"You can't have the same fight every time," Toriyama confirms. "In earlier times, Goku was still small, so it was all right, but in the latter half [of the story], the fighting escalated. I had to come up with more powerful attacks." Thus, the "Super Saiyan" mode of leveling-up a character's power came about. "Personally, I feel there's a limit to how strong one can be, so [power-ups] are usually out of desperation." The distinctive Super Saiyan "look"— spiky blond hair reaching for the sky, sharp-edged muscles, power crackling like a live wire—had its own inspiration. "I wasn't planning on Goku becoming a Super Saiyan, so when I came up with the Super Saiyan idea, I thought that his appearance should also change to show his power-up. In terms of design, his expression looks more like an enemy, doesn't it? I had doubts if that's what he should become, but since he'd transform [into a Super Saiyan] out of anger, I decided that it was acceptable. It was a pretty bold idea. As for enemies, they transform if my editor says he doesn't like them," he laughs.

A later power-up form, Fusion — the process of two warriors combining into an even tougher form, such as Trunks' and Goten's Fusion power-up, Gotenks—had this origin: "I was having a conversation that there's nothing stronger than a Super Saiyan," laughs Toriyama. "Usually, Masakazu Katsura (Video Girl Ai) and I only talk about silly things, but he said, 'You can always fuse them together.' I told him he said something useful for the first time." The concept of Fusion increased the humor of certain fighting scenes, but Toriyama doesn't see a problem with having more laughs than lacerations in his manga. "If the story got too serious, my own blood pressure would get high, and personally, I don't like that. I always think that manga is completely for entertainment." On the other hand, when Toriyama is asked to pick out his favorite original story for the Dragon Ball animation, he passes over the lighter tales and selects the story with Goku's father, Bardock. "It's a pretty dramatic story that I'd never draw myself. I got to see a different kind of Dragon Ball in a good way."

Speaking of entertainment, how about the Kame Sen'nin's (Turtle master) signature attack, the Kamehameha? Where did that idea come from? "I don't really like giving names to attacks," Toriyama says. "I don't think the characters would be yelling out the names of their attacks in life-or-death situations. You'd get killed while yelling the name of your attack," he laughs. "But my editor said I'm better off giving attacks names. Kamehameha is my wife's invention. I was agonizing, 'It's Kame's attack, called something-ha! Something-ha!' She just suggested ‘Kame-hame-ha.' It was great. It was so silly that it fit Kame Sen'nin's image so well."

"All the worlds I’ve drawn in manga are different from the real world, from the very first manga on," Toriyama says.   “You can't tell where Penguin Village is... Kishman looked a little more realistic, but you can't place that on the map either. It's easier, after all — my standard for choosing something is for the ease. If something's based on the real world, I have to use references for buildings and vehicles. This way, I can decide on any setting I want and draw it freely."

Dragon Ball, however, did use some real-life places as a basis. "My wife was infatuated with China back then, so I used some photo books she had bought. Also, before the serial had started, I'd gone to Bali with my family and assistants. Papaya Island, where the Tenka-Ichi tournament is held, is completely modeled after Bali." Other instances where Toriyama was forced to pull out real-life references were the location of a buried spaceship ("I used an African photo collection for that") and various barren wastelands. "The latter stories all took place in barren wastelands, so it was tough to depict them differently. I change the scenery each time. I'd change the shape of the rocks or the faraway mountains. I'd have to let the readers know it's a different place from last time — it would be boring to use the same location."

"It's been a habit of mine since childhood to always be looking around," he continues.  “When I go shopping, I have more fun observing the town than shopping. For my work, the town scenery, small things, and people's clothes all are useful — also, the sundries I had to draw back when I was an employee. I would complain that I had to draw a hundred pairs of socks,” he laughs. "In retrospect, that was a useful exercise." Instead of sketching what he sees, he says that "I burn it into my vision, so I usually fail when I try to draw it later. 'Was it like this?' But I retain the general image of things. I'll rely on that not-so-fully accurate memory to draw things. I can probably draw most anything that way."

"The only other time I might use references for my art would be in drawing cars and planes," Toriyama continues. "Plastic models are useful. You can examine them from every angle when you're drawing cars." This need for detail, apparently, is part of what led to Toriyama's cute, cartoony style of drawing machines and other gadgetry. "If you want to depict something exactly the way it is, it takes a tremendous amount of time. If you don't get the details right, the inaccuracies will accumulate somewhere. But it's no problem if it's caricatured. I try to get done as quickly as possible.

"I probably have the most fun thinking up original vehicles," he continues. "I usually consider details such as how to get into them and where their engines are. When you draw a real-world car, you have to obtain some references. I'd hate to have someone point out that I'm wrong," he laughs. "But if it's something I invented, I can have it my way." In fact, this caricatured style is truly essential to the Dragon Ball world as a whole. "My manga is in the slapstick style, so if the characters are caricatured humans, then it'd be strange for everything else not to be caricatured."

Besides Dragon Ball's version of Earth, the series indulges in many adventures "off world" — on the planet Nameck, searching for the more powerful grade-up version of Earth's Dragon Balls. “I came up with the Nameck architecture and spaceships based on Piccolo [Daimao’s] throne. I really only gave thought to making the setting coherent when they went to Nameck," Toriyama claims. Another unique setting is Dragon Ball's very Asian heaven and hell, where Goku spends more than a little of the series, trying to get back to Earth. Toriyama's take, however, is far from the typical one. "God's shrine looked rather mystical, so I thought it might work to make the other place look conversely worldly. So Enma [king of the Spirit World, city of Hades] and the ogres show up wearing suits like businessmen." The Afterlife, in Toriyama's vision, is filled with references to Earthly routine—from street-cleaning trucks on Snake Way to ogres wearing T-shirts and jogging gear and souls traveling to heaven on an airplane. In explanation, Toriyama refers to a world map in the Dragon Ball illustration collection.

"This map was something I originally drew at the request of an animator, but I used this opportunity to make [the world] complete. I usually come up with the story first and then set up the world. A real manga artist would probably draw the map first and then think up the story. This might make me sound like I work without thinking, but that's not true. I do have a vague notion before coming up with the story."

Playing God

In the same vain, Toriyama's approach to character design is to create characters to fit his story. In Dragon Ball, even the premise that the characters were aliens was something Toriyama just came up with at the time. "I didn't have in mind that Goku would be an alien when he had a tail or turned into a giant ape. The same for Piccolo. I came up with that when God showed up. I usually come up with some retrofitted explanation."

Likewise, Toriyama begins his character designs with the personality, filling in details as he goes. "I start with the face, and as I think up the face, I come up with the physique. After the head and body, I get a notion of a costume that would be suitable for the world he lives in, or for a fighting character, something he'd be comfortable wearing in combat. Basically, I think in monochrome — after I come up with characters, their color schemes are roughly set in my mind. Of course, they come up differently when I actually color them in on paper."

Dragon Ball aside, nowadays Toriyama is possibly even better known as a video game character designer, especially in America, where Japanese animation and comics are still only really beginning to catch on. Toriyama's characters for popular video games such as Chrono Trigger and Tobal No.1 are instantly recognizable, almost to the point of being characters that could just as easily have appeared in Dragon Ball (we know of one DBZ fan who managed to use the "customizing" feature in Tobal 2 to replicate Gotenks). Toriyama says of his adventures designing for video games that it was probably first suggested to him by his editor. "I didn't want to at first," he says, "but it did expand my horizons." On the difference between designing characters for video games and designing characters for manga or animation, Toriyama admits that "It's different," and notes that although video game characters are tiny, it's still possible to draw intricate designs.