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The ''Dragon Ball'' manga series features an extensive cast of characters created by Akira Toriyama. The series takes place in a fictional universe, the same as Toriyama's previous series ''Dr. Slump'', and follows the adventures of Son Goku from his childhood through adulthood as he trains in martial arts and explores the world in search of the seven orbs known as the Dragon Balls, used to summon a wish-granting dragon. During the course of the story, he encounters allies such as Bulma, Kuririn and Trunks, rivals such as Tenshinhan, Piccolo and Vegeta, and enemies such as Freeza, Cell and Majin Boo. The manga's anime and film adaptations feature some original characters not created by Toriyama, but by the animation staff. While many of the characters are humans with superhuman strength and/or supernatural abilities, the cast also includes anthropomorphic animals and later, extraterrestrial lifeforms. The series also includes depictions of the afterlife, with several characters being gods that govern the universe. ==Creation and conception== Akira Toriyama initially based most of the characters on those of the Chinese novel ''Journey to the West'', Goku being Sun Wukong, Bulma as Xuanzang, Oolong as Zhu Bajie and Yamcha being Sha Wujing, and redeveloped one of his earlier one-shot manga series, ''Dragon Boy''. To be creative with the character, Toriyama stated in 1995 that he designed Goku not as a monkey like the ''Journey to the West'' character, but as a human-looking boy with a monkey's tail to give him a distinguishing feature. However, in 2003 he elaborated saying he added the tail because his editor told him without it Goku had no distinguishing features, even though this was probably a joke, he went ahead and did it. Toriyama later stated that the tail was a pain to draw, hence why he had it get cut off early on, and that he never thought of making Goku an alien until Vegeta appeared. Going against the normal convention that the strongest characters should be the largest in terms of physical size, he designed many of ''Dragon Ball'' Additional characters (such as Kame-Sennin and Kuririn) 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 to plan an eventual victory.〔 When having fights in the manga, he had the characters go to a place where nobody lived to avoid difficulties in drawing destroyed buildings. Toriyama came up with the Red Ribbon Army, particularly its Muscle Tower, from the video game ''Spartan X'', in which enemies tend to appear very fast.〔 He said he created Piccolo Daimao because all his villains up to that point had something "likeable" about them, so the character was born in an attempt to have a truly evil opponent.〔 The Ginyu Force and their poses were influenced from the ''sentai'' and ''tokusatsu'' television shows he watched with his children.〔 Toriyama created Androids #17 and #18 after Kazuhiko Torishima, his former editor, was disappointed with Androids #19 and #20 as villains. When Torishima belittled them as well, he then created Cell.〔 Cell was also altered due to outside opinion, being given the ability to transform when Toriyama's then-current editor, Yū Kondō, said he was "ugly".〔 Toriyama also designed some characters that are exclusive to the animated movies, such as Bojack, Broly, Tapion and Minoshia, but more recently Beerus and Whis. Many of ''Dragon Balls characters have names that are puns, and which match those of characters related to them. For example, Bulma and her family are named after undergarments, Saiyans are named after vegetables, and because Freeza is a pun on freezer, the Ginyu Force are named after products that one keeps in a refrigerator.〔 In order to advance the story quickly, he introduced Goku's signature flying cloud, then gave most fighters the ability to fly, and later granted Goku teleportation.〔 Toriyama explained that he does not like giving names to techniques, but did so at his editor's opinion.〔 His wife was the one who named the series' signature , but he named all the others, even selecting them specifically for each character; saying someone like Vegeta would use names in English, and using ''kanji'' for the more sophisticated Piccolo.〔 The idea to have two characters "fuse" together was suggested by his long-time friend and fellow manga artist Masakazu Katsura, leading to the technique.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「List of Dragon Ball characters」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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