Despite Dragon Ball is not particularly solid on narrative levels, with a story that tends to cyclically propose the same context, Akira Toriyama is actually a more skilled writer than it might seem. The sensei, in fact, paid particular attention to the nuances of the Japanese in the drafting of his work.
Although sensei is having a hard time delivering the baton to Toyotaro today, preventing his successor from publishing scenes of romance between the gods of destruction and angels, in the same way the moment in which the Dragon Ball epic will not be inexorably approaching more just a creature of Akira Toriyama.
Yet, with the different adaptations and television productions of the franchise, some of the nuances that made the whole imagination fascinating were lost. Some elements, in fact, are part of Japanese culture and language, a reason that allowed only the readers of the Rising Sun to notice some particularly intriguing details. One of them, about Vegeta’s techniques, was recently unveiled and clarified by the writer Derek Padula.
The enthusiast, therefore, has noticed how the iconic attacks of the Prince of Saiyans are written in katakana, a type of writing mostly dedicated to foreign loans. The famous “Final Flash” is written in a very different way than the attacks of Goku, elaborated instead in hiragana and kanji. This choice apparently devoid of a hidden meaning, instead hides Toriyama’s will strongly highlight the alien matrix of Vegeta in such a way as to be more complicated and peculiar in the eyes of its readers. Goku’s techniques, on the other hand, sound more familiar, remarking heavily on the now mainly terrestrial nature of the protagonist.
And you, instead, what do you think of this curiosity? Let us know with a comment below.
Vegeta’s techniques are written in katakana, a Japanese script for foreign loanwords. For example, Fainaru Furasshu (フ ァ イ ナ ル フ ラ ッ シ ュ, “Final Flash”). This is the opposite of Gokū’s techniques, which are written in hiragana and kanji, for native words. #DragonBallCultureDaily pic.twitter.com/CCUqPz47cn
– Derek Padula (@DerekPadula) June 23, 2020
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