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On March 1st, 2024, Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball, passed away. Normally, celebrity deaths don’t affect me much. I am generally just disappointed that they are gone. That would probably have been as far as this went, except I had been thinking of rewatching early Dragon Ball in the months preceding it. It just seemed like the right time.
I have been watching Dragon Ball for the last 25 years or so. I have seen most of Dragon Ball, all of Dragon Ball Z, some of Dragon Ball GT, and most of Dragon Ball Super, and I have collected and read all the Dragon Ball manga. So, mostly, this was a nostalgic watch, and while these first 13 episodes of the anime are always the strangest from the perspective of someone who mostly watched DBZ, I found I could appreciate it a little more this time. Here are my thoughts on the first 13 episodes, aka “The Emperor Pilaf Saga.”
A Journey To the West
This first story arc is actually a loose adaptation of a 16th-century Chinese novel, “Journey To The West,” by Wu Cheng’en. It trades out Sun Wukong and Tang Sanzang for Goku and Bulma and the Buddhist texts for…well, the Dragon Balls. The Dragon Balls are seven small orange orbs with 1-7 stars in them that summon a dragon named Shenron to grant you one wish when you bring them together.
Akira Toriyama originally only wrote Dragon Ball as a comedic retelling of this classic story. The manga, however, proved to be so popular that his editors wouldn’t let Toriyama end it that fast, and he had to find a way to keep the story going. Before Dragon Ball, Toriyama had already had a hit manga called Dr. Slump, which was a gag manga about a scientist who created a robot in the shape of a little girl and was trying to keep her existence a secret while she was not very good at pretending to be human. Dragon Ball started out as a gag manga, much like Dr. Slump. It’s for this reason that these first 13 episodes are broken up into seven episodic stories. Almost a breakneck speed compared to later arcs.
A Note on the Humor
Since this is a gag anime, I should mention one thing about the comedy. Most of the humor here is based either on the goofy retelling of the stories from “Journey to the West” or in Goku’s naivete about the outside world. Goku has not been around other people except his Grandpa Gohan, who has been dead for a while. As such, Goku doesn’t understand things that others take for granted. One of these things he doesn’t understand is how to tell between guys and girls just by looking. Which brings me to the dirty jokes. While the show is obviously written for kids, In Japan at that time, they got away with so much more than we did here in the States. Much of this was originally edited out in the US Broadcast, but there are some things they couldn’t, working around these dirty jokes with censored dialogue. These parts of the dub were not uncensored for the version on the DVDs or Crunchyroll, yet the dialogue is uncensored for the parts they originally edited the video around.
Storytelling and Combat
In contrast to later sagas, the first saga feels episodic, with seven standalone short stories unfolding within its speedy 13-episode span. On top of that, this will sound odd to the DBZ-only crowd; Yamcha is actually a threat to Goku in their first encounter. Yes, Yamcha, the character whose death is now an internet meme. In fact, that’s one of the other things different here: the combat is short. No multi-episode fights are happening here! Nearly every fight is 5 minutes or less and is based more on Goku outsmarting his opponent rather than wearing his opponent down. The conflict with Yamcha is the only one that’s really a martial arts fight. The fight with Oolong is concluded by Goku forcing him to reveal his true form. Monster Carrot, a human-sized rabbit who can turn people into carrots by touching them, is defeated by Puar transforming into a clone of him, and Monster Carrot gives up in fear of getting touched and turning into a carrot himself. Interestingly enough, Goku strands them on the moon to make “Rabbit Treats” for the kids of Earth, but we never see him again, and the moon gets destroyed twice in this show. I wonder if Monster Carrot and his cronies survived.
One of the things Dragon Ball is known for with its combat is Ki Blasts. Waves of spirit energy that fighters can hurl at one another. Strangely enough, there are only 2 Ki Blasts in these episodes, both Kamehameha Waves. One when Master Roshi attempts to put out the fire engulfing Fry Pan Mountain, which he actually hits the mountain and destroys it accidentally, and the second when, after seeing it, Goku tries to do it himself, and much to Roshi’s chagrin, instead of the lifetime it took him to learn it, Goku pulls it off first try.
In Conclusion
Looking back on these early episodes, I found I had a lot of fun with its goofiness. In many ways, when I think about Dragon Ball, I remember the fights and how fun it is to watch grown men scream at each other as they power up. I think back to moments later on when Frieza claims the blast that he just fired at Planet Namek will blow it up in 5 minutes, and it doesn’t actually blow up for ten more episodes. I remember stupid things like Power Levels that are over 9000, Goku and Piccolo learning to drive and The Great Saiyaman. But what I’ve found to be really enjoyable about this franchise is its characters and their relationships. It’s in these early tales that those relationships start. If you’ve never seen Dragon Ball and want to try it out, you can start with Dragon Ball Z. It’s where many of us, me included, did. But really, I think you ought to start here. And if you’ve only ever seen DBZ, definitely give Dragon Ball a shot.