
5: As I wasn't the type who stops and thinks about all the details concerning the story development of his mangas, I had simply focused on the base of this new story, the initial course of my hero Son Goku throughout his quest for some magic balls, the Dragon Balls, by adapting a bit of the atmosphere from the Chinese fable "The Monkey King."

6: To be honest... I had never anticipated in the beginning that my hero would turn out to be an extraterrestrial who transforms into a giant monkey! But without bragging (or at least only a little), I even surprised myself with how coherent the story ended up turning out.

7: No, frankly, I won't try and make you think I'm an author who simply rushes through all his stories. For a longtime I have dug deep into my brain to give this coherence to Dragon Ball. For a professional author, that's the least of our worries...
Captain Christopher Pike wrote:The away team will consist of myself, Cadet Kirk, Mr. Sulu, and Ensign Olsen.
Freeza Heika wrote: for the land of the cool, and the home of the Appule
The Geeky Gentleman: For all your comics, movies, TV and other geeky needs.

User avatar
Dayspring
Kicks it Old-School
Posts: 7753
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:00 pm
Location: Quebec, Canada

Post by Dayspring » Wed Dec 21, 2005 5:53 pm

Meh. Just called Hydro. Hopefully they'll get here before x-mas.
Until they do, here's the third installment.
lost in thought wrote:Neat little strip. I am glad you didn't try to replace the text within the images for your translation this time, after the quality rape of last.
:roll: Again, calm down. I didn't need to justify squat to you then, I don't need to justify myself now. If it bothers you to such an extreme, just don't read it.

Image
8: I didn't have a precise synopsis, so I just let my characters evolve, without asking myself which following sequence would reveal itself to be the best. Needless to say I was writing under stressful conditions, but it was more of a positive kind of stress. I therefore started a substantial story without even realizing that I was possibly going to fall flat on my face, and it was that uncertainty that both terrorised and thrilled me at the same time.

Toriyama: Am I going to make the Saiyans win or not...

9: Just like the story, I set neither a fixed time-frame nor environment for these adventures. I therefore left free-reign to my imagination.

10: And so when and how would Dragonball end? For that, I really didn't have the slightest idea. I even imagined an ending in which Goku would have looked like this old geezer...

11: And so Dragon Ball had become very popular.

It was even adapted for anime, which for me was cause for great joy. I must give many thanks to the entire team who contributed to its creation and who have done such an excellent job despite the difficulties that they must have come across.
Captain Christopher Pike wrote:The away team will consist of myself, Cadet Kirk, Mr. Sulu, and Ensign Olsen.
Freeza Heika wrote: for the land of the cool, and the home of the Appule
The Geeky Gentleman: For all your comics, movies, TV and other geeky needs.

User avatar
Bejiita
OMG CRAZY REGEN
Posts: 803
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 2:45 pm
Location: London, England, UK

Post by Bejiita » Wed Dec 21, 2005 6:49 pm

That was all a great read, nice translations.

I enjoyed it.

Did you translate it?
My DB Fan manga:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=19169 [The new version]
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1942]Chapter 1
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2685]Chapter 2
Photo's I've taken of the nearby neighbourhoods where I live in South London: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8306850@N08/

User avatar
Dayspring
Kicks it Old-School
Posts: 7753
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:00 pm
Location: Quebec, Canada

Post by Dayspring » Wed Dec 21, 2005 6:58 pm

Yeah, I did the translations; that's why they weren't all posted in the same post.
Because I have no life, here's the rest:

Image
12: From time to time, il would happen that people whom I didn't even know were approaching me about the anime. Things were often said like: "Oh jeeze, between the manga and the anime, you must never take any time to let yourself breathe!". In reality, I had hardly worked at all on the anime, I had put confidence in my collaborators. I had enough to do just with the manga. I didn't want to work myself to death, you know...

Toriyama: I want to live until I'm 100 years old!

