In this entry we’ll continue to reverse-engineer the thought process Toriyama went through when deciding how to depict the characters’ facial expressions in Dragonball Chapter 30 and we will also discuss the techniques Toriyama employs that permit him to tell an ongoing story that is both coherent and consistent without planning anything ahead. You have to have read the other effort posts in this series to understand this one. You can find all the previous entries in order right here.
Know your characters before you begin
Toriyama has famously gone on record as never planning anything ahead. Despite this, he somehow managed to create an internally consistent and highly entertaining narrative. He accomplished this by getting all the hard work done up front. Good comic book creators know their characters as if their characters were real people. In The Art of Dramatic Writing, Lajos Egri says a good writer knows their characters as if they had lived with them for a month. Even if some component of a character is never explicitly made known to the audience, it’s vital to have a clear picture of any main character’s inner life so that the “acting” of that character maintains consistency. Happily, the next segment of Chapter 30 provides a great example.
Goku: *Gasp* *Gasp*
Roshi: “Ho ho! So even Goku is running out of steam, eh?”
Goku: “Ol’ timer…I really can’t deliver these with my flying cloud?”
Roshi: That wouldn’t be training, now, would it.
Roshi: What memories…! Long ago Son Gohan and Gyu-Mao delivered milk just as you’re doing now…
Goku: Really?!! My grandpa did this too?!!
Goku: Wow…
I’ve broken up the images like this so you can view each expression in isolation and out of the panel’s sequence.
Notice how in column 1, we have an aerial view. We are taking Roshi’s point of view as he looks downward at Goku. It’s not that Roshi literally “looks down on Goku” in the sense that he thinks badly of him, but we get the sense that Roshi is mature or complete in the sense that he is done growing as a person while Goku still has a long way to go. I wonder what Toriyama imagines Goku might look like at the end of his journey?
Well! While this sketch was done as a gag (Goku will probably never literally look like this in any “canon” Dragonball media.) I think it’s telling as far as the way Toriyama views Goku’s relationship with Roshi.
Look at Roshi’s body on the rock he’s sitting on. The rock is smooth and round and its surface is not unlike the top of Roshi’s head. The tendril of a vine reaches toward Roshi’s leg. He’s practically a part of nature itself. His staff also creates continuity between his body and the rock. (Also check out how that round rock aligns with his smoke rings.) Contrast Goku in column 1 – he’s coming up off of the stairs and has sets of nearly perpendicular lines behind him. His eyes reflect panic. This juxtaposition is no accident.
In column 2, Note also that Roshi is chilling here smokin’. Not only does that show that he’s been up there long enough to pack a bowl, he’s showing the reader and his students that running up a mountain ain’t even a big deal to him.
Column three now puts us at eye level with Goku and Roshi. Roshi is looking up at nothing in particular. He’s not staring at Goku. His arms point inward toward his body also. He’s talking to Goku, but he’s not really talking to him. It shows us the depth of Roshi’s reminiscing better than having him just look straight at Goku. As for Goku, he’s floored — so shocked he dropped the milk crate. Unlike Roshi, whose arms point inward, Goku’s like an asterisk. Why would Goku be so surprised? He knew from the very beginning that Roshi was Gohan’s master. Maybe he respected Gohan so much that it must have never crossed his mind that his Grandpa ever did something so silly as deliver milk. Notice how he’s also leaning back ever so slightly.
And now column four – Goku is beaming! It’s easy to jump through this panel without really focusing on it because it’s actually a pretty small part of the entire page.
Nonetheless, the fact that we get a whole panel of Goku looking happy as a clam instead of having this be part of a panel he shares with someone else or having him smile but in a “oh, that’s neat!” sort of way is something Toriyama did on purpose. Goku just learned of a point of commonality between himself and Gohan. If it makes him this thrilled, he must really have looked up to Gohan and now sorely misses him. This might not even be something Goku can articulate to himself, much less say out loud, and throwing in a flashback would shift the story’s focus, so instead Goku’s expression says it all.
Really? Goku misses his grandpa that much? It’s fine to interpret the expression as coming out of that, but how can anyone really be sure that was Toriyama’s intention? Fortunately, we don’t have to speculate, as proof is provided (78 chapters later.)
