Animation Blog

In an Oricon survey back in 2007, with 1,000 respondents, Son Goku of the iconic cartoon animation series Dragon Ball Z has been tagged as the top cartoon character of the recognition “Strongest Manga Character of All Time.” That may be a stretch to some people. But you have to hand it over to Son Goku because the creators of Naruto and One Piece, Masashi Kishimoto and Eiichiro Oda respectively, have used this Saiyan as their inspiration.

Before Son Goku hit the television series in the memorable Dragon Ball Z cartoon animation series, he appeared in the manga of Weekly Shonen Jump magazine on December 3, 1984. The inspiration behind Son Goku, according to his creator Akira Toriyama, was the character of Sun Wukong in the story Journey to the West.

It was eventually revealed that Son Goku was not human at all (although there was a bit of a hint when as a child Son Goku was a monkey-tailed boy). Hailing from a superpowered alien race, the Saiyans, Son Goku introduced us to different fashion statements from human and Saiyan culture throughout the various sagas of the Dragon Ball universe. So let’s take a look:

Young Blood. To many people, Son Goku was that cute monkey-tailed boy from the prequel-like cartoon animation Dragon Ball. His fashion apparel would be the gi, which was an allusion to Chinese culture with its orange wardrobe emulating martial artist monks. Among his accessories was a Nyoi-bo or the Power Pole which is a magic staff which can adjust its length according to the needs of Son Goku. Of course there also was the magical Kinton Cloud which was Son Goku’s primary mode of transportation when he was young.

At this phase in the life of Son Goku, he was still a bit unaware of his status as an alien Saiyan – and the burden of fighting mega-powered aliens. So he was more carefree back then. This was more different when he became an adult. To mark this growth, Toriyama gave Son Goku a change in hairstyle…

Adult. Well, that change of hairstyle was there but not so much. But it was an important aspect of this adult phase in my opinion. The adult Son Goku had more of the same form of hair as his young counterpart but Toriyama and the team of animators made it grow a bit.

After this though, that hair has been steady as Velcro.

Yes, the hair would flow with the wind but it would never grow. His archrival/friend Vegeta once explained that this is really how the hair of Saiyans are – excellent way for the animators to explain this pragmatic drawing move. After all, it is easier to draw characters with the same length of hair. Here’s a video of Son Goku in action:

In the follow-up cartoon animation series Dragon Ball Z, Son Goku was still toting the same gi uniform but this time he had a blue undershirt. Not much change but that has been part of what made Son Goku’s appearance so memorable. At this time however, Son Goku was shown the potential of his power and thus he had less reliance on his old trusty Power Pole and the Kinton Cloud. At this time Goku decides to go with the minimalistic fashion look.

Oozaru Mode. Part of the narrative devices used to show that Son Goku is an alien is his transformation into a giant monkey whenever a full moon is lurking around. So that was the reason why the monkey tail was there all along and it was not a senseless accessory. There’s not much to rave about this look of Son Goku, other than its raw bestiality, but the creators of Dragon Ball made this Oozaru mode later into the series. Moreover, Toriyama and the rest of Dragon Ball’s animators did try to give us varying hairstyles throughout the series. We’ll get back at it in the second installment of this article: