Some of the characters in
Dragonball/
DBZ are lifted from the Chinese novel "
Journey to the West" The most obvious one is
Goku, whose name
Son Gokuu is the
Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese name for Monkey in
Journey to the West (the
Mandarin pronunciation for the name is "Sun Wukong") Also Goku rides a cloud and carries a staff that can change in size, which are really the salient features of Monkey. Also like Monkey, Goku can change shape, albeit not in the same manner as Goku can only change if he is struck by moonlight.
another character that is derived somewhat from Journey to the West is Oolong, the pig character, who is similar to the Pig character in Journey to the West as they are both lazy and kind of perverted.
On the other hand however, later plots in the series depart from this formula, instead the series is about Goku fighting aliens