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Who Can Beat Goku? The Monumental Legacy of Akira Toriyama

Considering Goku is really Toriyama's legacy, I wonder Super will keep using him or change to somebody else. The movie Super Hero finally tried to stay away from abusing the characters of Goku and Vegeta but the manga insists they should be everywhere. There is the case of Uub but Toei treated him horribly in GT. I remember hearing that Toriyama doesn't like the heroic portrayal Toei gave the character (especially in the English dub) so that's why he felt more selfish and cocky in Super when compared to Z.

Akira Toriyama was inspired by the works of amazing mangaka like Osamu Tezuka.

If he had a problem with that why did he write Goku the way he wrote him in the first half of the original manga? Where Goku more or less had heroic qualities.

- Courageous
- Defends the weak
- Helps those in trouble
- Selfless
- Saves the world sometimes secondary to a primary purpose but still.

Any of the more dubious things he did like throwing Gohan to Cell, helping irredeemable people with body counts he’s also to blame for that.

If he had a problem with that why did he write Goku the way he wrote him in the first half of the original manga? Where Goku more or less had heroic qualities.

- Courageous
- Defends the weak
- Helps those in trouble
- Selfless
- Saves the world sometimes secondary to a primary purpose but still.

Probably the most controversial is when Goku had the potential to save the world from the beginning just by killing the Gero before the androids are awaken but he wanted to fight them too. However, when Cell and the others awake everybody starts having second thoughts.

In the original manga, Goku is a dumb, very naive, unfit for society, country boy with no manners, no heroic qualities, he just did whatever he wanted and nobody could stop him. He was easily fooled and Bulma had to tell him to come save her before he even did anything.

Considering Goku is really Toriyama's legacy, I wonder Super will keep using him or change to somebody else.

Ideally they'll stop making Dragonball and milking it and Daima will be the swansong of the franchise outside new video games and merchandise.

It's why I find Dragon Ball so interesting from a historical & serialization perspective, because while it was obviously success & inspirational from the beginning, a number of the elements that people associate with DB today as being so iconic, particularly some the stuff covered in Dragon Ball Z, very much look to have been influenced by Kurumada's Saint Seiya, despite DB debuting first. The biggest one would easily be the visual of the Super Saiyan, i.e. a yellow/golden tinged power up that makes certain characters more powerful than before, which came after Saint Seiya's "Power of Gold", i.e. a yellow/golden tinged power up that makes certain characters more powerful than before; in fact, Goku didn't first turn Super Saiyan until after Saint Seiya had ended. Toriyama was always looking at what the people he admired, i.e. his fellow Jump mangaka, were doing for inspiration, while also making sure to implement those ideas in their own unique ways, to some extent.

Quote:

Akira Toriyama was inspired by the works of amazing mangaka like Osamu Tezuka.

While Toriyama came into manga with little direct inspiration, it's easy to see that he so much talent around him to look at for inspiration (& competition). It's an element of Toriyama that, unfortunately, isn't talked about much, as people tend to focus solely on the influence he had on others.

I guess Goku's character isn't that consistent. Proabably the most notable difference is how he reacted to Raditz; upon hearing there are two stronger Saiyans, Goku admits being afraid rather excited and is willing to pull any trick with Piccolo to kill Raditz and save his son. There is also the case of Goku having mercy with Frieza after Krillin's death too in contrast to how happy he was when he avenged the first death in the classic series.

Yes, but to be fair (using the above example as a point of reference) Saint Seiya's cultural impact has been negligible on a global scale in direct comparison (hence the many misguided recent attempts to make it a successful franchise in the US). It has its die-hard fans in Japan, South America, France and Italy to this day, but it's pretty clear why Toriyama is considered so influential on the shōnen genre as a whole, as opposed to many of the people he was inspired by. I would argue that this is even the case in France, which is the world's largest manga importer (there's an interesting English article on the topic in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/mar/29/france-manga-anime-murakami-macron). Toriyama found a winning formula and arguably pulled it off better than the competition (studio interference aside), even if haters gonna hate. While he may not have agreed with the directions the anime took the source material, there is no doubt that it gave his work exposure and influence it probably wouldn't have had otherwise (I for one only ended up reading the manga much later, when I was in high school, despite having grown up with the anime).

That last line you're quoting from me was me simply pointing out that people tend to focus so much on Toriyama's impact & influence that it inadvertently comes off as though they believe that Toriyama seemingly came from out of nowhere & came up with everything he did out of the blue. That's why the piece here only brought up Osamu Tezuka, because what Toriyama's influences were are next to unknown to most people, so they go with the obvious one (i.e. the guy who essentially influenced everyone in manga) & leave it at that.

I just wanted to bring to light Toriyama's (admittedly unique, in origin) set of inspirations & influences that he had, since pretty much no one else would. Yes, his impact was greater than others around the world, but that doesn't mean that we should act like he came up with everything from out of nowhere, like people tend to do, even if accidentally. Everyone has a past, but Toriyama's own is rarely spoken of, because people just want to talk about how he's everyone else's past.

A titan in the creative space who brought the world together in a shared love of action, art, and comedy. A man whose influence impacts so many people in so many visible and invisible ways. And what are we to do, as fellow creators who want to impact the world with our work? He changed the lives of tens of millions of people - how can we measure up to that kind of legacy, even a little bit? How can you compete with that? That kind of influence and creativity can seem nearly divine. You can't measure up to Akira Toriyama – no one can beat Goku, it seems.

When we shout Kamehameha, we speak the same tongue.