Found out Goku's hair color was a printer mistake the whole time

I was reading this old interview with Toriyama's editor from back in the 80s. Apparently they had this whole thing where black hair for manga characters was supposed to save ink. But when they did the first color spread for Dragon Ball, the printer used yellow for the highlights and it came out looking blonde. Toriyama just ran with it because he thought it looked cool. Nobody ever corrected it. I found this on some deep dive manga history blog last night. Has anyone else run into weird origin facts like that from the early days of anime production?

3 comments

3 Comments

casey_wood218d ago

Man I remember running into the same thing a few years back and it blew my mind. Kinda wild how something like a printer error just became the look of one of the most famous characters ever.

taylor.sean18d ago

@casey_wood2 Was that the Pac-Man joystick or the Sonic blues?

phoenixb3418d ago

Well, I'll be honest, I always assumed the blonde hair was just a creative choice from the start. Never crossed my mind it could be a printing mistake, but that actually makes a lot of sense given how many production shortcuts they took back then. Kind of impressive that something so random became such an iconic part of the character.