The China Mail - Creator's death no bar to new 'Dragon Ball' products

Japanese manga artist Akira Toriyama, who died in March, launched "Dragon Ball" in 1984 and it has since become one of the best-selling manga franchises of all time, spawning countless anime series, films and video games.

"Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO" will be released on Friday with a record 182 characters doing battle.

"It's a very important launch for us, we hope it will work," Maurice Fontaine, product manager in France for Bandai Namco, the game's publisher, told AFP.

A new animated series, "Dragon Ball Daima", will also be released to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the franchise.

In a statement last year, the studio behind the series credited Toriyama with dreaming up the title.

He is also named as a writer on the show and the statement quotes him as saying "daima" is an invented word roughly meaning "evil" in English.

Fans of the franchise are nervously waiting to see if the new products can carry on Toriyama's legacy.

- 'Part of our lives' -

"My first contact with the series was video games," Tsutomu Tanaka, a 19-year-old Japanese student, told AFP, stressing the "simplicity" of the story and the characters.

Initially published in 1984 in Japan's Shonen Jump, a magazine beloved by Japanese boys, it told the adventures of a monkey-tailed boy called Son Goku through multiple fantastical universes.

Part comedy, part absurdist adventure, the series fused martial arts action with a story influenced by the classic Chinese tale "Journey to the West".

Over more than 500 chapters, the hero with spiky black hair fights otherworldly enemies in his quest to find seven mystical dragon balls.

"My father's generation loved Dragon Ball, we watched them as a family," said Ayase, a Japanese woman in her thirties, adding that the franchise was "part of our lives".

Translated all over the world, "Dragon Ball" spawned countless anime cartoons, films, video games, trading cards and collectible figurines that made it an immense money-spinner.

Saudi Arabia announced earlier this year it intended to create the world's first theme park inspired by Dragon Ball.

The comics have sold more than 260 million copies worldwide, according to publisher Shueisha.

There have been more than 100 video games since 1986, selling tens of millions of copies, and five animated series.

But while the short-term future of the franchise as a moneyspinner seems assured, the longer term is less clear, according to Tadashi Sudo, journalist and cartoon specialist.

"The commercial machinery is in place," said Sudo, but "the challenge ahead will be to see if the creativity can be maintained without Toriyama".

"If new ideas stop emerging, everything could become repetitive, and it could be difficult to appeal to the new generations," he added.

D.Wang--ThChM