PLEASE Consider Supporting CBO

Please consider supporting Comic Bits Online because it is a very rare thing in these days of company mouthpiece blogs that are only interested in selling publicity to you. With support CBO can continue its work to bring you real comics news and expand to produce the video content for this site. Money from sales of Black Tower Comics & Books helps so please consider checking out the online store.
Thank You

Terry Hooper-Scharf

Monday 28 August 2017

Dragon Ball Z -Yes, I HAVE Changed My Mind

I have been asked once more for my opinion and I can add no more than I wrote here. It should answer questions and I stick to what I wrote.


 Above: This is so similar to Hong Kong Manhua covers and posters not to mention splash pages that the mind tells you this is Manhua influenced.
__________________
_____________________________________________

You see, I was working after publishing that Dragon Ball Z and Manhua influence and images started flashing up in my mind.  Art I had seen a long time ago but realised it wasn't Chinese.  Something was "off".

So, I looked around on my bookshelves.  Nope.  Searched some of my old web groups but accidentally came across one of the recalled images!

Above: VERY Manhua in style.
_______________________
It was from Dragon Ball Z and so I did a quick search and....well, I came up with a lot of very Manhua art, but altered so that it was more in-keeping with "the Manga style".

Far from being coincidental I think it is very likely.

First time I saw Dragon Ball Z I thought it was Manhua but looking closer you see the Manga influence and, to be honest, a Japanese creator HAS to include those popular Manga traits to get a comic published and sold.  The people who head businesses in Japan are VERY conservative and tend to look down at foreigners and things from outside Japan. 

 
 Above: This could well have been lifted from a Jademan comic. It screams "Manhua!"


_________________________________________________________________

Working in a creative arts media Toriyama would have seen lots of material -also Chinese martial arts films became major outside Hong Kong in the late 1960s/early 1970s -when I went to see Bruce Lee, etc., in kung fu movies. Now, a Japanese businessman visiting, say, London or a European city -even the USA-  would have had to have been blind NOT to see this explosion of kung fu mania. And that leads to the question: "what inspires these movies that make so much money?"  And from that....Manhua.

I have looked at what I can find of Dragon Ball Z and you look at Jademan Kung Fu comics that burst on the scene in the early 1980s and the similarity is rather striking.  If you asked me to give a per centage figure on the likely probability of Manhua influence on Toriyama and this series...75% which is as far as anyone can go without being told "No" by the man himself.

So Derek Padula may well be on to something.

_______________________________________________________________________
Below: Do I need to say more?  Toriyama is famous, I'm told, for being reclusive. I'd really love to know what has to say because only he knows!

No comments:

Post a Comment