Have you ever wondered what leads to the creation of your favorite series? Sometimes it’s planning, sometimes it’s divine intervention, sometimes it’s a stroke of luck. The idea of Harry Potter came to author J.K. Rowling while she was riding a train. Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse after his original creation – Oswald the Lucky Rabbit – was stolen right from under his nose. Yu-Gi-Oh! Started out as a horror manga that morphed into a battle card manga after three chapters of the series caught the attention of readers who wanted to know what that card game the characters were playing was called.
In the same way, the creation of Dragon Ball is the result of circumstances that managed to come together in a very specific way. Like other examples that were just mentioned, the circumstances were unusual and interesting. What’s crazier though is that if one thing had not happened, then it’s safe to say there would never have been a Dragon Ball to begin with, and the world would have missed out on one of the greatest series to ever be created.
A Tired Manga Writer
Before Dragon Ball was created, Akira Toriyama was already an established manga author. What’s more, he wasn’t just an established artist, he was currently working on a hit series called Dr. Slump, a series in which a lonely doctor creates robot children for himself and then must live with the consequences of creating artificial life that isn’t aware of how the world works. The series was funny, witty, and loved by readers. It received an anime that wasn’t exactly a phenomenon, but it got decent ratings and was loved by audiences. Everyone was happy…except for Toriyama himself.
Despite the fact that he had achieved success with Dr. Slump, the task of coming up with enough gages to fill a weekly manga was becoming an arduous task, and he was frustrated with the limitations of the scope of the humor manga. He wanted to write something with more substance in it, and he felt he couldn’t do that with Dr. Slump. He went to his editor of Weekly Shonen Jump and asked if he could bring an end to Dr. Slump and work on something else. His editor surprisingly agreed, but on one condition: He could only end it if he came up with an idea that was more interesting than Dr. Slump.
Coming Up With an Idea
Toriyama was happy to have a way out of his current series, yet he still had a problem in that he didn’t have a replacement for Dr. Slump. So he invited his editor to come to his house where they could brainstorm ideas for a future series. The editor came to his house, the two men lit some cigarettes, and they talked and brainstormed. For several hours every week, they did this and nothing came of the project.
It seemed like there would be no breakthrough and the men were prepared to call it a night. Dr. Slump would continue, Toriyama would just have to suck it up and think of more gags to write, and the world would have never gotten Dragon Ball. Then, inspiration came from an unlikely source.
An Off-Hand Comment Changes Everything
Before scrapping the entire project, Toriyama’s editor came over to his house one more night in a final attempt to come up with an idea. The two men brainstormed for hours with nothing to show for their time. They were about to give up when Toriyama’s wife entered the room with tea for the two men and made an off-handed remark that would prove divine: She commented how she liked how quiet it was in the house when the two men were brainstorming because normally she would hear the sounds of punching and screams coming from the living room, as Toriyama loved to watch martial arts movies while he drew Dr. Slump.
This led to the eureka moment the two had been waiting for: Toriyama’s editor figured if Toriyama liked martial arts, then his next manga would be a martial arts action series with hints of comedy. They developed a two-chapter manga to test the idea called Dragon Boy. The title was loosely based on the Journey to the West story and revolved around a boy going on a quest to return to the princess to her home in Flower Country. The Dragon Balls do make an appearance, but unlike in Dragon Ball, they summoned a small, useless dragon who doesn’t do much of anything.
Once the story was published it was well received by readers, and the two men knew that they had something great on their hands. After some more tweaks and mapping out an ending for Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball premiered in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1984 and would become an instant hit that would change the world of manga and anime forever.
Listen to Your Wife
Words of wisdom most would be wise to head is “listen to your wife.” What they say usually ends up being a good idea, and in the case of Akira Toriyama it was life-changing. It’s strange to think that if Toriyama’s wife hadn’t decided to comment on her husband’s love of martial arts movies when she brought the two men beverages the world would have potentially never gotten Dragon Ball (or its sequel Dragon Ball Z), yet that’s what happened.
Toriyama would go on to have worldwide success with Dragon Ball to the point where he could retire a happy many when it was over, coming out of retirement to create character designs for the Dragon Quest video games here and there. To this day the world is still enjoying his creation with Dragon Ball Super, yet we very well might not be if Toriyama hadn’t listened to his wife. It’s a lesson we can all learn from.