THE shonen phenomenom.
Is there any series that’s had such a commercial impact as Dragon Ball? Not only did it have a massive success itself, it pretty much defines the shonen adventure genre even now, as the kids who used to read the strip have come through with there own material and the readership of Shonen Jump continues to favour strips that adhere fairly closely to the template Dragon Ball laid out.
Just in case you’ve been out for the past 20 years, Dragon Ball and it’s sequel Dragon Ball Z tell the story of Son Goku, a monkey tailed martial artist who turns out to be an alien from another planet. It starts as a homage to Journey to the West, before gradually turning the focus more towards battles and tournaments. Then a time jump is made and the series restarts with Goku as an adult as Dragonball Z. The fighting continues and becomes even more of the focus. Let’s face it there’s umpteen thousand websites out there pouring over the minutiae of the series, so there’s not much point me going into it in great detail here. Particularly considering I’ve read only a bit of the manga, and seen less of the TV series.
It is interesting that of Shonen Jump’s success stories that Dragon Ball is the one that is replicated to such success. Comparably long running series such as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and the stalwart of Shonen Jump Kochikame don’t seem to have imitators that have done as well as Dragon Ball’s have. Naruto, One Piece and Prince of Tennis are the current Jump warhorses, with the first 2 clearly DB influenced and PoT is certainly closer in spirit to Dragon Ball that it is to Jump’s previous sports mega-hit, Captain Tsubasa. So what was different about DB?
Here’s an answer, and it’s just guesswork, so take it with a pinch of salt.
Akira Toriyama continually tweaked the story in response to readers’ tastes. Jump provides readers with a survey card, and editorial decisions are heavily influenced by this. Compared to DB, Kochikame and JoJo’s are more idiosyncratic, they are popular because they hit home with a large enough percentage of the audience that they don’t really need to adapt all that much to survive. It’s arguable that One Piece has kind of reached this point now in it’s popularity that it can indulge the creator’s whims too. But Toriyama seemed to have aimed for a bigger target, continually tweaking the premise of the series so it wasn’t just a favourite of enough people to survive, but it was THE favourite series. The advantage Toriyama had was in having story arcs. This enabled him to finish stories, then in the next one, change the tone and focus to reflect what the audience was looking for. Today, Naruto seems to be the series that is trying the hardest to follow audience desires – see how Shikamaru’s role increased as he appeared high in popularity polls – but because the series doesn’t split neatly into distinct arcs, the transitions aren’t achieved with the ease of Dragon Ball.