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  The apparent redundancy highlights the difficulty of fitting a pantheon into Dragon Ball’s world of shonen-style constant power inflation. Once that initial Dragon Ball hunt wraps up, the series is all about getting stronger: the characters are always going through more intense training, reaching more powerful forms, fighting tougher and tougher enemies, etc. For the most part, Dragon Ball’s gods are there to provide Goku and co. with training, quickie power-ups, and the occasional heads-up about the next imminent disaster. Then when an even bigger threat turns up, Toriyama introduces an even higher god to provide the characters with even better training and/or power-ups. In this light, Dragon Ball’s gods are all just bumped-up versions of the more down-to-earth mentor figures like Kame-sen’nin or Karin, and even these guys are mystical immortals.

  Theoretically we get introduced to new gods whenever Dragon Ball’s worldview expands (more planets=more gods; more galaxies=more Kaio, etc)…but in practice, new gods turn up whenever the series’ power inflation has rendered the old gods useless. The end result is that in the Buu arc we get the Kaioshin because at this point nobody would buy it if regular old Kaio suddenly owned magic fusion earrings or could do a funky chicken dance that made Super Saiyan forms obsolete. But there’s no expansion of the Dragon Ball world to go along with this like we had in earlier arcs, so we get new gods without anything new for them to be gods of, apart from their own realm which exists solely for them. They’re around mostly for their plot function, with only a hazy in-universe reason to exist.

  It seems Toriyama was aware of the issue, since when creating a new addition to the DB pantheon for Battle of Gods, he did as much as possible to separate Beerus from all the previous Dragon Ball gods. Even before Toriyama got heavily involved in the project, the initial idea for the first DBZ movie in 17 years was that it would feature a “God of Destruction” and a “Super Saiyan God.” Once Toriyama started rewriting things, he quickly put his own distinctive spin on these ideas. Rather than a pure evil villain as originally planned, Beerus ended up a more neutral figure, selfish and ill-tempered but not actually malicious, with many humorous aspects to his personality. As already mentioned, Toriyama designed Beerus as a cat man to separate him from the other more human-looking gods, and his feline nature shines though in his laziness and obsession with food.

  One phrase that got kicked around a lot in the previews and other early press for the movie was that this God of Destruction was needed “to maintain the balance of the universe.” As Toriyama explains in his Chouzenshuu 1 interview (released a few months before Battle of Gods itself), Kaioshin is actually a “God of Creation” who “provides the stimulus” for new planets to be born, and even creates new life-forms...though he mostly just watches over all these worlds, with help from the Kaio (this is the only aspect of their role touched on in the original series itself, or earlier guides). Since the number of planets is constantly increasing, Beerus provides balance by destroying worlds. It’s a bit like hunters shooting deer to keep their population in check. Of course, Toriyama never explains why Kaioshin couldn’t just stop making planets if there are getting to be too many, or why too many planets would even be a problem (can outer space get overcrowded?), but the important thing is that Beerus has a clearly-defined role. In the movie itself, Kaio gives Goku a shortened version of this explanation, saying that both creation and destruction are needed to preserve balance (though he doesn’t touch on the whole “planetary overpopulation” idea).

  But the biggest difference between Beerus and prior gods is that he’s an antagonist; not strictly evil of course, but someone there for Goku to fight all the same, as opposed to serving as a mentor or martial arts master. Wrapped up in this is the idea that to fight Beerus, Goku must himself become a god, which is where Super Saiyan God comes into the picture. Like with the God of Destruction, Toriyama put his own spin on this. Rather than a super muscular guy in a cape, as was originally planned, Toriyama wanted to keep things as simple as possible: Goku is skinnier and younger-looking, with red hair and a fiery aura. The backstory (as explained in the movie by Shenlong) describes this form as the “god of the Saiyans,” originally created long ago by the few good-hearted Saiyans to oppose the wanton violence of their peers. Five good-hearted Saiyans have to share their energy with a sixth to trigger the transformation. Though powerful, it has a time limit, which prevented the original Super Saiyan God from stopping the evil Saiyans (resulting in him and the other good Saiyans getting “erased from history”), and in the film Goku’s transformation runs out midway through his fight...but he keeps on trucking all the same.

