How Black fans came to love Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z.

News Snapshot:

On March 8, a few minutes after seeing the news that the titanic anime and manga creator Akira Toriyama had died on March 1 at the age of 68, I, like all Black men in mourning, started drafting a text to my group chat. But before I could fire off my reflexive expression of grief and celebration, my guy Daniel wrote simply: “RIP to our king.” The word “our” leaped out at me, striking in all that it represented. Black people claim Akira Toriyama; he was ours. He was everyone’s, of course; I don’t mean to hog a man whose...