Jaco the Galactic Patrolman Review: Toriyama's Eleven-Chapter Detour That Quietly Rewrites Dragon Ball's First Page

I read Jaco the week it concluded in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 2013. I was in a coffee shop in Shinjuku, half a coffee in, no idea what I was about to read. By the time I closed the magazine I had spent the last chapter staring at a single page for longer than is socially normal. Toriyama had quietly written a Dragon Ball prequel, and the prequel's last chapter rewrote a scene I had read as a kid in a way I was not prepared for.

I'm Yu, and I am here to tell you that the one-volume manga about a goofy alien cop is, in fact, also the most affecting single piece of Toriyama writing I have read.

Quick Take

• Akira Toriyama's Jaco the Galactic Patrolman ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump from July to October 2013 — 11 chapters, collected as a single volume. VIZ Media's English edition was released January 6, 2015, including the Dragon Ball Minus bonus chapter.
• Reads as a complete standalone comedy. Is also, by design, a Dragon Ball prequel that connects to the original series's first scene in the bonus chapter.
• Rated All Ages — slapstick comedy, mild peril, nothing rougher than mid-period Toriyama gags.

Story Overview

A retired scientist named Omori lives alone on a small island off the coast of Japan. He has built a private rocket. He won't say why.

Jaco — a Galactic Patrolman from a multi-planetary law enforcement agency — crash-lands on Omori's island while attempting to investigate the planet from orbit. Jaco is loud, arrogant, slightly ridiculous, and accustomed to being the smartest person in any room he enters. Omori is none of those things; he's quiet, methodical, and not particularly impressed.

The unlikely partnership recruits a third member: Tights, seventeen years old, daughter of a distant family member of Omori's, an aspiring science-fiction novelist whose habit of asking too many questions accidentally pulls the story forward.

Across eleven chapters, Jaco tries to fix his ship, Omori works on his rocket, Tights writes her novel, and a corrupt branch of the Japanese military gradually becomes the antagonist. Each chapter is a small comic episode about people taking each other seriously who really shouldn't. The story is funny, then sweet, then — in the final pages — something larger.

The Dragon Ball Minus bonus chapter, included in the collected volume, completes the connection. The mission Jaco was sent to Earth to perform — assess this planet's threat level — is the same window in time during which Bardock and Gine, on a Saiyan colony far away, sent their infant son Kakarrot off-planet to escape the destruction of their home. The two stories meet in the sky over Earth, and the second-to-last panel of Dragon Ball Minus is the first panel of Dragon Ball, redrawn after thirty-five years by an older Toriyama who has remembered what was happening on the other side of the camera.

Characters

Jaco — The lead. A Galactic Patrolman whose self-importance vastly exceeds his actual competence in any specific task. Toriyama draws him as an unbroken streak of confident wrongness, and the manga's affection for him is real. He is also, structurally, the first time Toriyama wrote a clearly alien comedic protagonist after Dragon Ball ended; in retrospect he is the manga's bridge between Dr. Slump's gag energy and Dragon Ball's space-empire cast.

Omori — The retired scientist. The quiet center of the cast. A man whose private project on the island is, eventually, revealed to be a personal mission tied to a daughter he lost; the manga handles the reveal with the lightest hand and it lands all the harder for it.

Tights — Seventeen, mouthy, aspiring sci-fi writer. Her name is the giveaway for Dragon Ball readers: she's the older sister of Bulma. The series doesn't lean on this; the connection is delivered as a quiet line, almost a footnote. Toriyama lets it do its work without flagging it.

General "Don't-Care-Who-He-Is" — The corrupt military faction's most prominent face. A reminder that Toriyama could still write a perfectly punchable authority figure twenty years after the Red Ribbon Army.

What I Love About It

What I love about Jaco is that it is the closest thing Akira Toriyama wrote to a goodbye letter to Dragon Ball, except he wrote it before he came back to Dragon Ball, and that means the goodbye-letter quality is structural rather than emotional.

The bonus chapter — Dragon Ball Minus — is twelve pages long and it is, with no exaggeration, my favorite twelve pages of Toriyama's career. It depicts the mother and father of Goku as they are about to send their infant son away from a planet that is going to be destroyed in the next hour, and it does this without sentimentality, without speeches, without underlining any of it. Bardock buys his son time. Gine — Goku's mother, who Toriyama invented in 2014 for this chapter, retroactively — looks at her infant son one last time and says she hopes he grows up strong. Their last panel together is a single small image of two adults watching a pod disappear into the sky.

The original Dragon Ball opens with that same pod arriving on Earth. The opening scene of every Goku story we have ever read was drawn in 1984, before this chapter existed. Jaco is what Toriyama wrote three decades later to make the first panel of his most famous series mean something different.

I read both works again afterward. They are different works now. That is a kind of authorial achievement I don't think I have seen anywhere else in manga.

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The single page of Goku's pod leaving the Saiyan home colony, in Dragon Ball Minus. There is no dialogue. Toriyama's older art is loose, less crisp than 1984. The composition is two adults watching a tiny dot move upward. The frame matches, almost exactly, the frame on the first page of Dragon Ball chapter 1 — the same dot, traveling the other direction, about to land on Earth.

I have been looking at this image for ten years and I cannot get past it. It is the most quietly devastating thing Toriyama drew. It cost him eleven chapters of comedy to set it up.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

• A complete, one-volume Toriyama work — short enough to finish in an afternoon, dense enough to revisit.
• The Dragon Ball connection lands cleanly for fans and is invisible to newcomers; both reads work.
• VIZ's English edition includes Dragon Ball Minus.

Cons:

• The story's emotional payoff depends partly on Dragon Ball context; without it, Jaco is good but smaller.
• 11 chapters is genuinely short; if you wanted a longer Toriyama project, look elsewhere.
• The villain plot in the middle chapters is functional rather than memorable; Toriyama is more interested in the leads.

Is Jaco Worth Reading?

Yes — particularly if you've read Dragon Ball. Even if you haven't, it works as a charming standalone. Skip only if you have no patience for Toriyama's gag-comedy rhythm at all.

Who Is This Manga For?

• Dragon Ball fans who haven't read this yet — this is mandatory reading.
• Dr. Slump readers who want the late-period version of that energy.
• People who want a one-volume Toriyama project to introduce a friend.
• Anyone who likes a quiet authorial revisit to a long-finished work.

Official English Translation Status

VIZ Media published the single-volume English edition on January 6, 2015, with the Dragon Ball Minus bonus chapter appended. Available in print and digitally on the VIZ Shonen Jump platform. The English edition is the recommended one for international readers; the bonus chapter is what makes the collected volume a permanent piece of the Dragon Ball canon.

Where to Buy

VIZ's single English volume is the practical and complete way to read this. Available in print at major bookstores and digitally through the VIZ Shonen Jump app.

Browse Jaco the Galactic Patrolman on Amazon →

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