  In a lot of ways, Super Saiyan God is a much bigger departure from prior Dragon Ball gods than even Beerus. Throughout the series, being a god has mainly been shown to be a job. Somebody is born an Earthling/Namekian/fruit person/etc., and only becomes a god when they inherit a position in the divine hierarchy, either by being personally selected by the current position holder or (as Toriyama explains in guidebooks) a divine lottery. There seems to be a certain amount of training involved, since they don’t want anyone who isn’t good or strong enough for the role, but overall that’s it. A bit banal, but again, Toriyama likes gods who aren’t too different from regular folks. This setup even seems to be the case with the God of Destruction: near the end of Battle of Gods, it turns out Beerus’ attendant Whis is also his martial arts master, and Whis offers Goku the role of God of Destruction once Beerus dies. The implication is that Whis likewise originally selected Beerus for the role, and trained him for it.

  But Super Saiyan God isn’t a job, it’s a transformation. Getting the energy of five other righteous Saiyans causes Goku to become a god, and when the time limit runs out, he stops being a god and goes back to being a regular Saiyan. Contrast this with (for instance) Dende, who takes over as God of Earth when the old one recombines with Piccolo, and simply is the God of Earth from then on, and will be until he passes the role to someone else. Going along with this notion of transforming into a god is the new idea that gods have a special kind of ki energy, one that’s of a higher quality and “clear,” making it impossible for non-gods to sense. It’s this special ki that allows Beerus to suddenly show up unexpectedly (as opposed to when someone like Freeza swings by Earth and everyone senses him coming an hour in advance), and Goku apparently gets it as a Super Saiyan God. But it’s a bit hard to square this idea of “god ki” with the main series, where Goku spends a lot of time around gods but never seems to notice their special ki. Maybe only Beerus and Super Saiyan God have it, but if so, why? Obviously it’s not the first time Toriyama’s on-the-fly writing style has created discrepancies, but it does underline how the concept of Super Saiyan God seems to define godhood as a state of being, in contrast to almost everything else in the series.

  “Almost everything else in the series”…so far. We still know virtually nothing about the upcoming 2015 DBZ movie, but Toriyama has said it will be a continuation of Battle of Gods, and early teasers mention a battle of “godly dimensions.”

  So more gods may be on the horizon. Certainly, Battle of Gods itself ends with the revelation that everything we’ve seen of the Dragon Ball world so far is just one universe out of twelve, with the implication that these other universes contain their own gods. The door’s wide open for new pages in the Dragon Ball bible. Maybe future gods will be more like Super Saiyan God, transformations rather than people simply holding a divine job title. Maybe we’ll get a truly evil god for the Z-Warriors to face. Maybe it’ll be something far stranger than anything we could possibly predict ahead of time.

  God only knows.

  Jake (“Herms”) provides research and translations for Kanzenshuu.

  The Unexpected Dragon Ball Prequel

  By Mike LaBrie

  There were already hints that Akira Toriyama’s new short series, Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, would have some sort of connection with Dragon Ball before it even launched. Comments from the author told us to scale back our expectations, but the
re was no denying the excitement.

  Simply having a consistent new series from Akira Toriyama should have been exciting enough, but did the story’s conclusion bring enough to the Dragon World?

  Jaco the Galactic Patrolman tells the story of Jaco, a “Super Elite” member of the 38-member patrol force overseen by a galactic king. After being distracted, Jaco crash lands on Earth on an island inhabited by Omori, an old man with a somewhat-mysterious past.

  It seems that Omori lost his wife in an accident that involved some sort of time machine, and the government is now looking to take the island back from him. When they run into a young girl named Tights, everyone’s fates become intertwined with more mystery, intrigue, and explosions, along with a good mix of posing and deadpan humor.

