Dr. Slump, Vol. 01 (Dr. Slump, #1) (2025)

It’s weird that I’ve never read anything else by Akira Toriyama considering Dragon Ball might be my favourite comic ever. So I picked up the first volume of Dr Slump, the series he did before Dragon Ball, annnnddd… it’s ok but definitely not of the same quality.

Dr Senbei Norimaki creates a realistic robot girl called Arale and the two have adventures. The Doc creates wacky gadgets, they time-travel, slapstick (sometimes strangely bawdy) comedy abounds; it’s readable but nothing inspired.

As a huge Dragon Ball fan, it’s interesting to see the genesis of a lot of that series here. Arale, an innocent young child with super-strength, is clearly a proto-Son Goku, as well as looking like a tiny Bulma; Dr Slump and his inventions (like the Shrink Ray) is part Dr Briefs and part Kame-Sennin; and Penguin Village, with its anthropomorphic animals, is much like Dragon Ball’s fantastical world. I also enjoyed seeing Toriyama’s cute art style again – everyone’s chibi in this series!

But I wasn’t grabbed by the episodic, meandering stories and would’ve preferred a more focused, longer narrative instead. It’s a fine lil’ kiddie manga but not a patch on the brilliance of Dragon Ball so I’ll leave the title here. Some creators are one-hit wonders but sometimes one is all they need, especially when it’s a mega-hit!

Lo que me puedo reír con Arale, el Dr. Slump y sus peripecias en Villa Pingüino no está escrito. Me encantaba el anime cuando era adolescente, igual que las primeras temporadas de Dragon Ball, así que no podía dejar pasar la ocasión de hacerme con los mangas y que mi hija conociera a Arale. ¡Muy fan de esta niña!

So charming and relentlessly funny. I can't wait to keep reading this. It won't be as enjoyable for everyone, but it's right up my alley. Toriyama's art is great. I love the bonus pieces he puts between stories, like cutouts of masks or "spot the difference" drawings.

It's a simple rule I have: if a comic makes me grin ear to ear practically the whole time, laughing out loud at several moments, it's five stars.

Even on the second read-through it cracks a smile a few times. Yeah. A classic.

Sep 22, 2018: I have fond memories of Dr. Slump, as it was the very first manga I’ve ever gotten my hands on. The year was 2001 and it was impossible to buy any manga whatsoever in my hometown. It was hard being a fan back in the day. Then my family and I took a trip to Poland, where Japanese entertainment was already starting to take off, and I saw the single Dr Slump, Vol. 12 (Dr Slump, #12) in a random magazine kiosk. Even though I could not read Polish, my parents, bless their hearts, bought it for me. The next day I located a Dragon Ball, Tom 10: 22-gi Turniej o Tytuł Najlepszego under similar circumstance and snagged it too. The rest is history.

Dr. Slump is ridiculously cute. Each chapter is a separate little skit about the adventures of a scientist and his creation - robot girl called Arale. There is some naughty humour, but in a childish way. The art is old fashioned, with heavy influences of Osamu Tezuka, but very high quality. I love it to bits. I especially enjoy all the cute animal characters and Senbei’s hilarious inventions. It’s obvious that the author had genuine fun working on Dr. Slump. This manga is such a trip down the memory lane.

This was such a funny volume, I loved it. Dragon ball remains one of my favorite mangas ever and this one I wanted to check out for Toriyama sensei and his earlier works and it lived up to the expectation. It's so cute and funny and like seriously you can see the pre dragon ball sensei here and then there are creatures whose design looks familiar and I love it. The character of Arale is so funny and she gets into weird hijinks and I love the supporting cast, they just make it even funnier but my favorite has to be the doctor whose just a mad harmless scientist and he just makes the weirdest inventions be it the magnifier or time travel and the way the cast is expanding its awesome! I can't wait to read more!!

