Goku’s Saiyan lineage is one of the reasons why the protagonist of Dragon Ball is so overwhelmingly strong. The Saiyans are always looking for fights and battles and are training hard to become stronger. All of these are the defining traits of Goku and make them the perfect main character for Akira Toriyama’s magnum opus.
Goku’s Saiyan roots not only get him excited for battles but have also become a part of his identity. However, Toriyama initially had no interest in focusing on Goku’s origins. He rather wanted to focus on his upcoming journey. Goku’s origins were reflected in the story only because of Vegeta.
Additionally, he never even thought of Goku being an alien, which later became an important narrative of the story. Toriyama also talked about how he didn’t anticipate that the story would go on for so long and become such a huge franchise, as he was initially planning to end the series quite early.
Akira Toriyama Had Not Thought About Goku’s Origins in Dragon Ball
TV Anime Guide: Dragon Ball Tenka’ichi Densetsu featured an interview with Goku’s voice actor Masako Nozawa, Takao Koyama, and Toriyama, which was translated by Kazenshuu. During the interview, Toriyama was asked about Goku as a protagonist and how much he conceptualized Goku’s character at the start of the series.
Toriyama answered:
I’d hardly thought out anything. I hadn’t come up with the concept of him being an alien until Vegeta came, and I think I originally meant his giant ape form to be “just a transformation”, like a werewolf. For it to turn out over the course of the writing that “Goku’s really an alien!” was something that took even me by surprise.
According to the mangaka, although he had originally planned for Goku’s great ape transformation, he had no idea how to justify it. Later on, he came up with the idea of Vegeta, who was an alien, and thus he found the perfect base for the origin of Goku and also a good explanation for Goku’s Ozaru transformation.
Akira Toriyama Was Prepared to End Dragon Ball only After 10 Weeks
During the interview, Akira Toriyama talked about how, in the beginning, he only had one concept ready for Dragon Ball, and that was to make the series similar to the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West and add some Kung-Fu to it.
Toriyama stated:
At any rate, I had really only thought, “I’ll make a motif of Journey to the West, with a little bit of Kung-Fu thrown in.” I was prepared for it to end after 10 weeks if it wasn’t a hit.
Toriyama even revealed that he was not sure whether the series would actually work or not, and he was ready to end it after 10 weeks if it hadn’t worked out the way Toriyama planned it.
However, the series became a huge sensation among anime and manga fans, and to this day, even after Toriyama’s demise, Dragon Ball is considered to be one of the main pillars on which the Shonen genre is based.
You can watch the Dragon Ball series on Crunchyroll.
