Dragonball Episode

Wanting to break from the Western influences common in his other series, when Akira Toriyama began work on Dragon Ball he decided to loosely model it on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. He also redeveloped one of his earlier one shot manga series, Dragon Boy, which was initially serialized in Fresh Jump and released in a single tankōbon volume in 1983. This short work combined the comedic style of Toriyama's successful six-year series Dr. Slump with a more action-oriented plot and paid homage to famous martial art actor Jackie Chan. Toriyama notes that his goal for the series was to tell an "unconventional and contradictory" story.

Dragonball Episode

In the early concept of the series, Goku and Piccolo were from Earth. With the introduction of Kami, the idea of having fights from other planets was established and Goku and Piccolo were changed to alien species. For the female characters, Toriyama felt it wasn't fun to draw "weak females" so he created women that he felt were not only "beautiful and sexy", but also "strong". Going against the normal convention that the strongest characters should be the largest in terms of physical size, he designed many of Dragon Ball's most powerful characters with small statures, including the protagonist, Goku.

Dragonball Episode

Dragonball Episode

The fighting techniques were initially unnamed, but the series editor felt it would be better to name them all. Toriyama proceeded to create names for all of the techniques, except for the Kamehameha which his wife named when Toriyama was indecisive about what it should be called. When creating the ficitional world of the series, Toriyama decided to create basing it from his own imagination to avoid referencing popular culture. However the island where the World Martial Arts Tournament is held is modeled after Bali. When having fights in the manga, Toriyama had the characters go to a place where nobody lived to avoid difficulties in drawing destroyed buildings. In order to advance the story quickly, he also gave most fighters the ability to fly so they could travel to other parts of the world without inconvenience. This was also the reasoning behind Goku learning to teletransport (thus allowing characters to move to any planet in a second).

Dragonball Episode

Dragonball Episode

Pokemon Diamond

Pokemon on the DS is nothing new -- we've already received Pokemon Dash, Pokemon Trozei, and Pokemon Ranger in the system's two years of life. But it's the RPG design the public's clamoring for, not the spin-offs -- those games were just biding the time while Game Freaks cranked out the enormous, ambitious, real deal Pokemon project. It doesn't matter what's going to be said in the next thousand or so words: Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl will, without a doubt, be the top-selling game released to date on the Nintendo DS. There's absolutely no debate here. Millions of gamers are going to buy this game no matter what the critical word will be, but that won't stop us from calling it like it is: Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl are still the "gotta have" portable games, but don't expect to be overwhelmed with a fresh take on the series. The team stuck to its guns and kept the DS game in line with the Game Boy Advance designs, which were, honestly, a modest upgrade to the Game Boy Color game, which, in turn, wasn't a huge step over the game that started it all in black-and-white a decade ago.

Pokemon Diamond

Pokemon Diamond

Pokemon Diamond

For a game that's literally sold countless millions of copies over the past ten years, it's pretty amazing to discover gamers who have yet to experience what Pokemon is all about. Under its kid-friendly, thick sugary coating lies a deceptively deep and addictive design that encourages players to create collections of highly marketable creatures of various species. The core mechanic is an adventure with role-playing game battle mechanics -- these creatures will fight for their owner using their abilities in a turn-based interface, where players choose the best mode of attack or defense that'll get them through the brawl. Winning battles will earn these creatures experience which will, in turn, advance their levels and increase their capabilities...as well as earn their owners some coin for purchases at the shops.

Pokemon Diamond

Pokemon Diamond