This is probably the best comedy manga I've ever read in my entire life, it's smart, creative, and extremely funny. Usually when someone thinks of Toriyama the first thing that comes to mind is Dragon Ball, I don't understand why this gem is so forgotten in the media today.

This book does not lend itself much to an extensive review as it consists of short few page stories in a format that looks like a traditional long comicstrip, but I can say that the adventures of Dr. Senbei and Arale are extremely funny, this is a highly recommended volume if you want to have a good time!

Very light, playful manga with lots of humor. Goes to the ridiculous side of things at times. It toys with being for kids but lots or reference to more mature things but it is in truth fairly clean for any manga .Just things like how Arale has no private parts and seems to want one but the Dr was unsure what that might look like, just to learn she meant a belly button! Also references to dirty mags, etc. Honestly it is more than likely to make a kid laugh at some of the immaturity of it all, and adults can see the deeper humor. I smiled a lot, chuckled a bit. 3.5-4 stars. Nothing spectacular but still quite enjoyable, especially being an older series.

There are a few naughty things in this but they're fairly harmless. Overall, this was hilarious and ridiculous and makes me re-evaluate Akira Toriyama as an author/illustrator (for those not in the know, Toriyama is mostly known for Dragon Ball, Dragon BallZ and the lead designer on the Super Nintendo game Chrono Trigger). The ploooooot...such as it is...is about Dr. Senbei Norimaki creating a super powered 13 year old robot girl...for reasons? And then does a very poor job of convincing the inhabitants of Penguin Village that she is his daughter/niece/sister? and not a robot...again, for reasons? Wackiness and hijincks ensue. I definitely want to read more of this series, I've not read or seen a great deal of straight-up comedy manga but this certainly wants me want to read more. At least if it's of this quality.

Cute series which caused quite a few laughs. I loved that the whole idea was so well thought out, and some of the situations so unique. I wouldn't recommend this for too young of kids (saw one for 7/8) as some of the dialogue is sorta teen related and kids won't really get it.

I can't remember the last time I laughed so much while reading a manga.

This was so cute and funny that my wife was constantly wanting to know what was making me laugh so much.

This was funny, like when Arielle's innocent gestures gets her into trouble and wanting her creator to install something that got her father all flustered (when you read it you will know!😹).
Yet I did find the set up of a mad scientist making a robotic daughter short and to the point. Yet I did see that the main problem was with the pacing and the shortness of each chapter and how fast the pacing is.
Yet as this is the start of the late Akira I can see just how well he grows.

Pensándolo mucho mejor, le doy un 4.

In 2006, during the latter half of sixth grade and going into the summer before seventh, I read the entirety of the Dragon Ball manga, including DBZ (released under a separate title by VIZ), and excluding DB volume 2 (which, for whatever reason, my city's library system did not have). Still interested in Akira Toriyama's work, and more "open" to checking out random manga I'd not heard of previously (that is, stuff that wasn't published in American Shonen Jump magazine nor adapted into anime airing on Toonami, Kids' WB, or FOX Kids), I picked up Dr. Slump. To go through Dragon Ball chronologically, having mostly dismissed the original anime when it aired concurrent to Z in circa 2003, I was not aware of how funny the series had originally began, so it was quite a pleasant surprise to read a pure gag manga such as this. It is true I didn't read the entire manga, nor do I think I even read it in its proper release order (instead picking up volumes as I found them in my local library branch), and unfortunately I more or less forgot about Dr. Slump as a whole, keeping it somewhere in the middle of my mind only insofar as I could apply its honest reliance on silly humor as a reason why the action-focused DBZ was an inferior product (as decided arbitrarily some time in 2010 or '11, years after the last time I experienced anything Dragon Ball).