13: For example, drawing an image of a movement in a manga is relatively simple, but to animate this image, you had to decompose the movement and draw all the intermediary movements. That demands a colossal amount of work. (Ok, the example of Kame-sennin might not be the most appropriate...)

14: Of course, those who have read Dragon Ball have noticed that certain stories which are found in the anime didn't existe in the manga.

Oolong: What's this? I never saw that in the manga....

END: As one adventure in the manga corresponds to about 10 minutes of animation, and since one episode comprises on average 30 minutes, the entire series of Dragon Ball would have passed by very quickly. The team of animators therefore had to insert some original stories. I admire what they have done, that's a hell of a job!

Toriyama: Dragon Ball, it's the anime and the manga!
Captain Christopher Pike wrote:The away team will consist of myself, Cadet Kirk, Mr. Sulu, and Ensign Olsen.
Freeza Heika wrote: for the land of the cool, and the home of the Appule
The Geeky Gentleman: For all your comics, movies, TV and other geeky needs.

User avatar
Chaos Saiyajin
Advanced Regular
Posts: 1343
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2005 8:35 pm
Location: Kentucky, USA
Contact:

Post by Chaos Saiyajin » Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:57 pm

:P Thanks a lot, Dayspring, that was a neat little comic strip. I love the old Goku drawing, it's like a potara fusion between Goku and Kame'Sennin! :lol:
I really, really need to get back into the habit of posting.

User avatar
Bejiita
OMG CRAZY REGEN
Posts: 803
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2005 2:45 pm
Location: London, England, UK

Post by Bejiita » Wed Dec 21, 2005 8:18 pm

Chaos Saiyajin wrote::P Thanks a lot, Dayspring, that was a neat little comic strip. I love the old Goku drawing, it's like a potara fusion between Goku and Kame'Sennin! :lol:
If he fused with Roshi he would look much older than that, I assure you!

I'd draw a fusion to see what it'd look like, but I'm tired. But I might.
My DB Fan manga:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=19169 [The new version]
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1942]Chapter 1
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2685]Chapter 2
Photo's I've taken of the nearby neighbourhoods where I live in South London: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8306850@N08/

User avatar
Conan the SSJ
I Live Here
Posts: 2814
Joined: Sun Apr 17, 2005 8:40 am
Location: Ohio

Post by Conan the SSJ » Wed Dec 21, 2005 9:04 pm

Hey, Dayspring, many thanks for sharing this manga with us, and even bigger thanks for the translations. I give ya' props, you 'da man.
14 years later

User avatar
Akira
Regular
Posts: 713
Joined: Tue Dec 28, 2004 11:13 pm
Location: United States of America

Post by Akira » Thu Dec 22, 2005 1:34 am

Thanks for the effort put forth, Dayspring. I too appreciated the read.

User avatar
Hao_Kaiser
Beyond-the-Beyond Newbie
Posts: 437
Joined: Wed Nov 02, 2005 1:36 pm
Location: Kentucky

Post by Hao_Kaiser » Thu Dec 22, 2005 9:20 pm

Is it me, or does "Dragon Boy" look a lot like Yamcha?

Hahaha... Goku is old.

User avatar
Dayspring
Kicks it Old-School
Posts: 7753
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:00 pm
Location: Quebec, Canada

Post by Dayspring » Thu Dec 22, 2005 10:57 pm

Hao_Kaiser wrote:Is it me, or does "Dragon Boy" look a lot like Yamcha?

Hahaha... Goku is old.
That's what I always thought! But more acurately, he looks like that guy from Dr Slump w/Giran's wings stuck to his back.
Captain Christopher Pike wrote:The away team will consist of myself, Cadet Kirk, Mr. Sulu, and Ensign Olsen.
Freeza Heika wrote: for the land of the cool, and the home of the Appule
The Geeky Gentleman: For all your comics, movies, TV and other geeky needs.

Post Reply