Dragon Ball is a Japanese series of anime, whose original author is Akira Toriyama. This mangaka is also known for being the author of another famous series: Dr. Slump, which is a series that in my opinion is brilliant and unique for its dumb humour. Dragon Ball first appeared as a comic, called "manga" in Japan. This manga was published weekly in Shounen Jump magazine. It is important to keep in mind that this magazine has a weekly circulation of 6-7 million (American magazines like Time or People have 4,3 and 3,4 million each.) It had an enormous success and inmediately it was adapted as a TV series..

Dragon Ball is the first of the three parts which (until now) make up the anime series with the greatest number of fans in Catalonia., one of the most famous anime series in the world and also in his mother country, Japan.
This is the story of a little boy called Son Gokou. This story is based on a chinese legend, the king ape legend. In the beggining, Son Goku lives happily in the mountains, far from the world since his grandfather's death. He is a very naive boy who has a physical peculiarity: he has a tail. And a day, all his life changes: a girl called Bulma arrives, she is searching a thing owned by Gokou: A dragon ball. After discussing a little, Gokou decides to go with Bulma in search of the other dragon balls. There are seven dragon balls, and each one has a certain number of stars in it. When these balls are all together, they have the power to call a mighty dragon, the Dragon Shenron, who can bring into reality any wish of the caller.

As the episodes go on, some new, unearthly techniques and attacks appear. These attacks are based on different kinds of energy balls which explode like bombs. Son Gokou's most famous attack is the Kamehameha. Gokou learned this attack from his master, the great Mutenroshi, best known under the name of Kame Sennin, one of my favourite characters.

And that is how this great story beggins. The story has lots of humoristic situations, as well as action, and we can follow Gokou's life. We can see how his strength and his skills grow and how he overcomes the obstacles he finds during his search for the seven dragon balls. Now, I will not make a summary of the series because it would not occupy only a page, but many.
One of the most interesting quality of the series is that the characters keep growing, and don't have always the same age. This doesn't happen in the Western series and comics as Superman or the Ninja Turtles. The characters grow, die, new characters are born, and there are marriages as well.

I only would like to say that it is worth to see the series and to read the manga, because Dragon Ball is one of theses series which marks a generation, as Heidi, Marco and Mazinger Z marked the last generation.