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At this point, it is tough to think of Dragon Ball without Krillin. The fellow student of Master Roshi has been a constant companion (and occasional rival) of Goku since almost the beginning of the manga. However, Kazuhiko Torishima, the longtime editor of Dragon Ball, has said that Krillin and the entire training arc that introduced him only came about because Akira Toriyama needed to change the Dragon Ball formula amid declining rankings.

A lot changes in Dragon Ball around the time that Krillin was introduced. Suddenly, it is no longer a retelling of Journey to the West; instead, it focuses firmly on Goku as the main character and his desire to get stronger. To do that, he needed a teacher and a rival. The series already had a mentor lined up for Goku in Master Roshi, so Akira Toriyama introduced a new character, Krillin, during the arc.

It was all due to needing to change up the Dragon Ball manga to hook new fans.

“Originally, we started Dragon Ball as a kind of road movie based upon Journey to the West,” Kazuhiko Torishima said in an interview. “But the ranking started to gradually decline. So we discussed why this type of story wasn’t resonating with readers and why we weren’t doing well in the rankings. The conclusion we came to was that Goku, the protagonist, was not strong enough. That he didn’t resonate with readers very well. From there, we discussed a great deal about what Goku should be like. The answer was that Goku wants to get stronger and stronger. In order to pursue that theme, we decided to forget all the previous characters except for Goku and Master Roshi. To strengthen this theme further, we added a new character called Krillin. Mainly focusing on three characters, we made new episodes based around the training of Goku. In addition, to show how Goku became stronger, we had a big tournament in the story. After all this, the ranking shot back up to the top again.”

Shifting from the comedic tone of Dr. Slump to the more action-focused tone that we associate with Dragon Ball helped set the series apart from what was already in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump, and it turns out, changed how Shonen manga approached characters and training arcs forever. So, really, Krillin helped save Dragon Ball from obscurity. His reward, of course, was having a healthy, functional marriage (eventually).

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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