Hey Wisecrack, Jared here and today we're talking about everyone's favorite anime with
an uncomfortable amount of underage crotch-fondling...
Akira Toriyama's enduring and much-beloved, Dragon Ball.
While Dragon Ball may appear to be little more than a run-of-the-mill adventure show
for kids, the series and its spinoffs actually have roots in some pretty hefty philosophical
material.
Many fans are aware that, in creating the earliest episodes of Dragon Ball, Toriyama
drew inspiration from a five-hundred-year-old Chinese classic, Journey to the West.
The superficial similarities are easy to spot – both feature a group of four adventurers
in search of powerful magical objects, among them a monkey-like creature with a magic staff,
a horny piggish-looking fellow, et cetera.
Often overlooked, however, is the fact that Dragon Ball, much like Journey to the West,
can be read as an explicitly Buddhist allegory.
Indeed, – a show that many of us watched in our underwear on Saturday mornings while
wolfing down Cookie Crisp – offers a surprising take on fundamental elements of Buddhist doctrine.
Welcome to this Wisecrack Edition on the Philosophy of Dragon Ball.
(Note for the die-hard fans keeping score at home: since a full discussion of the extended
Dragon Ball universe would take quite a while, today we’ll focus mainly on those episodes
of the original anime most heavily influenced by Journey to the West - the thirteen episodes
comprising the Emperor Pilaf saga.)
But first, a quick refresher.
Dragon Ball follows Goku, a young boy with a monkey tail and superhuman strength, and
Bulma, a girl who plans to collect the Dragon Balls in order to wish for a new boyfriend.
Along the way, they team up with Oolong, a shape-shifting pig, and Yamcha, a desert-dwelling
bandit with a crippling fear of women.
They are in a race against time to collect all seven Dragon Balls before the evil Emperor
Pilaf can snag them for himself.
At the last moment, when Pilaf has gathered all of the Dragon Balls and is about to wish
for world domination, Oolong saves the day by sabotaging his wish: "I want to have the
world-" "-the world's most comfortable pair of ultra soft UNDERWEAR!!!"
Remember that face, boys and girls.
This moment will be an important part of our discussion later on.
REMEMBER IT.
Journey to the West follows Tripitika, a Buddhist monk, and his three disciples, Monkey, Pigsy,
and Sandy, on their quest to locate and bring back sacred Buddhist scrolls to the Chinese
court.
When the pilgrims arrive at the Buddha's paradise, the scrolls they receive turn out to be completely
blank.
While Journey to the West involves characters searching for a magical object, there’s
more to it than your basic (annoying) fetch quest.
The novel is often read as a Buddhist allegory, one concerned with spiritual enlightenment.
The characters move from a place of ignorance to one of insight as they get closer to their
destination.
Surprisingly enough, the same applies to Dragon Ball.
Both Dragon Ball and Journey to the West have their philosophical grounding in 'Mahayana'
Buddhism.
To vastly oversimplify, the Mahayana approach to Buddhism is distinguished from the earlier
'Theravada' school by its emphasis on the collective enlightenment of all sentient beings
in the universe, rather than that of any one individual.
Accordingly, Dragon Ball puts a premium on acts of 'compassion,' and on the growth of
the group as a whole.
When the heroes of Dragon Ball put others first, they advance in their quest.
When they act selfishly and refuse to see things from others' points of view, their
progress is delayed.
In the second episode, Goku and Bulma encounter a beached Turtle who explains that he
is lost.
While Goku wants to put their journey on hold in order to help the turtle, Bulma wants to
get right back to her quest to find the Dragon Balls.
However, Goku's act of compassion unexpectedly turns out to be the most direct route to the
next Dragon Ball.
Enter Master Roshi, hermit and pervert extraordinaire.
Roshi is grateful to Goku for returning the turtle to the sea, and gives Goku his iconic
Flying Nimbus cloud as a reward.
He also happens to own a Dragon Ball, which he is willing to give to Bulma in exchange
for...well.
It's a weird show, guys.
The ethical implications of trading peep shows for magical jewelry aside, the fact remains
that Bulma and Goku find the Dragon Ball because Goku is willing to delay his own gratification
in order to help out a fellow being in need.
Now that I think about it, as the series goes on, Goku spends a lot of time dragging around
his useless childhood friends while doing all the work – lookin’ at you, Krillin.
If that ain’t compassion, I’m not sure what is.
This correlation between ethical behavior and speed of progress is lifted straight from
Journey to the West, in which a lack of compassion on the part of the pilgrims causes delays
that can only be resolved through compassion and understanding.
Monkey often gets in fights with monsters, only to realize that those monsters were supposed
to help him.
Both Pigsy and Sandy start out as foes, only to eventually become allies.
This goes part of the way toward explaining early Dragon Ball’s unexpected attitude
toward violence.
For a franchise that would eventually go on to feature scenes such as this.
This.
And this.
Dragon Ball, in its earliest episodes, has a surprising lack of violence.
Like Journey to the West, the show is preoccupied with a particular Buddhist conception of nonviolence.