Goku sees Gohan alive again (recall that the last time Goku saw him, he was dead from being crushed. Horrifying!)
Interestingly, you can see in the page above that Goku’s pupils aren’t solid black. That indicates that they’re reflecting more light (ie, they’re wet from tears.) That further distinguishes Goku’s crying here from similar panels in which he had a giant teardop hanging out of the corner of his eye in a humorous “play crying” manner.
vs. 
vs. 
On the next page Goku sobs while hugging Gohan – not only do we see it, Gohan, Bulma and Yamcha discuss the fact that Goku is crying. The purpose of having them do so (why tell when you’re already showing?) is because we’ve been shown characters sort of “play crying” or “play sweating” throughout the series as a way to humorously exaggerate their distress so Toriyama had to have several characters actually confirm for us what is going on to make sure we understood the scene correctly.
From viz copy:
Goku: Waah! Grampa-!!
Gohan: Silly boy, there’s no need to cry.
Bulma: Oh dear, Goku’s crying.
Yamcha: No surprise, strong as he is, Goku is still a kid.
Goku: Sniff
In this panel Goku is asking if Gohan is going to come live with him again. (oh my god that’s so sad.)
(lol, kids love to do this.)
Goku: Hey! Hey!! I’ve got something neat to show you, grampa!!
Goku shows Gohan that he’s still got the four star ball. Gohan’s response is something like “oh, that old thing?” If Gohan didn’t consider the dragonball to be particularly special, then the only reason that Goku treats it as if it were special is his love for Gohan.
Gohan says he cannot stay with Goku. Goku demands to know why.
And of course, we see evidence that this was a planned component of Goku’s character right from the very beginning:
“Hey! Let go of grandpa! That was his last possession! Even girls aren’t allowed to touch it!”
From the beginning, Toriyama knew that the fact that Goku misses Gohan would inform Goku’s behavior and emotions. Since Toriyama famously didn’t plan ahead, at the time he drew that panel of Goku beaming at hearing that Gohan once delivered milk too, he didn’t even know if he would ever explicitly spell out the way Goku felt, but it was key to informing the manner in which he depicted Goku’s facial expressions. Toriyama drawing Goku like this in Chapter 30 was not done to specifically foreshadow Goku’s fight with Gohan at Urani Baba’s arena because Toriyama had no idea what he was going to do after the tournament arc at the time, but by knowing his characters’ inner lives, he plants the seeds of that story and gives the illusion that it might have been planned – and since everything is natural to the flow of the story, you don’t get any forced foreshadowing that looks awkward if it ends up being for an aborted arc that never happens (unlike some works I could mention.) By keeping everything unified like this, he is better able to operate by the seat-of-his-pants storytelling method he seems to prefer.
Here’s the next set of images. I don’t have much to say about this part since a lot of what I would have said has already been covered. I do want to point out that when Krillin arrives it sort of disrupts the magical moment that Roshi was having since he no longer has that sort of one-with-nature placement in the composition – notice how his staff now sets him apart from the rock. Also, Krillin’s eyes are hilarious.
Visual Storytelling Through Body Language
First off, honorable mention to monk guy who is so much a part of the scenery that he’s visually attached to the temple in every shot we see of him except the overhead one.
Monk: My, my, thank you so very much.
Goku: Hiya!
Roshi: Hey!
Roshi: It’s not “Hiya”! It’s “Good Morning”!
Goku: Oww~~…
Goku: G-good morning.
Monk: Ho-ho-ho…
Monk: Training, venerable Muten-Roshi? It has been a long time…
This sequence is a fun way to show that Goku is in a sort of “natural state of man” in that he doesn’t realize he’s breaking social mores. Interestingly he already broke one earlier in the chapter – after he knocks out Lunch, Roshi remarks that he’s surprised Goku would hit a girl. We’re invited to laugh at Goku for getting things wrong (hence the slapstick here), but we’re also invited to sympathize with Goku too, since this is his story. Why shouldn’t Goku greet people as he pleases?