In 2016, finding myself with more disposable income than ever before, I impulsively picked up the first of VIZ's "VIZBIG" compilations of the original series of Dragon Ball. Following my enjoyment of that volume, I began loosely collecting other manga from my middle school years - BLEACH, Naruto, and One Piece, though I was never huge into those, but also Death Note, Yu-Gi-Oh! (pre-Duelist Kingdom), Sadamoto's adaptation of Evangelion (which I'd mistakenly read in seventh grade, thinking it was a simple mecha battle series like G Gundam), and Ranma 1/2 (which I read thinking it would be similar to Inuyasha, not knowing what a "harem comedy" was). I kind of burned out on the more serious, action-oriented series, but began collecting newer manga focused on comedy (Nichijou, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Monster Musume, &c.). For whatever reason, I never thought to combine both ideas and purchase a nostalgic comedy series (well, I guess the aforementioned Ranma counts). It is with some reluctance I admit I did not think to start purchasing Dr. Slump until Providence allowed me to run into a preorderable Arale Nendoroid on Amiami, when I was intending to preorder soemthing else entirely (I think the scale of Homura from Xenoblade Chronicles 2).

Anyway, this shit is great. Toriyama's original art-style had much more character than the most basic style of DBZ, circa Androids Arc. The stocky-yet-proportionate style of classic Dragon Ball is still probably the peak of Toriyama's art, but the big-head-thin-body style of most of Slump's cast is great, especially in contrast to the wider body-type of Senbei or the chubby toddler body of Arale. Of greatest note is the realistic bear in one chapter, shedding a tear at the beauty of the outside world, an image used as a reaction face on a certain imageboard, which I've seen so many times over the years that I outright forgot it originated here.

It is also worth noting VIZ does some false-flagging with its content warning in the credits page. There is a statement suggesting mild alteration of the art, evoking images of Bulma's covered-up tits or Mr. Popo's missing lips from the VIZBIG Dragon Ball releases, but everything seems mostly untouched here. Maybe Arale is missing nipples, I don't remember, but that isn't as egregious as the censorship of Bulma's own in Dragon Ball, since Arale's nipples wouldn't have been sexualized anyway (that is, I'll cry "wolf" if someone censors nudity that is there for purposes of eroticism, but sexless nudity may be removed insofar as it was never meant for titillation anyway). I think juvenile delinquent characters are still depicted smoking cigarettes, but honestly I'd probably not notice if that was removed, and the content advisory box accounts for "underage smoking" regardless. The most important thing is that certain jokes were not altered where they might seem "objectionable" by 2005 American standards. The chapter where Arale seems to be missing a sculpted vagina (but really just wants a navel) appears not to be censored (except for the scribbled-out vulvae of the girls on Senbei's porn mags, which would obviously have been censored in the Japanese original, as per Japan's laws, fitting with the joke that Senbei doesn't know what a cunt looks like because porn is censored and he is presumably a virgin).

direkomendasikan ini oleh teman dan langsung melongo pas baca 20 halaman pertama.

ini cerita anak-anak tapi bukan untuk anak-anak banget ya. kalau boleh dibilang, ini kayak gabungan antara doraemon, shinchan dan kobo chan gitu. surem absurd, dark dan receh banget asli wqwq

tapi suka, gambarnya khas, dan cerita2nya walaupun absurd dan bikin geleng kepala gak percaya. ini versi terjemahannya gak ada sensornya sama sekali, surem. kata temen sih yang baca versi jepangnya lebih vulgar. tapi ora bisa baca tulisan urek urek :'(

jadi penasaran pengen baca dragonball juga jadinya.

bagus!

Kicks ass. Truly dumb and funny.

If you're familiar with Akira Toriyama's work through his immensely popular Dragon Ball series, it may seem strange that his first rise to fame resulted from Dr. Slump, a long-running comedy manga. But, if you've read some of the earlier Dragon Ball volumes, this change in tone shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Toriyama was essentially a gag manga guy until the overwhelming popularity of a Dragon Ball fighting tournament arc convinced him to change gears and veer away from the genre that made him a name (though I'm sure his editor had some influence). If you ever wondered why some of the later Dragon Ball stories seemed to meander, it's because Toriyama is much more comfortable with short, punchy stories that don't need to make sense.

