Son Goku ( , Son Gokū?, addressed only as Goku in most English adaptations) is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the Dragon Ball universe created by Akira Toriyama. He first appears in the first chapter Bulma and Son Goku (, Buruma to Son Gokū?) first published in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine on December 3, 1984. He is loosely based on Sun Wukong, a central character in Journey to the West, however, Toriyama changed some of his characteristics to be more original.

Goku is introduced as an odd, monkey-tailed boy who practices martial arts and possesses superhuman strength. As the story unfolds, he is actually revealed to be from a fictional race of extraterrestrials called Saiyans, said to be the strongest warriors within the fictional universe. Goku starred in most of the films, specials and video games from the Dragon Ball series.

Outside of the series, Goku also had cameo appearances in Toriyama's self-parody series Neko Majin Z. He also been the subject of parodies, and has also appeared in various special events and in American pop culture. Toriyama's Goku finds his origins in one of Toriyama's earlier characters named Tanton, a fictional protagonist who appears in a one-shot series called Dragon Boy.

In this story, Tanton's odd physical characteristic was a pair of wings. When Toriyama decided to create Dragon Ball, he used author Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West as inspiration for his own series. The name Toriyama adopted for the character is the Japanese romanization of (Sun Wukong), who is the central character in Journey to the West.

To be creative with the character, Toriyama stated that he designed Goku not as a monkey like the Journey to the West character, but as a human-looking boy with a monkey tail. As his reasoning was, if he were hiding behind something his tail would be visible. Though Goku is treated as a person from another planet, Toriyama initially had the idea to give him the identity of person from Earth, but with the introduction of adding fighters from other planets it was established that Goku is a Saiyan.

In order to advance the story faster, Toriyama made Goku learn to teletransport to allow the characters to move to any planet in just a second.

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