abstract
| - Akira Toriyama initially based most of the characters from the Chinese novel Journey to the West. He also redeveloped one of his earlier one-shot manga series, Dragon Boy. To be creative with the character, Toriyama stated that he designed Son Goku not as a monkey like the Journey to the West character, but as a human-looking boy with a monkey tail. During this period of the series, Toriyama placed less emphasis on the series art work, simplifying the lines and sometimes making things "too square". He found himself having problems determining the colors for characters and sometimes ended up changing them unintentionally mid-story. For the female characters, Toriyama felt it was not fun to draw "weak females" so he created women that he felt were not only "beautiful and sexy", but also "strong". Going against the normal convention that the strongest characters should be the largest in terms of physical size, he designed many of Dragon Ball's most powerful characters with small statures, including the protagonist, Goku. After the first chapters were released, readers commented that Goku seemed rather plain, so his appearance was changed. More characters (such as Master Roshi and Krillin) and martial arts tournaments were added to give the manga a greater emphasis on fighting. Knowing readers would expect Goku to win the tournaments, Toriyama had him lose the first two while continuing his initial goal of having Goku be the champion and hero. When having fights in the manga, Toriyama had the characters go to a place where nobody lived to avoid difficulties in drawing destroyed buildings. In order to advance the story quickly, he also gave most fighters the ability to fly so they could travel to other parts of the world without inconvenience. This was also the reasoning behind Goku learning to teletransport (thus allowing characters to move to any planet in a second).
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