A guide to Dragon Ball spinoff manga

Toriyama's own side work comes first. Neko Majin, his turn-of-the-century gag manga about a cat creature who knows the Dragon Ball cast, is the purest spinoff, Toriyama parodying himself. His Jaco volume and the Dragon Ball Minus chapter belong to the same family, and his one-shot sensibility runs through all of it. These are the spinoffs with permanent shelf status, because the author's hand is the content.

The fan-to-official pipeline is the modern story. Dragon Garow Lee built a following on a doujin premise, a fan reincarnated as Yamcha, the series' most mocked character, using his knowledge of the story to survive it, and Shueisha published it officially as That Time I Got Reincarnated as Yamcha (2016 to 2017), collected in one volume in both Japanese and English. It is short, funny, and genuinely knowledgeable, and its single volume is the easiest spinoff recommendation the Library makes.

Dragon Ball SD, by Naho Ooishi, retells the manga in chibi gag form in Saikyo Jump and many collected volumes, aimed at young readers; Ooishi also drew Episode of Bardock, the what-if in which Bardock survives, lands in the past, and becomes the first Super Saiyan of legend, a story the games have since absorbed. The Super Dragon Ball Heroes manga lines extend the arcade game's universe and are covered with Heroes itself.

Buying guidance is forgiving here: spinoff volumes are cheap, mostly in print or plentiful used, and complete in a handful of volumes at most. Their value to a shelf is tonal range, proof that Dragon Ball contains multitudes, and as gifts for fans who think they have read everything. They are read first and collected second, and priced accordingly.