Dragon Ball is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama with an anime adaptation, followed by Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT. The basis for the storyline took inspiration from two Chinese-related works, Jackie Chan's Drunken Master II and Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West. In Japan, Dragon Ball was collected into a single 42-volume series (called tankōbon) after the manga was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1984 to 1995.

In 2004, the manga was re-released in a 34 volume collection called kanzenban, which included a slightly rewritten ending, new covers, and color artwork from its Weekly Shonen Jump run. blank">http://cartoons-comics.deepthi.com/comic-hero-dragon-ball.html As of 2006, the distributing company _Viz Media has released all 42 volumes (nearly matching the first Japanese set) into English-language in the United States. Viz titles the second portion of the manga Dragon Ball Z to lessen confusion for North American readers. The series is published in the United Kingdom by Gollancz Manga.