  Jaco the Galatic Patrolman looks and feels like an Akira Toriyama work through-and-through, which means it has all the incomprehensible magic along with the expected pitfalls.

  The overall style fits in with Toriyama’s “modern” art: lots of short/thin characters, some shading now that he has fully moved to digital, and the occasional great-looking action shot.

  The various side characters all have the standard Toriyama charm, but none of them particularly stand out in terms of memorable design. Even recurring characters such as Katayude are so basic as to be pretty indistinguishable from any other random character. Being standard “human” characters adds to this, but as recent as 2010’s Kintoki, some of the henchman at least stood out a little bit.

  Jaco is easily the most interesting character to look at, which seems odd considering his flat features. This is likely why Toriyama has him striking poses so often, and while he only barely ever smiles, we do occasionally get some great facial expressions.

  Considering her family, it is no surprise to see Tights go through several great wardrobe changes throughout the short series. She seems to accessorize quite well between her head-wear, necklaces, and coats!

  With Jaco never changing his (naked?!) appearance, it is great to see Toriyama give Tights and even Omori (with his scarf, proper city clothes, etc.) a little extra attention-to-detail. Omori in particular is drawn very intricately with expressive wrinkles and heavy eyes.

  Jaco has a few stand-out panels, but it does feel like a severely-and-perhaps-over-polished final product. The characters carry it far more than its art, and thankfully they are a pretty fun group to be around.

  Toriyama set the stage a little bit with his comment for the first chapter, noting that, “...the content has a bit of a dated feel, but if you read to the end, you’ll understand why.”

  So what does “dated” mean? Does it refer to his older Dr. Slump writing style with a looser story and jokes driving the dialog? Does it refer to the timeframe of the story, and therefore fuel the flames of Dragon Ball tie-in anticipation? Well, it turns out it is a little of both.

  Many fans have noted that while Jaco does indeed sprinkle the jokes, it is not quite as dense as Dr. Slump was. That is a fair assessment, but to me, it felt appropriate for what Jaco was trying to do. It was not a straight-up comedy, but it was certainly not a straight-up action series. Then again, does that mean Jaco has a bit of an identity crisis? Toriyama is—self-admittedly—not particularly one for deep stories. In an English-language exclusive comment printed alongside the first chapter, Toriyama flat-out stated, “Unfortunately, this series won’t have much flashy action like Dragon Ball did. But that doesn’t mean it will have a beautifully deep plot either. Light, goofy and happy! That’s what my manga is all about.”

  So yes, Jaco walks the line between Toriyama’s two most famous series, but in the process does manage to carve out a bit of its own identity. You can feel the fun that Toriyama is having with the series, something we are treated to not nearly often enough.

  The world of Jaco feels real and fully imagined. As with Dragon Ball, it is definitely “Earth” but it is hard to pin a point in the “real world” that it might take place; of course, the way the story wraps up explains that pretty well enough.

  Jaco himself is very reminiscent of the titular Neko Majin characters: mostly self-centered, occasionally oblivious to his surroundings, insanely strong, and a blunt, funny straight-man to a (generally) non-existent sidekick. He is a wonderful new addition to the world, and it is hard to imagine a pantheon of Toriyama characters without him!

  Jaco has a little bit of everything: action, comedy, and drama. Despite the underlying story being about the fate of the world, it ends up being a pretty endearing personal tale with a fun trio of characters.

  It cannot be overstated that Akira Toriyama wrote a Dragon Ball prequel. Taken on its own, Jaco is one thing, but understanding how it fits into the larger Dragon World has its own implications. Fans may take issue with aspects that appear to contradict “common knowledge” about how, for example, certain characters should look or appear for their age, but it is equally important to note that pretty much nothing shown in Jaco—including “Dragon Ball Minus”—directly contradicts anything that Toriyama himself personally wrote or drew in the Dragon Ball comic. If you want Jaco to fit in, it sure can, and does a pretty gosh darn great job at it.

