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We all know Dragon Ball. Even if you aren’t an anime fan, chances are you’ve seen Goku floating around on social media or above New York on Thanksgiving morning. However, before Dragon Ball was published, Akira Toriyama created a one-off manga called Dragon Boy that very clearly has the DNA of Goku’s adventures in it.

Back in 1983, Akira Toriyama already had the top-ranking manga in Weekly Shonen Jump with Dr. Slump. However, Toriyama was quickly looking for something new to work on and wanted to end Dr. Slump. During a visit from Kazuhiko Torishima, who was the Weekly Shonen Jump editor working with Toriyama on Dr. Slump, the two came up with a plan to create a new project that would replicate the success they had already enjoyed.

After a flurry of meetings, the pair had nearly given up on finding a new project to work on. However, Torishima found out about a peculiar habit of Toriyama’s; while drawing, he would often have an old movie on in the background. His favorite films were all Jackie Chan kung fu movies, which gave Torishima an idea.

“So I said that if he liked kung fu movies so much,” Torishima said in a 2016 interview. “Why not try a kung fu action manga for the next project. After this, Toriyama came up with a very short 13-page short story called Dragon Boy. This one-off short story got an incredibly good ranking in Weekly Jump.”

Dragon Boy was about a young boy who was adept at fighting on a journey to escort a princess, which isn’t a million miles from the first arc of Dragon Ball. However, Toriyama hadn’t yet added many of the elements from Journey to the West, which Torishima says was his idea later on. The success of Dragon Boy got the pair permission from Shueisha to start winding down Dr. Slump and launch the reworked Dragon Ball manga the following year. The rest, as they say, is history.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

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