The Kamehameha explained: how Dragon Ball's signature move was named, drawn and posed

The Kamehameha is the most iconic, possibly the most important technique in Dragon Ball. It's the move most closely tied to the series, from the very beginning through Z, GT, Super and everything else. Even people who don't know what Dragon Ball is have seen this move, or versions of it, at some point in their lives.

I would go as far as to say it's a mainstream representation of not only Dragon Ball and combat, but of manga, anime and even pop culture. That reach covers the United States, Latin America, Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan. To explain the technique properly, I have to start at the very beginning.

Toriyama's wife gave the Kamehameha its name

Akira Toriyama reveals a lot about the Kamehameha in an interview for the fourth Daizenshuu, one of the official Dragon Ball guide books. He says he didn't originally want the techniques in the series to have names. His reasoning was that a fight is a battle of life and death, and you could end up dying in the middle of saying the name of a move. That's true, but it's how Japanese entertainment works. It's wacky like that, and we all love it.

It was his editor who told him he should probably name the techniques. Toriyama then reveals that it was his wife who came up with the name Kamehameha. I think it's a perfect name. It works as a pun and also describes the move well, because Master Roshi, the Kame Sennin or Turtle Hermit, is the one who invented it and was known for perfecting it before Goku ever appeared in the story. Kame Sennin fits with Kamehameha.

In the Super Exciting Guide interview in the Story Volume edition, Toriyama says the name came from the Hawaiian king, King Kamehameha. That is why so many fans say it the way they would say the king's name. Because the word is written in katakana, it isn't strictly meant to be pronounced that way, but that pronunciation isn't really incorrect, since the move was named after the king.

There's no real explanation of what Kamehameha means. I've seen people call it the turtle wave, and that's fine, but the phrase itself has no real meaning. It's a loose pun named after the Hawaiian king that fits with Roshi, and there's no actual translation. Some theories suggest the hame part could relate to hametsu, which translates to destroy or break. I'm not a Japanese language major, so I'd rather not go down that path. What matters is that until Toriyama made it mainstream, it was not a real Japanese word.

Goku learned the Kamehameha after seeing it only once

The Kamehameha first appears in Dragon Ball manga chapter 14, which corresponds to episode 8 of the original anime. The Ox King's castle is on fire, and Roshi steps in and uses the Kamehameha to put the fire out.

Shortly after that, Goku was able to learn the technique and use it after seeing it only once. He adopted it as his own signature move for the rest of the franchise. Many other characters have used it since, including Yamcha, Krillin, Tenshinhan, who used it once, Gohan of course, and Majin Buu, who learned it. At this point it's simply the technique of the series.

To me the Kamehameha is more spiritual than scientific

At one point Yamcha describes the Kamehameha as an ability that draws out the potential energy of the body and releases it as a single blast of ki. This goes back to Japanese and Chinese mythology and belief systems, which hold that every living being has an energy deep inside that it can draw on. Here that energy is drawn out and released for a purpose, whether that's putting out a fire like Roshi did or injuring or destroying an opponent.

Over the years I've seen many people overanalyze the Kamehameha and treat it as something too scientific. I've seen theories that it's plasma and all kinds of other things. To me it isn't that complicated. How the Kamehameha uses ki is much more of a spiritual thing than a scientific one. It draws on inner energy and lets you manipulate particles around your hands, which is why the hand movement is so important. You ignite these invisible subatomic particles and release them like a projectile at very high speed toward your target.

The substance that makes up this energy can be thought of as a mixture of elements: electromagnetic energy, heat, cold and more, all combined to serve a purpose. Science will tell you that particles have positive and negative values, and that concept isn't too different from what Asian traditions call yin and yang. So there is a scientific element to it, don't get me wrong. It's just not plasma.

When you think about it, the Kamehameha is almost a supernatural ability. It's a wave of energy that can bend, because Goku can choose which direction it goes. Some Kamehamehas look different from others. Some are very big and some are very small, but they're all composed of millions of particles of energy. Those particles explode on contact and can destroy matter and rip through things. We've seen Kamehamehas go through walls and even through bodies.

Vegeta's Galick Gun and the Masenko are variants of the Kamehameha

Within the Dragon Ball universe, the Kamehameha isn't the first technique of its kind ever developed. Creatively, though, through Toriyama's eyes, other techniques with similar properties are manifestations of the Kamehameha, even though they aren't the Kamehameha itself.