  Those looking for a Toriyama story—and know what to expect from one—are in for a treat. As our own Julian noted back on our podcast review of the series, Jaco’s greatest accomplishment is also his greatest failure: by missing his opportunity to complete his mission, he inadvertently saves the world. This almost-anticlimactic bit of resolution and humor is Toriyama to a tee.

  Jaco is not a story that ever needed to be told, but it adds enough to the world and is cute the whole way through. You can feel the author having fun in every single chapter, and you will have a smile on your face right there with him. In my book, that is a “win.”

  You might just want to conveniently happen to skip over most of “Dragon Ball Minus.”

  MIKE (“VegettoEX”) is one of the co-founders of Kanzenshuu. He aims to own every piece of Jaco literature.

  Jaco: One Last Look

  Jaco works as a stand-alone story, but when viewed through another lens…

  By Julian Grybowski

  Akira Toriyama originally never meant for Jaco the Galactic Patrolman to be a Dragon Ball story at all. It began life as a draft for another Galactic Patrol manga in the vein of Jiya, for Toriyama to script and Masakazu Katsura to draw. But when Toriyama’s planned series for the 45th anniversary of Weekly Shonen Jump began to look a little too much like Battle of Gods, he reworked his unfinished draft into something he could do himself, and almost as an afterthought, linked it up to his most popular series with the final chapter.

  All of which is quite the surprise, really, because it seems to work so well. Viewed through the lens of Dragon Ball, Jaco is transformed from a low-key, odd-couple comedy with moments of high action into a profoundly melancholy meditation on the nature of fate and unintended consequences.

  Consider for a moment: we already know that Omori’s time-travel research will not be completed by him. Moreover, even if he had succeeded in traveling back in time and preventing the disaster that killed his wife and assistants, the nature of time-travel in this world means that they would still be dead when he returned to his own time. Would Omori have known that beforehand? And would he have been satisfied knowing that at least one incarnation of himself could live happily, or would it have simply embittered him further? Ultimately, he is destined never to find out, as we know Tights’ sister Bulma must be the one to finally complete the time-machine, and perhaps Omori is even a better person for this failure.

  We also know that, despite Jaco saving East City from a brush with disaster, it is doomed to be obliterated by Vegeta and Nappa as a long-term consequence of failing his primary objective, which is to stop a young Saiyan from arriving on Earth. The city and its inhabitants are never restored with the use of the Dragon Balls, but this event is also necessary for the Earth as a whole to be saved countless times by that same Saiyan. Son Gohan, too, is ultimately rewa
rded for his selfless choice to take in the child who fell from the sky with a death-by-origin-story, but that’s how it has to be.

  Even “Dragon Ball Minus,” while not perfectly executed, has a similar air of subdued inevitability. We know that Bardock is right to suspect Freeza, and that whatever his or Gine’s misgivings, they must part with Kakarrot in order to ensure his survival. But we also know that Bardock’s last stand against Freeza is doomed from the start, and his message to Raditz will set his sons against each other. Would Bardock have still done this, had he known? We never get to find out. Young Kakarrot, with his look of pure anguish as he sees his mother and father for the last time, is fated to forget them, and himself, as he is set on the path to becoming the carefree boy, and eventual hero, we meet in Dragon Ball. Freeza’s genocide of the Saiyans has to sow the seeds of his own destruction. It cannot happen any other way, or the series we know cannot be.

  Viewed in this fashion, Jaco the Galactic Patrolman is less about the apparent plot—an alien policeman stranded on Earth, with an important mission—and more about how the Dragon Ball world, which appears as a given, is subtly but crucially shaped by the actions of “unknowns,” who have no inkling as to their importance to the story. One wrong move, and everything would simply come apart. Is all this simply the convergence of random events, or is there some unseen force, like fate, shaping things as necessary? That much seems to be the reader’s to decide, but the fact that Jaco is imbued with this (perhaps unintentional!) question makes this the author’s most mature work yet.