And that's essentially what Dr. Slump is. In sprit, it feels a lot like a Japanese version of MAD Magazine, with a narrative through line to tie everything together. While the stories within Dr. Slump feature the titular Doctor and his robot daughter at their core, the sort of "anything goes" atmosphere Toriyama shoots for makes his stories have limitless potential. And if you'll permit me another comparison, these Slump stories have the structure of old Looney Tunes: a bunch of gags generated from a single premise, with endings that arrive abruptly with a gut-punch joke to close the curtain.

Above all, though, Dr. Slump is FUN. You get the sense that Toriyama loved putting in anything that tickled him, and every panel and splash page is absolutely crammed with visual jokes and tiny details. Slump's often immature absurdity isn't for everyone, but definitely consider giving it a try if you want to see where Toriyama came from—you may be surprised.

This is a very funny series with loads of sight gags. It starts with Dr. Slump making an android which he later names Arale. She's a young girl and points out that she can't fly and doesn't shoot missiles from her tummy. She also has to wear glasses.

He ends up dressing her like a boy. She drops a hand-grenade in his mouth to wake him up. Arale demonstrates that she's super-smart and extremely strong.

There are also fun cards that can be cut out or photocopied. They include Arale, Gatchan, Senbei Norimaki, Akane Kimidori, Taro Soramame, Peasuke Soramame and Mikdori Yamabuki. There's also a bunch of other extra things for coloring, cutting out, etc.

There's a really funny section about Arale pointing out that she has something missing and she wants one since all the other girl's all have one and it's not what the reader might think it is. Dr. Slump is also a pervert, by the way, making glasses to see through clothes.

A guy kidnaps Arale and a hilarious section follows with the revelation that Arale's power can run down. Later, all the sports clubs at school want Arale to join them. She tries out for various of the clubs with funny results.

Arale makes friends with a bear and she and Dr. Slump help it get fit for release into the wild. When the release it, though, it's shot by a hunter and Dr. Slump alters the bear into a cyborg bear. Before long the first poop joke appears. Dr. Slump invites a big-small ray gun. Then there's a section dealing with a camera he invented that takes pictures of the future of something.

Then the next invention is a time machine. Of a sort. They go back to the time of the dinosaurs and Arale gets an egg and they bring it back with them. It hatches and turns out to be Gatchan. Gatchan eats anything and has wings.

Dr. Norimaki Senbei decided to create something that never been done by anyone, he created an android. The android is called Arale. Arale was disguised as 13 years old girl. Senbei told everyone that she was his sister.

There are 12 chapters in this manga, I will try to share some summaries out of those 12 chapters.

The first chapter was about the creation of Arale. Arale was a bit disappointed that she couldn’t jump nor fire a missile from her stomach. Senbei thought those weren’t necessary. To his surprise, Arale couldn’t see well, she needed thick glasses to see. The real problem came when Senbei had to buy clothes for Arale. He was so embarrassed when he had to buy girl’s underwear.

In the second chapter, Arale was sent to school just like any normal 13 years old girl. She surprised everyone as she was so good in any subject and incredible in any sport. She met 3 kinds that soon became her best friends, Akane, Piisuke and Tarou.

Continue Reading> http://bokunosekai.wordpress.com/2011...

The book Dr.Slump is about how Dr.Senbei Norimaki creats a robot named Arale who turns out to have super strong powers and can lift anything. They both encounter a lot of bad guys trying to defeat Arale but she only thinks it's a game and she ends up hurting every one who tries to fight her. Arale can run really fast and isn't afaird to pick up poop. Dr.Senbei Norimaki is known as a pervert who always looks and watch things he's not suppose to. He is a really smart man who can build anything. In the seris of books you'll find that he builds a lot of differnt things and you'll meet new people and there's a differnt story every book not really one topic and each series is funny and crazy everytime. I though the book was really interesting and fun to read cauze everyone was so crazy.