As for Roshi, we can clearly see that it matters to him whether or not Goku is polite to random strangers. At first that might seem surprising for someone who is such a brazen pervert, but when you consider the importance Roshi places on humility, it makes sense. Goku’s crime was not committing a social faux pas as much as it was behaving in a way that could be seen as arrogant – if someone WERE aware of the polite way to greet someone but purposefully chose not to use it, that would be rather arrogant indeed. Roshi does not want to be known for training students who think they’re God’s gift to martial arts. Not only would it make him seem arrogant, it would attract arrogant people to his school (too late…)
You can also see here that Roshi’s hands as he grips his staff are really cartoony – we’re not meant to take him seriously. He’s annoyed but he’s not actually furious. Likewise, Goku’s goofy face when he’s hit shows us that he wasn’t seriously injured. Also the monk laughs so clearly nothing really uncomfortable has happened. (Have you ever been stuck near a parent who was super angry with their kid? Awkward.)
Also look at Krillin. It’s not that he’s a sadist – he’s not this happy when Goku is suffering for some general reason. He’s clearly pleased because he thinks that Roshi’s approval is a zero-sum game. If Goku made a mistake, Krillin’s standing with Roshi will increase, or so he thinks. Christ, what an asshole.
Roshi: Yes, yes indeed, it has been a while, hasn’t it?
Monk: You look hale and healthy as always. And how goes these two lads’ training?
Roshi: Well, they only just started…but I already feel both have quite some potential.
Krillin: He said we have some potential!
Goku: Heh heh heh! All right!
Roshi: As long as they continue training obediently, they should be able to enter the tournament eight months from now.
Monk: Ho! The Tenkaichi Budokai, eh?
When Roshi says “they only just started…” he looks directly at the boys. The monk isn’t even in this shot, so in a way he’s speaking directly to them, reminding them that they are just beginners but that they should stick with it.
Notably, when the boys are showing how happy they are just to get this small compliment, he doesn’t even face them, as if he hasn’t even said anything nice at all. And he continues to have his back to them when he actually indicates his real opinion (that in a few months they might among the top 10 best fighters in the world). It’s not something he could tell them directly. He didn’t have to disclose this piece of information to the monk – both for in-story and out-of-story reasons. Toriyama could have had Roshi tell the boys “hey by the way I’m planning to enter you in a tournament you have no chance of winning, so…” or he could have kept mum and let it be a surprise. Since Roshi is a hermit when not training and we never see this monk guy again, Roshi’s goal is not to impress the monk. Roshi discussed the tournament within earshot of the boys to give the impression that their being to enter is not even a big deal, just as he was skipping around earlier to make the milk delivery seem like a trifle.
Look at Krillin here. I think this is the first time we see him genuinely happy. And he doesn’t mind grabbing Goku’s hands to share his joy! What about just a few panels ago when he was sneering at Goku? Doesn’t he hate Goku? Nope. Krillin doesn’t hate Goku. Krillin wants to be valued. The way he sees it, if nobody is seeing his value, then there’s two explanations: he’s not actually a person of value, or something is getting in the way. Krillin cannot accept that he’s worthless, so it must have been Goku getting in the way. If Roshi can see his worth, then there’s no problem. It makes you think, jeez, how did they raise him at Orin Temple? Wonder no longer – we get a peek several chapters later.
Remember when I said the first time we actually see Krillin genuinely happy right after Roshi says he might have some potential? Look at what everyone was telling him before he arrived on Roshi’s island. This bit of characterization in the hands of a lesser storyteller would result in us seeing tons of inner monologues in which Krillin narrates in real time to the audience the ways he’s grappling with his inner demons. But this story is not about how Krillin learned to like himself! This is Dragonball, a story about how the only moral good in this life is punching mans. I think we can all agree though, it really is as RuPaul says: if you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you going to love somebody else a killer cyborg?
And Goku is happy. Yay! Incidentally,
Goku and Krillin are insanely cute BFFs.
Showing a character’s inner demons without using an inner monologue
Krillin: Th- the “Strongest Under the Heavers”…?!
Goku: Huh? What’s that?
Krillin: They gather martial arts masters from all over the world and decide who’s the “Strongest Under the Heavens”! It’s an awesome tournament!
Goku: Wow! “Strongest under the heavens,” huh?
