Dragon Ball is Akira Toriyama's Japanese manga and its Toei Animation anime adaptations, which grew into a giant meme source thanks to iconic fights, transformations and lines like "It's Over 9000!".

Where did Dragon Ball come from?

The manga started in Weekly Shonen Jump in late 1984 and ran until May 1995, with Toei's anime premiering on Fuji Television in February 1986.

What does Dragon Ball mean?

In-universe, the Dragon Balls are seven wish-granting orbs the cast hunts across the series; online, "Dragon Ball" is shorthand for the whole Toriyama franchise and its associated anime memes.

How do you use Dragon Ball?

Fans typically pull a Kamehameha, Super Saiyan or "9000" screencap or clip and caption it with a mundane situation, a pattern common across Tumblr blogs and Reddit fan spaces.

Is Dragon Ball still popular?

Yes, momentum stayed strong after Dragon Ball Super launched on Fuji TV on July 5, 2015 as the first new TV series in about 18 years, keeping episode-reaction memes and transformation edits circulating.

Dragon Ball

1984franchise / meme sourceclassic

Published August 19, 2026

Dragon Ball is Akira Toriyama's Japanese manga and anime franchise that started in Weekly Shonen Jump in late 1984 and grew into one of the most quoted, remixed sources of internet meme material, from Kamehameha jokes to endless Vegeta "It's Over 9000!" edits1 2.

dragon ball memes anime manga otaku culture memes japanese internet memes powerscaling memes

Overview

Dragon Ball is a Japanese manga written and drawn by Akira Toriyama, later adapted by Toei Animation into a run of TV shows, films and specials that turned Goku, Vegeta and the Saiyan cast into shorthand for shonen anime itself1. The core setup follows Goku as he trains, fights escalating villains and hunts the seven wish-granting Dragon Balls, a template that gave the internet a bottomless supply of power-up jokes, screaming transformation loops and "training arc" edits2.

Online, the property is less a single meme than a whole meme ecosystem. Fans built dedicated Tumblr single-topic blogs like Dragon Ball Lovers and Fuck Yeah Dragon Ball Z around clips, panels and screencaps2, while YouTube uploads of Kamehameha showdowns, the "It's Over 9000!" scene and other DBZ fight bits pull tens of millions of views each3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Weekly Shonen Jump (print) / YouTube and Tumblr (meme spread)

Creator

Akira Toriyama

Date

1984

The first Dragon Ball chapter ran in Weekly Shonen Jump in late 1984, with the series continuing until May 19952. Toei Animation moved fast on a TV adaptation, launching the original Dragon Ball anime on Fuji Television in February 1986; when it wrapped in 1989, the sequel Dragon Ball Z picked up the story and ran through 19962.

Creator Akira Toriyama stayed close to the franchise across decades, co-writing the 2013 theatrical return Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, announced by Toei on July 10, 2012 and released in Japanese theaters on March 30, 20131. A follow-up film, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection of "F", was announced in July 2014 and premiered at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on April 11, 20154.

How It Spread

The franchise's second life as a meme engine ramped up online in the late 2000s and 2010s. Tumblr became a hub for reaction GIFs, ship art and screencap edits, with tag pages for "dragonball", "dragon ball z" and related handles filling up with fan posts, and dedicated blogs like Fuck Yeah Saiyans and Fuck Yeah DBZ Memes leaning fully into the joke side2. Fan projects such as the Dragonballzine Tumblr, which teased a print zine finalist in October 2013, showed how deep the community-organizing side ran during that era5.

On YouTube, uploads of fight scenes and dub moments crossed into full mainstream reach, with the two most-watched Dragon Ball clips tracked by Know Your Meme sitting at over 69 million and 31 million views as of August 20152. On Reddit, dedicated subreddits like r/dbz kept fan discussion, screenshots and memes churning long after each new arc aired, and Fanpop clubs and MyAnimeList pages did the same on their platforms2.

Momentum stayed high through the mid-2010s thanks to fresh Toei releases. Dragon Ball Super, announced on April 28, 2015 and broadcast on Fuji TV from July 5, 2015, was the first new Dragon Ball TV anime in roughly 18 years and pulled the meme community back to weekly episode reactions, transformation screencaps and fresh "Ultra Instinct" edits6.

How to Use This Meme

Most Dragon Ball memes lean on a handful of visual and audio beats: a Kamehameha charge-up used as a metaphor for effort, a Super Saiyan transformation glow representing sudden power, or Vegeta's scouter reading "It's Over 9000!" repurposed as a hyperbole punchline. Creators typically pair a screencap or short clip with a caption swapping the in-show stakes for something mundane, like grinding through a workout, an exam or a work deadline, and the joke usually lands because the anime's over-the-top delivery is common convention across the fandom.