Dragon Ball: Every Eternal Dragon Explained

Shenron may be Earth’s Eternal Dragon, but a few others are hiding out there in the Dragon Ball universe, waiting to be summoned. There’s Porunga and Super Shenron, of course. But have you heard of the more obscure ones, like Toronbo or the Demon Realm’s Eternal Dragon?

For those who are still unfamiliar with the rules of Dragon Balls and Eternal Dragons or need a quick refresher course, here’s what you need to know. If you can collect all the Dragon Balls in a set and recite a particular chant, an Eternal Dragon will appear to grant you your wish/es. That’s generally how it goes. However, the Eternal Dragons do have some slight discrepancies from one another. There are some differences in details, like how many Dragon Balls are in their set, what to chant to summon the dragon, how many wishes a dragon can grant, or even what wishes they can fulfill.

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Every Eternal Dragon in the Anime and Manga

Shenron

• Source: Earth’s Dragon Balls
• Number of Dragon Balls in Set: 7
• Number of Wishes: 3 (usually)
• First Appearance: Dragon Ball episode 1, “The Secret of the Dragon Balls”

Everyone knows him, as he’s practically the face of Dragon Ball, aside from Goku. He’s the most summoned of the Eternal Dragons, mainly because his Dragon Balls are on Earth, where most of the main cast lives. Currently, Shenron can grant up to three wishes, but that wasn’t always the case. Before Dende became Earth’s Guardian and enhanced Shenron’s capabilities, he could only grant one wish. Also, Shenron seems to favor repeat customers, as he would only grant Gomah one wish because it was his first time. Another interesting detail is that wishing for multiple people to be revived at once taxes Shenron’s power and will take up two of the three wishes.

Something to note is that each Eternal Dragon seems to have certain wishes they can’t grant. Shenron has a lot of restrictions, but that’s just because more people have attempted to have their wish granted by him on screen than any other dragon in the series, so there’s more information on his rules than all the others.

• Shenron can’t grant the same wish twice. So, if you wish to bring a person back from the dead, but Shenron already brought that person back from the dead once before, it wouldn’t work.
• He also cannot resurrect someone who died from natural causes, like sickness or old age.
• A person who has been dead for more than a year cannot come back to life.
• Shenron cannot grant a wish to kill.
• Shenron cannot force a person to do something they don’t want, which is why Goku can deny the wish to be teleported to Earth. So no wishes to force someone to fall in love either.
• Biotechnical organisms like the Androids cannot be wished into becoming regular humans.
• Shenron’s, and most likely all the Eternal Dragons’, knowledge is limited to the confines of his universe. That’s why he couldn’t find the final Super Dragon Ball, which was located in another universe.

Porunga

• Source: Namek/New Namek’s Dragon Balls
• Number of Dragon Balls in Set: 7
• Number of Wishes: 3
• First Appearance: Dragon Ball Z episode 75, “Password is Porunga”

The Namekian Eternal Dragon, Porunga, is considered stronger than Shenron since the former can grant some wishes that the latter can’t. Unlike Shenron, Porunga can bring a dead person back to life more than once, which also implies that he can grant repeat wishes. In the Buu Saga, Moori reveals that Porunga has been further enhanced and could wish entire masses of people to come back to life in just one wish; something that requires Shenron to use up two wishes. Also, the Namekian Dragon Balls are larger than Earth’s. While Erath’s Dragon Balls are about the size of a baseball, Namek’s are as big as a basketball.

Super Shenron

• Source: The Super Dragon Balls
• Number of Dragon Balls in Set: 7
• Number of Wishes: 1
• First Appearance: Dragon Ball Super episode 41, “Come Forth, Divine Dragon! And Grant My Wish, Peas and Carrots!”

Though he might be the hardest Eternal Dragon to summon, he also has no known limits in terms of wishes he can grant. Super Shenron can only be summoned upon collecting the Super Dragon Balls, which are planet-sized and scattered throughout the multiverse, so good luck finding them.

It’s unknown if Super Shenron’s wishes truly have no limits on them though. Could you wish for him to erase Zeno or make yourself stronger and have more authority than Zeno? Also, doesn’t that mean you could wish for Super Shenron to grant you infinite wishes? That sounds unlikely, but until more information on him is revealed, no one truly knows.

The Demon Realm’s Eternal Dragon

• Source: The Demon Realm’s Dragon Balls
• Number of Dragon Balls in Set: 3
• Number of Wishes: ???
• First Appearance: Hasn’t appeared yet

Since no one in the series has summoned it yet, not a lot is known about the Demon Realm’s Eternal Dragon. It isn’t even known how many wishes it can grant yet. However, as of Dragon Ball Daima episode 13, “Surprise”, either Goku’s or Arinsu’s group is close to gathering all three Dragon Balls, so it might appear soon.

The Demon Realm’s dragon is special in that it can grant “black wishes”, while Shenron apparently cannot. Daima hasn’t really specified what constitutes a black wish, but a wish to kill people counts, so black wishes might mean wishes that are conceptually morally bad.

Toronbo

• Source: Planet Cereal’s Dragon Balls
• Number of Dragon Balls in Set: 2
• Number of Wishes: 1
• First Appearance: No anime appearance yet. First appeared in the Dragon Ball Super manga chapter 69, “The Evolution of Planet Cereal”

Toronbo only appears in Dragon Ball Super after the Tournament of Power, so he hasn’t been adapted to the anime yet. Toronbo’s Dragon Balls are found on a world known as Planet Cereal, and there are only two of them in the set. They are also far tinier than all the other Dragon Balls, with each being only about as big as a ping-pong ball. They’ve only been used a couple of times, so the only known restriction on Toronbo’s wishes is that he can’t make a person stronger than his maximum latent potential. He could compress all the potential an individual can achieve throughout their lifetime to break their limits, but this comes at the cost of a shortened life span.

Another interesting fact about Planet Cerals’ Dragon Balls is that they don’t turn to stone after use. They will still spread across the planet, but can immediately be used as soon as they’re gathered again.

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Non-Canon Eternal Dragons

From GT and the Video Games

Other than the Eternal Dragons shown in the main anime series and manga, several other dragons have only appeared in non-canon material. Here are some of the more notable ones.

• Dragon Ball GT has Ultimate Shenron, whose Black Star Dragon Balls are spread throughout the galaxy. He seems to be stronger than Shenron, as he can grant wishes to kill. However, upon use, the planet he was summoned on will be fated for destruction in one year unless the Black Star Dragon Balls can be gathered again and returned to that planet.
• The Black Smoke Dragon, also from GT, is summoned from the Earth’s Dragon Balls that have been filled with negative energy. He has no interest in granting wishes though, and even creates the evil Shadow Dragons, which fight the Z Fighters.
• The Xenoverse games have Dark Shenron, whose set of Dragon Balls is scattered throughout time and space.

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Release Date

February 26, 1986

Studio

Toei Animation

MyAnimeList Score

7.97

Creator(s)

Akira Toriyama