Toriyama used only very few assistants compared to most manga artists, so his work lacks the stiffly drafted backgrounds and obviously traced photos which give so many manga a cookie-cutter look.

Dinosaurs, dragons, monsters, and strange sci-fi vehicles of all kinds float through the strange world of Dragon Ball. If his style looks familiar, he also did the art for the Dragon Quest video game series. We've created a gallery of some images from Dragon Ball and Toriyama's first series, Dr. Slump.

Jason Thompson is the author of "Manga: The Complete Guide" and the forthcoming Del Rey graphic novel "King of RPGs". As a manga editor for Viz and Random House, he has worked on the English editions of Dragon Ball, Yu-Gi-Oh!, YuYu Hakusho, Uzumaki, Fullmetal Alchemist and many other titles.

The long answer is, Dragon Ball was originally intended as a sort of Fractured Fairy Tale, a play on the Chinese legend Saiyûki (Journey to the West). (The same legend used as source material for the 2007 Monkey: Journey to the West stage musical and Jamie Hewlett's 2008 animation sequence, Gene Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese, the 1978 Monkey TV series, Kazuya Minekura's bishonen manga Saiyuki and much more.) Although his personality and appearance are quite different, Goku is loosely based on the Monkey King; that's why he has a monkey's tail, a magic staff and rides around on a cloud. (Most of these elements are jettisoned in Dragonball: Evolution.) Toriyama also added to the mix a large dose of Hong Kong martial arts movies, particularly Jackie Chan's Drunken Master. Toriyama has even said that Jackie Chan in his youth would have been the ideal person to play Goku.

The celestial bureaucracy of the Dragon Ball universe, in which there are several layers of by no means omnipotent "gods" in charge of the earth and the universe, is also vaguely reminiscent of Chinese mythology, although no comparisons to any real-world religion are intended. When asked about his world's religion in the January 2003 issue of SHONEN JUMP, Toriyama replied "To be honest, I wasn't really thinking about it too deeply."

The other big influence in Dragon Ball is science fiction. Toriyama is a fan of sci-fi movies (his favorite is Alien), and Dr. Slump is full of gags based on Star Trek, Star Wars and other sci-fi and monster movies, not to mention plenty of fanciful cars, hovercrafts and dinosaurs. In fact, the Chinese style of Dragon Ball was originally intended as a break from Dr. Slump's Western sci-fi themes. But over the long course of Dragon Ball the story loosened up and acquired more and more science fiction influences. Gamera has a cameo in the series, as does a thinly disguised Arnold Schwarznegger from The Terminator, and Freeza, one of the villains, transforms into a creature clearly based on H.R. Giger's Alien. Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball even take place in the same universe-the Dr. Slump characters appear in a lengthy cameo in Dragon Ball volume 8.

The clearest point at which Dragon Ball turns from mythology to sci-fi is the shocking revelation which opens the Dragon Ball Z part of the storyline-in which Goku, previously just a weird kid with a monkey's tail, is revealed to be one of the Saiyans, a race of mercenary space aliens. Of course, this was all made up retroactively, as Toriyama himself admits; originally Goku was just supposed to be like the Monkey King. Did we mention that in Dragon Ball, the gods are aliens too?

Dragon Ball is, basically, a martial arts story with elements of fantasy, science fiction and comedy. The hero, Goku, is a boy with a monkey's tail (or not, in the live-action version) who is raised in the woods by a martial artist. Bulma, a girl on a quest for the seven magic Dragon Balls (a treasure which can grant any wish), accidentally discovers the guileless Goku and introduces him to civilization. Over many adventures, Goku travels around the world, develops his already prodigious fighting skills, and saves the world from evil martial artists many times over.

This is the basic formula: lots of martial arts, lots of training sequences, a few jokes. (Sometimes dirty jokes.) Whether Goku's opponent is the green-skinned Great Demon King Piccolo (his first major opponent, played by James Marsters in Dragonball: Evolution), or the alien mercenary Vegeta (presumably next in line for the sequel), or the artificial life form Cell, or the genie-like magical pink blob of doom Boo, the structure is the same. New bad guys show up, and Goku must defeat them (as much out of a love of a good fight as a desire to save the planet); if he's not strong enough, or he loses the first round, he hits the gym and soon he's buff enough to have a fighting chance. Rinse and repeat for 14 pages a week, once a week for ten years, and you have a 42-volume, 8,000-page graphic novel series.

