The story and characters of Dragon Ball were partly inspired by the Chinese folk novel Journey to the West, though they diverge from the novel very quickly. As of January 2012, generating $5 billion in merchandise, Dragon Ball is one of the most merchandisable anime based media franchises of all time. It consists primarily of a manga series created by Akira Toriyama, along with its follow up manga series Dragon Ball Super by Toyotarou, six anime series ( Dragon Ball, Z, GT, Super, Heroes) and Daima, twenty-one anime films, three live-action films, seven anime specials, five anime OVAs, four anime crossovers, two anime PSAs and a high-def remastered recut of Dragon Ball Z (more faithful to Toriyama's manga).ĭragon Ball has an extensive online fanbase and is consistently one of the most frequently searched-for terms on Google, Yahoo! and Lycos.
Dragon Ball ( ドラゴンボール, Doragon Bōru ) is an internationally popular media franchise.
