Japan’s Toei Animation announced on Friday that a unit of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) will build the world’s first theme park based on the immensely popular Dragon Ball franchise.
The creator of Dragon Ball, Akira Toriyama, died on March 1 at the age of 68.
The Dragon Ball theme park will be constructed near the Saudi capital of Riyadh by Qiddiya Investment, a unit of the PIF. The park will be part of a tourism megaproject that began construction in 2019. The project is slated to include at least a dozen major attractions, including a water park, a Six Flags amusement park, and a sports and gaming district. The site for the megaproject is more than double the size of Disney World in Florida.
Qiddiya said the Dragon Ball theme park will include 30 rides and 5 major attractions based on famous locations from the long-running comic book and animated series, including a massive roller coaster based on the dragon who gives the series its name.
The park will be divided into seven zones matching the seven mystical spheres that must be brought together to summon the dragon. There will be a large number of food stalls and restaurants to honor the prodigious appetite of the series protagonist, Goku.
“On a scale never imagined before, the park’s interactive and explorable themed experiences will allow you to live the adventures at the heart of the action, experiencing the journey from the first Dragon Ball series to the latest Dragon Ball Super,” Qiddya boasted.
That would be quite a scale as Dragon Ball has been running since 1984. The story was originally a lighthearted fantasy romp steeped in Asian mythology, following the adventures of a boy with a monkey tail named Goku and his growing band of mismatched friends as they sought to gather the fabled Dragon Balls and summon the dragon so he could grant their wishes.
In 1989, Toriyama retooled the series into a superhero show, renaming it Dragon Ball Z. In this incarnation, the now-grown Goku learned that he was among the last survivors of a super-powered alien race, similar to Superman. The level of power and destruction portrayed on the show increased dramatically and its popularity exploded, unleashing a tidal wave of TV episodes, animated films, and merchandise.
Crucially, even this bigger, more violent, and more “serious” version of Dragon Ball retained Toriyama’s signature sense of goofball humor, and many of the characters from the wackier and more childish original series came along for the ride. The number of characters and plotlines in the Dragon Ball universe grew exponentially, proving plenty of fodder for theme park attractions.
Dragon Ball Z wrapped up after some 200 episodes with a seemingly definitive series finale but, like its hero Goku, it did not stay down for long. A sequel series called Dragon Ball GT was created with minimal involvement from Toriyama and was greeted with disdain by many fans, to the point where many in the fandom have collectively decided it never happened.
A far more successful sequel called Dragon Ball Super, referenced in the theme park announcement, debuted in 2015. Dragon Ball Super is still in progress, producing both printed comic books (or “manga”) and animated films. Toriyama was working on more material for both Super and another planned spinoff series, Dragon Ball Daima, at the time of his death. The producers of the series recently confirmed that it will continue after Toriyama’s passing, using some notes he left behind.
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