Akira Toriyama Super Database: Dragon Ball/Z/GT

• The Story
  • Dragonball/Z Character Guides
  • Dragonball Manga Summaries
  • Dragonball/Z TV Series Guide
  • Dragonball/Z Movie Guide
    
    
  • Dragonball GT Character Guide
  • Information from the DBGT Perfect File
  • Dragonball GT Episode Summaries
  
  
• Additional Information
  • List of Pun Names
  • List of Attacks
  • List Super Saiya-jin Stages
    
    
  • Timeline
  • Scans of the Maps
  • Scans of cool stuff
  
  
• Multimedia
  • Image Galleries
  • Sound Samples
  • Quicktime Samples
  
  
• Links to Dragon Ball Web Sites
  
  
• Dragon Ball in Other Countries
  • Web Sites
  • Character Names in Other Languages
  • List of Attacks, Items, and Techniques in Chinese
    
    
  • DBZ in the U.S., and other Countries
    
    
  • Reviews of magazines that featured articles on Dragon Ball.
    • Mangazine review of Dragonball
    • Animerica Cover piece on Dragonball
      
      
  
  
• Voices
  • Japanese Actors
  • U.S. Actors
  
  
• Paraphenalia
  • Toys
  • UFO Catcher Dolls
  • Collectors Cards
    
    
  • Video and Arcade Games
    • List of games (game machine, cost)
      Cheat codes and game play help
      Screen captures, and sound samples
    • Dragon Ball Quake wad
    
    
  • Discography
  • Sampled Music Files
  • Sound Samples
  • Lyrics
  • Scans of CD Inserts
  
  
• Amateur Efforts
  • Fan Clubs
  • Newsletters
  • Fan Fiction
  • Fan Artwork
  
  
• File Revision History, as of 02/20/97
• Go to the Bottom of the File

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The Story of Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball is a gag/adventure manga by Akira Toriyama, based on the old Chinese Monkey King legends.

Dragon Ball started out as a gag manga, with adventure elements. But, by volume 14, Toriyama switched focus and concentrated on the martial arts aspects. According to various sources, Toriyama was beginning to burn out on Dragon Ball around the Freeza storyline. However, his editor pressured him to keep going. Finally, Toriyama took Dragon Ball as far as he wanted, and wrapped it up at the end of volume 42, in the summer of 1995.

Dragon Ball Z was a name change for the TV series, that reflected the change in focus mentioned above. But, the manga has always been named Dragon Ball.

Because Dragon Ball has been a hugely successful marketing vehicle (promoting products as diverse as clocks, posters, curry rice, eye drops, and children's study desks), many promotional agencies demanded that a replacement TV series fill the gap left behind by Dragon Ball. Thus was created Dragon Ball: GT. Toriyama was retained as artistic consultant, but no longer had direct input to the storyline and there is no manga to accompany the TV anime.

Apparently, DBGT was intended to end around April, 1997. However, the latest DBGT video game for the Sony Play Station had to be released before the end of the show, and the game missed its first deadline. So, the DBGT TV series was extended for a few more episodes, until the new game could be released at the end of August, 1997.

DBGT ended its TV run on Nov. 19, 1997. The New Dr. Slump TV show took over DBGT's timeslot the following week.

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Revision History

• 03/14/97
  Created this file.

People who helped me on these files:

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This Section of the Akira Toriyama Super Database is maintained by Curtis H. Hoffmann.

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