If you want a Dragon Ball shirt, we can help you find some good ones.
With its tough heroes, iconic villains, and massive battles, Dragon Ball remains an extremely popular franchise in Japanese pop culture. Naturally, the series has inspired a lot of merch, including dozens of T-shirts.
About Dragon Ball
Akira Toriyama began the original Dragon Ball shonen manga series in 1984. The first anime adaptation started in 1986.
The first part of the series was heavily influenced by the classic Chinese story Journey to the West, and its most popular character, the Monkey King.
However, over time, this martial arts adventure series evolved. It got less silly, and more serious (but still fun) with deadlier, more dangerous villains. In the anime, this was reflected with a new title, Dragon Ball Z, in 1989. (However, the manga kept the old name.)
DBZ was followed by Dragon Ball GT in 1996, Dragon Ball Z Kai in 2009, and Dragon Ball Super in 2015.
List of the 10 Best Dragon Ball Shirts
- Goku on Kinto’un
- Goku and Shenron
- Goku Meets Bulma
- Dragon Ball Super Hero Goku
- Pretty Girl/ Cool Girl Lunch
- Dragon Ball Motorcycle
- Androids 17 and 18
- Vegeta Pride
- Capsule Corporation
- Kame House
Best Dragon Ball Shirts
1. Goku on Kinto’un
We’ll start with a familiar-looking, classic Dragon Ball image from the early episodes.
On this T-shirt, we see young Goku flying into adventure. He’s riding his trusty Kinto’un nimbus cloud. And he has his staff at the ready, in case he has to fight some bad guys.
According to the website, the shirt is a Guf limited original T-shirt. Japan Culture & Character Shop Guf is a Japanese pop culture and anime store in the Kansai area. Guf has locations in Kyoto and Osaka. (The Osaka location is in Nipponbashi, Osaka’s equivalent to Akihabara in Tokyo.)
You can find this shirt at ZenPlus.
2. Goku and Shenron
Primitive Skateboarding created this colorful and explosive shirt, which features Goku and the wish-granting dragon, Shenron. The dragon balls are also visible, along with a Dragon Ball Z logo.
This is actually one of 14 T-shirt designs you can choose from on one webpage. All of the designs are good ones. Several of them feature Super Saiyan characters who look ready to battle. But I like this one with its bright and cheerful colors. I’ll admit it’s another one with Goku and the Kinto’un, but he looks good riding it.
3. Goku Meets Bulma
If you’re a fan of the early, sillier episodes of the original Dragon Ball series, you ought to enjoy this T-shirt. It re-creates a scene from the first episode.
In the image, rustic martial arts expert Goku is suspicious of modern girl Bulma as she tries to explain the Dragon Ball radar to him.
These two will make a great pair of hilarious, contrasting heroes. But as of yet, neither one has any idea of what lies in store on the long journey ahead of them.
The shirt has the Japlish caption, “New Adventure From Starts Here.” (It makes more sense if you add Akira Toriyama’s name to the sentence.) But it gives the shirt a certain “only in Japan” charm.
Considering Bulma’s awkward stance, this shirt is also a candidate for the “How To Talk to Short People” meme.
Like the Goku/ Kinto’un shirt, this was also a Guf exclusive item.
Purchase this shirt at ZenPlus.
4. Dragon Ball Super Hero Goku
This shirt is a Crunchyroll Store-exclusive item. It features grown-up Goku and the 7 dragon balls, as well as a cool tie-dye pattern. There are also line art illustrations of Goku and Vegeta.
You don’t have to be a Crunchyroll member to get this shirt. But some premium subscribers can get a store discount.
The “Super Hero” underneath Goku indicates that this T-shirt is from Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. The anime movie came out in 2022. Super Hero was the second film created as part of Dragon Ball Super, the 2015-2018 anime series. Crunchyroll distributed the film outside of Japan.
The movie does have something to do with “superheroes,” although not the ones you might expect.
Find this shirt at Crunchyroll Store.
5. Pretty Girl/ Cool Girl Lunch
Remember Lunch? She was typical of the old school Dragon Ball — a cute girl with a comical “Jekyll and Hyde” personality. Just a sneeze was enough to swap her split personalities, unfortunately for anyone who happened to be nearby when her nasty side emerged.
This fun and clever shirt has “Pretty Girl” Lunch (nice, blue hair) on the front, and “Cool Girl” Lunch (mean, blonde) on the back.
Unfortunately, it seems that Toriyama forgot about her shortly after the timeskip.
It’s another Guf shirt.
6. Dragon Ball Motorcycle
This T-shirt from TRZN is taken from one of the early manga covers. According to reports, Toriyama loved cars and motorcycles, so he put a lot of vehicles on Dragon Ball covers over the years. Toriyama’s vehicles were typically cool-looking and fast, and often looked like something you could ride in real life. He put a lot of details into them.
This particular shirt depicts the cover from chapter 187 of the manga (originally printed in 1987). It features Goku and Bulma sharing a motorcycle.
TRZN, a.k.a. Torazen, is an international apparel brand specializing in anime stuff.
Get this shirt at TRZN Studios.
7. Androids 17 and 18
Androids 17 and 18 are all charged up and ready to attack in this T-shirt. The shirt has a Red Ribbon Army logo on the sleeve. That’s probably because the twins were created by Dr. Gero, who had been the evil organization’s mad scientist (until Goku destroyed it).
Androids 17 and 18 first appeared as villains in the Androids Saga, but they switched sides afterward.
The shirt is by Guf.
8. Vegeta Pride
Everyone’s favorite grumpy Saiyan features on this T-shirt. The shirt is done in the style of Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster.
The title probably references a quote from the episode Vegeta’s Pride. In it, Majin Vegeta shows Babidi that he can’t fully control him — as a Saiyan, he still has his pride.
The shirt is available in black, navy, blue, grey, pink, green, white, and red.
9. Capsule Corporation
This shirt features the Capsule Corporation, the company founded by Bulma’s father.
The shirt has the Capsule Corp. logo, as well as several of the company’s trademark capsules. Bulma always seemed to have plenty of the capsules around, which came in handy as vehicles or bubble-dome shelters.
The shirt has a deliberately faded look to it, as if it had seen a lot of adventures.
According to the ZenPlus website’s auto-translation, the shirt is “saxophone”-colored. Actually, the color is Saxon blue — a.k.a. “Saxe blue” or sakkusu. Japanese websites will sometimes mistranslate this as “sax.” The shirt is also available in white.
It’s made by COSPA, a Japanese company which makes cosplay items, but also a wide variety of otaku stuff.
10. Kame House
This retro-styled, 1980s-esque T-shirt shows Master Roshi’s house on a tropical island in the middle of the ocean.
The shirt can be customized in a lot of ways. It’s available in black, white, navy, grey, and red. You can also get it as a T-shirt, tank top, v-neck, long sleeve T-shirt, sweatshirt, and hoodie.
It’s sold through Amazon Handmade, Amazon’s place for artisan crafts.
Conclusion
These ten shirts are just a few of the many possible Dragon Ball shirts that you might find online. It was not easy to sort through all of the options, but I think I found some good ones, and some unique ones.
I hope you enjoyed this list of Dragon Ball shirts.
