Dragonball Z is also based on a
Chinese Myth. Characters such as
Son Goku,
Master Roshi, the Ox King, the tortoise,
Oolong as well as others were taken from the Myth. What's the Myth? Well it's more of a story than a Myth. It's the story of a monkey who was very naughty (and whose name was also Son Goku) and he was the pupil of a
Shaolin monk. The Shaolin monk had two other pupils: a pig (Oolong) and an ox (the Ox King). Most of
Dragonball Z is not like the myth though. The
androids, the
nameks, the world-destroying
Saiyan-Jin are inexistant in the Myth. However things like the cloud and the red poll that Goku used for example were directly from the Myth/Story.
Note that the Chinese Myth (btw there's a PlayStation Game that's called Magic Monkey which is derived from the Myth as well) is full of martial arts, mystic powers and monkey vs. Buddha action!
Note also that Dragonball Z is a sequel/continuation of Dragonball which is more closely related to the Chinese myth. In fact, in Dragonball Z, most of the original characters such as Chi Chi's father and Oolong started to appear less than in Dragonball.
1.
Kudos goes to
dragoon who corrected me in the spelling of
Dragonball Z instead of
Dragon Ball Z. Some high power figure of
E2 ought to delete that complete misleading series of nodes.
2. Thanks to JustSomeGuy who pointed out that Dragonball series were more closely related to the Chinese myth than Dragonball Z. So I've added a few corrections.
3. Benabik added that Chi Chi's father was the Ox King. (I did not know of his name in DB beforehand.