Usagi Yojimbo DojoBoard

Before Sandland......before Neko Majin Z.......Before Dragon Ball.....

There was Dr. Slump.

Dr. Slump is one of the greatest gag manga ever created in the manga art form, utterly hilarious and brilliantly drawn, showing the universally hailed talent for storytelling that the author would come to be known for.

OK, a little back story. Dr. Slump is the creation of Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball. Toriyama-san had already been in the manga business since the late 70s with his obscure gag manga Wonder Island. However, when Dr. Slump premiered in Shonen Jump magazine in 1980, it was a MONSTROUS hit. It broke the record for sales, and also broke the record for amount of time between manga and anime adaptation-The anime was made only five weeks after the manga premiered. The comic was a smash, and Toriyama became a star.

Now, for the story. This particular manga is about the trials and tribulations of Dr. Norimaki and his robot daughter, Arale. Dr. Norimaki is hack when it comes to inventions, so when he creates Arale, she is immediately flawed, needing glasses. The stories, like most gag manga, are formulaic. They usually revolve around Arale's confusion with the world, and learning about how to go about every day life.

The setting of the story is almost as important as the story itself. It takes place in Penguin Village, a strange, surrealist, and twisted town filled with all kinds of weird characters, including talking animals, giant robots, superhero wannabes, ghosts, and all kinds of legendary critters.

This was Toriyama-san's biggest hit yet......until Dragon Ball, that is, which would very quickly overshadow Dr. Slump. Though it didn't disappear altogether, as both Arale and Dr. Norimaki (as well as penguin village) would star in a Dragon Ball story arc.

This manga is now available through Viz media's Shonen Jump label. If you get a chance to read it, do so........

......Just remember to have some wires and strings to stitch up your sides when you quit laughing.

I was a big fan of Dr Slump, having bought all the manga collections as they appeared. When I was doing work for Viz, I suggested they translate these, but at that time they could not because of some small amounts of nudity and a lot of poop jokes. I'm glad Viz decided to make these available now.

The first stories were terrific, but the latter ones just revolved around races that dragged on much to long. The same thing happened with Dragon Ball, with the later stories revolving around martial arts tournaments.

Toriyama also has some wonderful art books, well worth getting if you are a fan. There were also a bunch of plastic model kits featuring Arale and the gang. These were also very well done. Like all successful Japanese anime, there were a lot of merchandising. The favorites in my collection are an Arale disguise kit and the Arale furikake that you sprinkle over rice.

We are very lucky for manga in France, Toriyama is edited for a long time and we have an interesting book :

"Hettapi manga kenkyujo" the french title is l'apprenti mangaka (mangaka apprentice) : that's a manga where he explains how to write a manga and what are common mistakes... that's very funny as usual !

I think my childhood and pretty much all my generation would have been very different if we hadn't had our daily dose of Dr. Slump and Dragonball on TV.

About 2 years ago, a remake or the Dr. Slump series was aired here. Arale had brown hair instead of purple and the art style was closer to the looks of Dragonball GT (blegh!) than Toriyama's original artstyle. And the plots were much lamer than the originals as well. A shame, because the original series (which are still aired from time to time) are brilliant.