Ask John: Why did Dragonball End?

Question:
I was wondering why the creators of the Dragonball (Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT) series stopped making it in 1995? Didn’t Cartoon Network say that it’s “The greatest action cartoon ever made?” It’s a big hit everywhere, and I don’t really understand why they stopped. Was the series over? Did they get tired and quit, or were there not enough people working there to animate more of it?

Answer:
With rare exceptions such as Doraemon and Sazae-san, all good things must come to an end. Akira Toriyama created the Dragonball manga in 1984. It was the story of a young boy with superhuman strength and his quest to make friends, become stronger, and find the 7 mystical dragonballs. Through 42 collected volumes of Dragonball manga, Goku grew, married became a father then a grandfather, and finally ascended into heaven with the great dragon Shen Long, which could be taken as a metaphor for his death. In 1986, Dragonball became a television series and quickly turned into one of the most popular and successful anime series ever made. After 153 episodes, Dragonball changed its focus by introducing an alien origin and the concept of alien invaders and the Saiyan race. To go along with the sudden expansion of the Dragonball universe, the animation, in 1989, changed its name to Dragonball Z. After 293 episodes, and Toriyama having written and drawn the Dragonball manga for over a decade, Toriyama simply wanted to move on to new projects. It was time for Goku to say goodbye. But Toei Animation didn’t want to write off one of their most profitable franchises so easily. As a compromise, Toriyama-san drafted character designs and a basic plot direction for a third Dragonball series that returned Dragonball to its roots as an adventure series rather than a “fighting” series. The week after Dragonball Z ended in 1996, Dragonball GT premiered and managed to struggle through an uneven, uninspired 64 episodes and one hour long TV special. Without Toriyama’s manga as a guideline, the GT series had no direction and no creative vision. Viewers quickly recognized the struggling writing and lack of direction to the story, and ratings plummeted. While still more watched than many programs of its time, Toei studios recognized that without Akira Toriyama’s guidance, Dragonball GT was a mere shadow of former glory. By agreement with Bandai, who was working on a Dragonball GT video game, eventually released as Dragonball: Final Bout, Toei tried to extend the GT series until the video game was completed and released. As soon as that time was within sight, Toei gave up the ghost and ended the Dragonball saga for good on November 19, 1997.

Dragonball premiered on American television in 1995, followed a year or two later by Dragonball Z. Keeping in mind that it took several years for Dragonball Z to really gain the popularity in America that it has now, by the time Dragonball Z was a huge hit in America, it had already been out of production in Japan for several years. And although the Japanese industry is beginning to become more and more aware of the American market and American demand for anime, the anime industry in Japan is still heavily dominated by an attitude of “out of sight, out of mind.” A series in Japan that comes to a natural end, either by concluding its story or by going out before it’s canceled, rarely comes back into production. Although American fans hungry for more Dragonball are eager to pounce on any hint of new Dragonball animation, at the present time FUNimation has confirmed that Toei Studios have no plans to revive the Dragonball franchise.