Krillin: Y-you think we’ll be good enough to enter?
Roshi: If you train without shirking.
Monk: How exciting!
Notice that when we first see Roshi in this sequence we’re in a zoomed out overhead shot, like we’re observing the scene from far away. Roshi is only half-turned towards the boys. The zoomed out look gives that panel a sort of dreamy detached feeling.
Roshi: However, your goal is NOT to aim for the title. Life just isn’t that easy. I simply feel that if you have a goal such as entering a great tournament, you will strive that much harder in your training.
The next thing we see is an intense close-up, where Roshi basically tells them “Don’t get too excited, you WILL lose.” We’re taken crashing down back into reality. Roshi has a shine on his glasses here, further hardening his look. Any obstruction in front of a character’s eyes forms a barrier between them and the audience. Since Roshi’s sunglasses are functionally his eyes, the glare takes on that function here.
Krillin: Yeah, yeah…!! Just to be able to enter…!!
Goku: There’s gonna be lots of strong guys going, right?!
Roshi: That milk is getting warm boys, so…
Monk: Good luck!
Notice here as the boys get excited, Roshi once again turns his his face away from them and dismisses their excitement (he’s facing the monk here.) Every part of his body language is communicating to them “this is no big deal.”
I want to point out here that Goku is looking directly at Krillin. His entire reason for being excited rests on what Krillin has told him and what he’s observing in Krillin’s actions – Goku’s energy is feeding off of that of Krillin. If Krillin’s response had been more muted, Goku’s would be similarly muted. Goku is excited because he’ll get to fight some strong guys AND because Krillin is excited. I’m reminded of seeing my brother taking his dog out saying “You wanna go for a walk? You wanna go for a walk?! Yeah girl? You wanna go for a walk?!?!?!” and working the dog up into a huge frenzy.
Look at Krillin. He has a different look of excitement than Goku. He looks like he’s in the throes of religious ecstasy. He’s not looking at Goku at all, his eyes are looking up, like he’s so excited that they’re rolling back into his head. If Toriyama was just approaching the characters’ expressions on a panel by panel basis, he would say “well, they’re happy and exited here, so both of them have happy and excited faces.” The differences show that he was informed by the characters’ backgrounds and motives. So why does Krillin look like he just found Jesus?
There’s an interesting divergence between the manga and anime when Krillin first arrives on Roshi’s island. Roshi sends the boys out to fetch him a hot woman. Krillin attempts to jump on the Kinto-Un/Flying Nimbus and falls through because he has an impure heart. Roshi demands to know what’s up. In the anime, Krillin reveals that he actually has a massive porn stash – his travel bag actually had nothing but porn in it. It’s implied he has an impure heart because he had a secret stash of porn.
In the comic…
Roshi questions Krillin’s motive for coming to be trained. Krillin blurts out it’s “to be popular with girls.” That’s not a small difference! Krillin’s chief motive is to earn the admiration of others. What better place to do that than at a highly visible event like the Tenkaichi Budokai? Krillin is ecstatic because in this moment he imagines that the Tenkaichi Budokai will make his dream of earning the admiration of others come true. Goku doesn’t care if anyone knows he’s strong – he just wants to fight. Krillin seeks happiness from others. Goku seeks happiness from within. All characterization revealed not through dialog or narration but through visual storytelling.
Aurain: “Beating the shit out of someone to be popular with the opposite sex is way more pure than beating the shit out of someone because you really like beating the shit out of people. I call bullshit.”
Lumberjack Bonanza: “Well, depends on your definition of “pure”. Goku wants to beat people up for the sake of it, Krillin has ulterior motives.”
Aurain, if we’re talking real world logic (pure of heart = unselfish, compassionate) I would agree. Fact is, Dragonball world operates on a different set of moral imperatives.
It’s a recurring theme in Dragonball that the universe will fuck up all your carefully laid plans just because it can. Goku wins because he does not act, he reacts. Goku’s plan is…空 emptiness. (That’s the “ku” in “Goku”. Deep, yo.) Hey, and you know that one time when Goku had an agenda that wasn’t purely reactive? He got killed by a giant green bug man.
Bad Seafood: “Truly, wasting fools is its own reward.”
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