Dragon Ball
There are many characters is DB. The main character is Son Goku. His two sons are Son Gohan (the one next to Goku) and Son Goten, the one that looks like a small Goku. Vegeta is the short evil one with a receding hairline. Vegeta has one son, Trunks. There are two "versions" of him. One has long bangs and a pony tail. He fights with a sword and was from the future. The other Trunks is small, playful, and has short hair split down the side. Both Trunks have purple hair. Kiliyn is Goku's childhood friend and is the short one in the corner with the mushroom head. Piccilo is the big green alien. He's always there to save Gohan at the last minute. Those are the major characters, that I know of, in the Dragon Ball /Z episodes and comics.
What has happened to Dragon Ball:
Dragon Ball is an Action Comedy by Akira Toriyama, based on old chinese folk tale known as, The Journey West.
Dragon Ball started out as a gag manga, with adventure elements. But, by volume 14, Toriyama switched focus and concentrated on
the martial arts aspects. According to various sources, Toriyama was beginning to burn out on Dragon Ball around the Freeza
storyline. However, his editor pressured him to keep going. Finally, Toriyama took Dragon Ball as far as he wanted, and wrapped it
up at the end of volume 42, in the summer of 1995.
Dragon Ball Z was a name change for the TV series, that reflected the change in focus mentioned above. But, the manga has always been named Dragon Ball.
Because Dragon Ball has been a hugely successful marketing vehicle (promoting products as diverse as clocks, posters, curry rice, eye drops, and children's study desks), many promotional agencies demanded that a replacement TV series fill the gap left behind by Dragon Ball. Thus was created Dragon Ball: GT. Toriyama was retained as artistic consultant, but no longer had direct input to the storyline and there is no manga to accompany the TV anime.
Apparently, DBGT was intended to end around April, 1997. However, the latest DBGT video game for the Sony Play Station had to
be released before the end of the show, and the game missed its first deadline. So, the DBGT TV series was extended for a few more
episodes, until the new game could be released.
You can expect that DBGT will end sometime between July and September.
by Curtis Hoffmann