Akira Toiyama fazendo uma históra focada no humor que lembra o tom da primeira fase de Dragon Ball com o Goku ainda criança, só que com humor ainda mais escrachado. São pequenas histórias muito divertidas com arte excelente. Me lembrou um pouco o antido seriado "Super Vicky" sobre uma menina robô causando confusões na vizinhança e na escola.
O ponto negativo vai para a Panini por lançar esse material no famoso "papel jornal", ao invés do papel de qualidade que tem usado em outros mangás como one punch man, vagabond e lobo solitário. A minha coleção da versão anterior de Lobo Solitário que também era neste papel ficou inteirinha amarela em menos de 10 anos. Essa série merecia papel de qualidade.

Dr. Slump, a book written by Japanese artist Akira Toriyama, is a great graphic novel series that focuses on comedy. I read the first volume and the plot is pretty good and organized. I am going to continue reading Dr. Slump because it is quite amusing. The characters are also fitting for the plot and the novel is funny. I borrowed this book from a friend because I had nothing else to read at the time and found this book to be a good find. I recommend this book to those who are interested in manga or just looking for some laughs.

Is it hard to believe that I read this series because my mom loved it enough to buy the books?
Toriyama's start-off series, Dr. Slump, is hilarious and in many ways childlike, exemplifying the attributes of the main character, a little robot girl who cannot, in fact, fly or shoot cannons out of her stomach. It's a cute little series, though a little perverted at times, and a little disgusting at times. But then, this is the creator of Dragon Ball, so I can possibly overlook such mistakes as those once in a while.

There is a reason Toriama is one of my favorite manga-ka. His books are funny, full of adventure and heart, and this book is a perfect example of that. Another classic! I can't wait to continue the series :)

UPDATE: January 2021
Read this for the second time. I'm becoming more aware of how much I enjoy Toriyama's early art style, how soft the female characters look, and how goofy the men are. I wish that he would have stuck with this softer look for Arale. I don't like the cartoonish version on the front cover nearly as much.

The first time I read Dr Slump I read it in Japanese many years ago still as a kid and that made me learn a lot of Japanese language and culture ( I ‘m Brazilian and my parents are Japanese).
This manga is soooo fun, nerds will love it and laugh a lot for all the unbelievable situations and funny faces , sounds and absurd things that happen!!
If you want something to make you happy in the morning this is the one for you. Just be aware of the people around you for the strange reactions of your face while reading it...

VERY SILLY. If you've got a little niece or nephew who likes poop jokes or a wannabe super hero who uses sour ume as his super (supa=sour=supaman! ha.), then this is the series for them. This was Akira Toriyama's breakout series and it's super silly, constantly breaking down the barrier between the manga world and the real world. The characters get crazier and crazier. Okay for younger kids (7-8+), but beware as there are some girl-crazy characters who have a thing for panties.

I decided to read Dr. Slump because I use to watch the Arabic dubbed show as a kid, and was curious if the story was still as funny. It was a bit of a nostalgic trip finding the separate episodic stories familiar as they were the same stories as the show, definitely had laugh out loud moments and overwhelming charm is still there. I had a fun time reading this and definitely will carry on reading the rest of the volumes.

I really liked this comedy manga. The humor is a bit crude and physical/slapstick, which are things I usually hate, but I liked this comic. Maybe because it feels so innocent/harmless. Any way it's quite funny. The art is very cartoonish (even for a manga) but it's obvious the artist knows how to draw. Also all of the tones are done in (watered down) ink. None of this really matters for the manga, I just thought I'd point it out.

That has to be the WEIRDEST 1st volume of a manga I’ve ever read. Just for some context, I remember when I rewatched Dragon Ball that there was a one off episode of Goku visiting a strange town where Arale and the doctor lived. My interest was peaked when I saw there was a manga and boy, it’s strange but kind of cute in a weird way? Totally different than the Dragon Ball series. I’m not sure if I’ll stay with this one.