Kung Fu boy
Toriyama began work on this enormously successful story in 1985, by which time he was already established as one of Japan�s most innovative manga artists. His madly inventive Dr Slump was heavily influenced by Toriyama�s own interest in American comics, and he wanted to make a clean break, concentrating more on the East than the West. His wife had developed an obsession with China, and Toriyama spent a lot of time going through the pictures she had bought. �I really like watching Jackie Chan movies, and I had already seen Drunken Master more than 20 times. Since I liked it so much, I decided to make a �Kung fu kid� manga, I proposed the idea to (my editor) Mr Torishima, and we put together Dragon Boy.�
A family trip to Bali sealed the next creation�s fate � it would literally involve a journey to the west. �I decided to modernise Journey to the West. I thought it would be easier with a base to work from.� But Toriyama was already drifting away from the original. The hero of his new story was originally to have been the Monkey King, but he decided there would not be �much design potential� in a hulking ape, and decided instead to have a human lead (Son Goku�s alien ancestry was a later addition). Wanting to keep the idea of unique physical characteristics first used in Dragon Boy (whose hero had wings), he gave his �normal� boy a tail, and Son Goku was born. Journey to the West�s original search for Buddhist scriptures was replaced with a much more materialist quest, and the rest is history.
Set in a world which is part futuristic, part mythical and part wildly surreal (in typical Toriyama style), Dragonball opens on the 12-year-old Son Goku. An orphan, he lives alone, honing his martial arts skills and transforming into a King Kong clone (heh heh ^_^) whenever the full moon rises. This tranquil, if rather odd lifestyle is interrupted by Bulma (Toriyama�s take on the monk Tripitaka), who is searching for the 7 legendary Dragon Balls, which, if brought together in the presence of the dragon god Shen Long, will bestow a single wish. Goku has 1 of the Dragon balls, and agrees to help Bulma locate the others.