“It would be useless if you couldn’t feel the harmony”: Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball Saw a Rough Patch During a Crucial Moment in the Saga
When it comes to Dragon Ball, fans have learned a lot from the series, but some believe that the franchise is all about hotheaded characters blowing off steam by engaging in intense battles. It seems like Kazuhiko Torishima, one of the first editors who worked on Dragon Ball, is also one of them.
Kazuhiko Torishima, the man who discovered Akira Toriyama’s talents, does not hold back his punches when it comes to Dragon Ball. Torishima is also the original editor of Dragon Ball, so it was shocking to hear him say that the series taught fans nothing. In an interview published by Derek Padula on May 20, 2020, the editor shared that he decided to make Dragon Ball a work without substance.
It didn’t just end with that. Torishima also added that he felt that the beginning of Dragon Ball was fine, but it got bad during the end of the interaction with the Pilaf team. He also mentioned that the series was not as popular at the start.
Kazuhiko Torishima Wondered If The Readers Would Find The Story Repetitive
Continuing the interview with Hiroshi Matsuyama, the President and CEO of a Japanese video game company, CyberConnect2, Torishima mentioned that there was a break in the Dragon Ball story after Shenron was summoned and their wish was fulfilled. He was worried that the fans would find the story repetitive and predictable. He continued:
“It would be useless if you couldn’t feel the harmony and excitement of the pacing, because in the manga, the number of characters had increased a lot.“
In fact, during that time the number of characters had increased quite a lot, as confirmed by Matsuyama, with the introduction of Bulma, Yamcha, Oolong, Kame-sennin, Chichi, the Ox King, and Pilaf. The decline in popularity of the manga series pushed Torishima to research top titles such as Fist of the North Star to study what made them so popular.
Kazuhiko Torishima Wanted Dragon Ball To Be Another Brainless Comic
Torishima claimed that he found Fist of the North Star a bit preachy, and decided then and there to make Dragon Ball a work without substance. He further went on to ask Matsuyama whether he learned anything from the series and as Matsuyama floundered to give an appropriate response, Torishima railed on:
“No, there’s nothing you can learn by reading Dragon Ball. It’s not a lesson in life, it’s useless in our lives; it’s just a funny comic. And that’s fine!“
After studying and researching Fist of the North Star, the former Dragon Ball editor reached the conclusion that children don’t want to be preached to when they read comics, so he wanted to make Dragon Ball more interesting and different at the time. Since he found Fist of the North Star so interesting and figured Dragon Ball wouldn’t be useful for people’s lives, he wanted to take a different route.
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This is quite the statement considering that Dragon Ball had such a huge impact on viewers as well as generations of mangakas. Although Torishima is not necessarily denigrating the series, his matter-of-fact statement makes it seem like he himself is unaware of the legacy of Dragon Ball and the effect it had on the manga industry.
Read Dragon Ball on VIZ Media.
