Master Akira Toriyama did not like crowded places. In general. Not in real life, nor when he was drawing Dragon Ball. The first is easy to understand, given its reserved nature, but the truth is that proposing a work that takes place on an increasingly larger scale requires that sooner or later it will be necessary to create or imagine large and detailed scenarios. Precisely for this reason he reduced them to rubble. But, as you will see, genius was always in how I planned it.
The visual style of Dragon Ball evolved from its origins. He gained enormous rhythm and a lot of energy, so that the pages increasingly demanded more speed and dynamism. Something that was slowed down by having to create crowded environments. Sometimes in the form of buildings or details such as tiles or decorations. Luckily, when Son Goku and his protagonists achieved enough strength, he could afford to do without the settings. Grossly, of course.
In fact, it’s not something I’ve done once or twice, for the record. Do you remember when Perfect Cell decided to destroy the tatami he had created a few chapters earlier because “it didn’t make sense for there to be limits”? That is the most blatant example, but not the only one. The ultimate goal was to turn iconic settings into simple rubble. that could be understood with a few lines. The key, on the other hand, was to justify it well enough so that the trick would not be noticed.
As the planet Namek during the Frieza saga was destroyed, the simpler its funds became. Clouds, lightning, debris and some water. And there are places like the planet Kaioshin or the room of Spirit and Time that hardly require any effort. But you can’t always make an action manga in such desert places: you have to move the events to emblematic places and, from there, clean them up.
In fact, the record for avoiding having to draw backgrounds goes to the time Vegeta and Nappa arrived on planet Earth. In an interview with Toriyama published in Dragon Ball Forever, long after the end of the manga, the author of Dragon Ball explained the process with which he saved enormous work when drawing each week, using the arrival of the saiyans as an example.
The system: first he established the combat zone and, in this specific case, three pages later, with a simple gesture from one of his characters, everything was completely destroyed and free of details or citizens to draw. Automatically turning the entire city into a wasteland.
How a simple gesture from Nappa saved Toriyama a lot of work
Chance? Absolutely. The explanation of this process is given by Toriyama himself in the same interview when he responds that his characters fight less and less in the city.
“The truth is that drawing the backgrounds is quite hard. And drawing a city is really hard… Everyone gets stronger and fights, so you have to destroy the city, right? That’s why when I draw the city I already plan how to destroy it. If I know how to destroy it then I can draw it.
If my assistants take too long, then it’s my turn to draw, that’s why I want to destroy it as soon as possible (laughs). In the case of the Central Capital I put it in the third vignette. He already had plans to destroy the city or the background that gave us a lot of work. The stage of the Great Martial Arts Tournament is also a lot of work.
Anyway, things were always like this. “If my assistants say that painting Goku’s hair black is a lot of work, then we transform it into his super Saiyan, which is blonde… Well, it was shocking and in the end it turned out well, I think.”
Akira Toriyama I always hate delivery times, but it also turned the way to avoid having to draw too many backgrounds and settings into a kind of art of its own and, from there, into a tradition to maintain. Although there are also very exceptional cases.
The art of destroying scenes… and the most brazen cases
In fact, there was one scenario that he almost forgot to remove: the Martial Arts Tournament during the Majin Buu saga. Luckily, Vegeta returned just in time to clear the area… before Goku took the action to another conveniently clearer location.
All in all, and to be fair, there was one occasion where Goku tried to minimize damage. With the entry on the scene of the Androids A19 and A20 to Dragon Ball, the protagonists proposed going to a place where no one could get hurt. A brilliant move by Akira Toriyama to draw rocky wastelands and much easier places to draw.
In any case, before saying goodbye to the place it seems that the unwritten rule of destroying a city before starting to draw it was fulfilled. Maybe Toriyama already planned to do it anyway.
Coincidence or not, Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero, the next Dragon Ball Budokai tenkaichi game, will give enormous prominence to destructible environments. Because we all know that the fight really gets intense when the stones rise and start exploding. That’s the Dragon Ball we’re passionate about!
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