Vegeta's Galick Gun is one example. It isn't the Kamehameha, it's his version of it, and he didn't even know what the Kamehameha was when he came to Earth. The idea is that the Kamehameha became the foundation for the similar but not identical techniques Toriyama would come up with later. The Masenko is another. There are also all the random ki blasts with similar properties: particles of energy, yin and yang, the use of ki. In many ways they're the same thing and a variant of the Kamehameha.

Toriyama made invisible ki visible on purpose

Something I find interesting, and Toriyama talks about this himself in the Super Exciting Guide, is that energy as described in the old texts is not visible. You can't see ki. But because he was illustrating a story in manga, Toriyama felt he had to show the Kamehameha as a visible form of energy. Much of the energy in the world can't be seen with the naked eye. The belief is that if you open your third eye and your chakra, you should be able to see it, but most of us can't.

In Dragon Ball the energy also comes in different colors. The 10x Kamehameha from GT is red, for example, and I think much of that was the anime staff trying to be more creative with color. You aren't supposed to see this energy, but in Dragon Ball you do. First, it makes things much more exciting and dramatic. Second, it would be hard to tell a story built on combat if you couldn't see what was going on.

At one point, characters in Dragon Ball move beyond the speed of light, and Toriyama still has to slow that down to show us what is happening. We know they're moving so fast the eye can't follow it. Even in the series, untrained characters can't watch the fights, yet we can, because we're the audience being entertained in the real world.

The "ha" at the end works like a martial arts kiai

Look a little deeper and even the word Kamehameha is perfect, because it ends with ha. In martial arts, ha is often used as a kiai, and anyone who has trained in martial arts will know what I mean. A kiai is essentially when you focus your energy into a blow, and it's used in the real world. There's more to it than that, but I'll keep it simple.

Ha is an expression of willpower through a projected shout or scream. Having characters shout it makes things more epic and much more dramatic, and Toriyama did it that way on purpose. No matter which version you watch, the slow buildup to the Kamehameha adds dramatic tension, because you know what's coming. The buildup is awesome.

Toriyama says he came up with the hand pose by himself

Where do the hand positions come from? As a kid, before I even discovered Dragon Ball, I played the Street Fighter 2 arcade game. In it, Ryu and Ken use the Hadouken, which has a very similar if not identical hand movement to the Kamehameha, and a projectile of energy comes out. So I wondered whether Street Fighter was influenced by Dragon Ball, or whether there was more to those hand movements.

Toriyama answers this in the Super Exciting Guide interview: "When no one was around I did a variety of poses and decided on one that looked cool which was that pose." He adds: "I get asked if I look at a lot of martial arts to get hints for techniques and poses while I have watched a lot of kung fu movies surprisingly enough I didn't have all that much interest in the martial arts themselves."

That means that if Toriyama got the hand movements from a movie, he doesn't remember which one. Otherwise he came up with it on his own, practicing the move when no one was looking, which I'm sure many people have done in the privacy of their own homes. If anything, the Hadouken probably did copy the Kamehameha, considering Street Fighter came out after Dragon Ball in Japan. Dragon Ball came first.

Roshi needed 50 years to develop the Kamehameha, Goku a few minutes

It took Master Roshi 50 years to develop the Kamehameha. Goku, because he's so enlightened and such a prodigy, was able to do it in a few minutes, though at the time all he could manage with it was destroying a car. As he trained harder and grew as a fighter, he figured out how to channel more energy into it and put more of his willpower and effort behind it. That let him create bigger and more powerful versions. At one point he even fired the Kamehameha from his feet. That's right, it happened just once.

Since then there have been dozens upon dozens of variations: the one handed Kamehameha, the Max Power Kamehameha, the Father-Son Kamehameha, the Family Kamehameha and the God Kamehameha. This technique is the founding father of all Dragon Ball techniques, and it has been emulated and used hundreds of times. The Big Green dub even refers to every single technique as the Kamehameha, incorrectly of course.

There are so many variations, and they're all essentially the same thing, so there isn't much more to explain about the technique itself. Still, I'm sure we'll see the Kamehameha many more times as Dragon Ball continues and in other forms of media, because it is that iconic a move.