Violence is not universally wrong so much as it is cumbersome – to some degree, it
does get in the way of insight.
Conversely, compassion facilitates spiritual progress.
This understanding of 'violence as roadblock' is most clearly displayed with the Ox King.
When the group first meets the Ox King, Goku tries to beat him up in order to clear the
pathway up Fire Mountain and take his Dragon Ball.
The enormous man barely feels Goku's attacks.
For the duration of this fight, everyone involved is stuck in an unproductive, pointless cycle
that gets the pilgrims nowhere.
It is only when Goku and the Ox King begin to understand each other's needs through conversation
that the team gets any closer to their goal.
Compassion and understanding, rather than violence, lead to the trade that eventually
nets the team another Dragon Ball.
Which is all well and good when you're dealing with a scary but ultimately harmless threat
like the Ox King.
But how should our heroes approach a threat that can't be reasoned with?
According to writer Paul R. Fleischman, the Buddhist approach to nonviolence makes room
for this kind of scenario: "permitting someone else to perpetrate harm without consequences
is not nonviolence".
Defending innocent lives with violent means is hardly ideal, but it is preferable to rigid
pacifism.
In the last few episodes of the Emperor Pilaf saga, the team is confronted with an existential
threats when Goku turns into a giant ape at the sight of the full moon and threatens to
eat Bulma.
So Yamcha, Puar, and Oolong cut off Goku's tail to save Bulma and stop Goku from doing
something he would later regret.
Their limited use of violence prevents worse violence down the road.
This way, at least, nobody dies.
This more nuanced understanding of violence would pop up in Toriyama's later work as well.
Listen to Goku's description of himself in response to Frieza's question, "What are you?"
Unlike the various villains that maim and murder throughout the series, Goku commits
violent acts to preserve peace.
Perhaps most interesting is how Dragon Ball handles the Buddhist concept of 'emptiness,'
the idea that things in themselves have no inherent or fixed essence.
Early on, Toriyama asks us to consider this concept in relation to the Dragon Balls: "These
gems can be used for great things.
And not so great."
From the start, the series points out that the Dragon Balls are neither inherently good,
bad, or anything in between – they are simply a store of potential energy used to fulfil
wishes.
Even so, the heroes revere them as a life-changing miracle.
Their disposition towards the Dragon Balls mirrors the pilgrims' attitude toward the
sacred scrolls in Journey to the West.
When the Buddha's assistants actually give them scrolls that are BLANK, they are more
than a little pissed off.
But they shouldn't be.
Scholar Andrew Hui argues that "[t]he blankness of the scrolls is a material manifestation
of the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, a sign pointing to the […] nature of ultimate reality"
(Hui 3).
The Buddha himself explains to the pilgrims that "As a matter of fact, it is such blank
scrolls as these that are the true scriptures" (Cheng-en, Wu).
By undercutting their expectations, the Buddha provides the pilgrims with a profound lesson
about the nature of reality, namely that it's empty of any inherent essence.
In this way, the prank actually advances their spiritual progress.
A similar bait-and-switch occurs in Dragon Ball.
Remember Oolong's panty wish?
By ruining Pilaf's wish, Oolong undercuts the heroes' expectations, turning something
as momentous as the summoning of the Eternal Dragon into a joke.
While the Dragon Balls have provided Oolong with a pair of panties, they haven't changed
anyone's life in any meaningful way.
Which is not to say the journey was for nothing.
Far from it.
In both the show and the novel, the revelation of the quest's inherent emptiness serves as
the catalyst for growth beyond what the characters expected.
In the final chapters of Journey to the West, the pilgrims are made into high ranking members
of the Buddha's paradise, while the heroes of Dragon Ball gain insight into the true
scope of their various problems, which turn out to be not as terrible or permanent as
they'd thought.
Bulma and Yamcha had planned to use the Dragon Balls to find a boyfriend and cure social
anxiety, respectively.
But After Oolong pulls his stunt, they realize the solution to their mutual problem has been
in front of them the whole time.
They agree to get together on the spot.
Bulma lets go of her need for perfection, and Yamcha lets go of his fear.
Even Oolong, who we first meet kidnapping young girls to staff his would-be harem, has
learned to find happiness in thinking about others besides himself.
When asked whether he will accompany Yamcha and Bulma to the city, he says: "Oh well,
I guess I'll go.
You guys need me."
So – turtles, flashing, panties, and more.
All in all, a pretty weird way of getting a religious message across.
But, that's kind of the point.
Mahayana Buddhism, with its emphasis on teaching and collective enlightenment, is big into
the concept of 'skillful means,' or the guiding of sentient beings toward enlightenment according
to their current abilities – in other words, meeting people where they're at.
One way to meet people where they're at is to dispense with dry lecturing and tell them
a damn good story, and that's exactly what Dragon Ball and Journey to the West do.
With engaging plotlines, creative characters, and writing that is alternately tense and
hilarious, Dragon Ball successfully weaves Buddhist morals into a story that people love
to come back to again
and again.