This Dragon Ball formula became the model for a successful shonen (boys') manga, inspiring such little-known works as Yu-Gi-Oh! and Naruto. But it wasn't always intended as an epic, and if it seems to have lots of quirky elements (such as Bulma's blue hair, or the magic nyoi-bo staff which Goku sometimes fights with, or the titular Dragon Balls themselves, which really aren't even that important in the manga), it's because the series changed a lot over its 10-year run. When he started Dragon Ball, Akira Toriyama was best known for his previous hit, the 1980-1984 mad scientist comedy manga Dr. Slump. Dragon Ball was also conceived as a comedy, or comedy-adventure, albeit based on Hong Kong martial arts movies rather than the science fiction genre. But readers reacted more to the action elements than the comedy, and so, with the guidance (or pressure) of his editors, Toriyama gradually de-emphasized the humor elements (such as the talking animals, which aren't in the movie) and emphasized the fighting and melodrama. The resulting hit combo was spun off into anime, video games, and merchandise, and made Shônen Jump magazine the manga equivalent of DC and Marvel put together; at its peak in the early '90s, before the magazine market started its slow worldwide decline, it sold 6.53 million copies per week. As for Dragon Ball, it was rated the #3 manga series of all time by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs .

The anime was first translated for English syndication in 1995, although it didn't become a hit until it started appearing on Cartoon Network's Toonami programming block in 1998, where less intense censorship allowed the characters to really beat each other up like in the original Japanese version. The manga was translated by VIZ and printed as two separate series, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z... which leads into the next question.

Astro Boy
Birth year: 1963
Who he is: A doe-eyed robot with jet engine feet, eyes that double as searchlights, and a nuclear reactor heart, created by manga godfather Osamu Tezuka.
Lessons learned: 1. Robots are smart and good. (Astro Boy had decision-making skills and a heroic conscience built into his circuitry.) 2. International politics: nuclear power is only dangerous if used maliciously, or if there's an accident. 3. Optimism goes a long way even when your world is being ravaged by war.

Doraemon
Birth year: 1969
Who he is: A blue robotic cat from the future that appeared out of accident-prone schoolboy Nobita's desk drawer. Doraemon has a treasure trove of secret weapons in his four-dimensional built-in fanny pack—everything from candy that makes you tell the truth to an ATM machine that recycles used goods for cash. In March, Doraemon was chosen to be the Anime Ambassador of Japan by the Foreign Ministry.
Lessons learned: 1. Don't be afraid of bullies. 2. Travel as much as you can—whether it's through a teleportation door, with propellers on your head, or on a time machine. 3. Just because you look different doesn't mean you can't be best friends.

Arale Norimaki
Birth year: 1980
Who she is: A purple-haired, near-sighted girl robot built by a kooky professor named Norimaki Senbei (seaweed-wrapped rice cracker) to resemble a real 13 year old human girl. She was created by Akira Toriyama, the same genius manga artist who wrote the Dragon Ball series.
Lessons learned: 1. To be fun and spontaneous. 2. To be honest about your compulsions. 3. That you can be female + completely non-sexual + still be the most powerful humanoid in the entire world. 4. How to launch pumpkin cannons and split the earth in half with one punch. 5. The art of the Japanese poop joke. (Even today, my favorite way to pick up my dog's poop is by poking it with a stick and then chucking it into the bushes or a trash can.)

Gundam
Birth year: 1979
Who he is: A cockpit-operated "mobile suit" from a world called UC (Universal Century). Some would argue that Gundam is technically not a robot, but it wouldn't be fair to exclude him from this list because of his importance in global humanoid machine history.
Lessons learned: 1. War is inevitable. 2. Bigger is sometimes better. 3. There are other universes out there, and one day we will all live in outer space.