The fact that manga artists work on several versions of the story before launching into the final is nothing new. Eiichiro Oda put several twists on his ‘Romance Dawn’ before it became ‘One Piece’, and ‘Boku no Hero Academia’ and ‘Naruto’ were published as stand-alone stories before becoming a full-fledged series.
So it is not surprising that Akira Toriyama gave a test run to much of what ended up being ‘Dragon Ball’, starting with its protagonists.
The thing is about dragons
Obviously, the biggest influence of ‘Dragon Ball’ was ‘Journey to the West’, which Toriyama wanted to adapt by giving it his own elements. The draft went through many processes before the manga became how it ended up being published, and before ‘dragonball‘ was born entirely in 1984, Toriyama published two stories that served as an indispensable basis.
The first one wasDragon Boy’a two-chapter short story that focused on tanton, a little boy who looked like a mix between Son Goku and a young Yamcha and who adored martial arts. Of course, instead of the iconic monkey tail, what he had were two dragon wings that allowed him to fly.
He both closely resembles Goku., because he also had a very lonely childhood in the mountains and his adventure begins when a Princess crosses his path who looks suspiciously like Bulma and Chi-chi. The most curious thing is that in In this manga an artifact also appeared that would later inspire the Dragon Balls, although in this case they were spheres that were charged with the internal energy of whoever used them to summon a small dragon.
In addition to the name and the protagonist, ‘Dragon Boy’ also influenced its successor with humor and elements such as martial arts. Toriyama got a lot of the beginnings of ‘Dragon Ball’ from this first mangacoming to “plagiarize” some designs, settings and even entire scenes.
The game is between androids
If we go to ‘Dr. Slump’ we can also see some inspirations, especially in how Toriyama draws different technological artifacts, certain concepts, and of course in the mood.
But the other small work that influenced ‘Dragon Ball’ was another lesser known short story: ‘The Adventures of Tongpoo’. In this case, the protagonist was a young android who also faced all kinds of enemies, but instead of using powers or martial arts he had technology on his side.
This is where the concept of Hoi-Poi Capsulesalthough in a more primitive way than in ‘Dragon Ball’. We also get a lot of the kind of humor from the early manga, a boy as the lead, and even a Bulma ancestor..
And of course, also the concept of androids itself, which we not only saw with Arale in ‘Dr. Slump’, but also recovered later with the creations of Dr. Gero.
A work with the impact of ‘Dragon Ball’ took time to forge and was not born overnightbut if we want to take a look at his earliest beginnings, here are two small manga where Toriyama began to plant the most important seeds.
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