Character · Dragon Ball
Shenron
Seven orange spheres, one wish, and then the balls scatter across the planet and turn to stone for a year.
In Otakana the clue reads: Green dragon summoned by seven orange balls
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Dragon Ball
- Letters
- 7 · Normal
Gather all seven and the sky goes black in the middle of the afternoon. Shenron rises out of them as a green serpent long enough to fill the horizon, listens to one request, grants it if he can, and leaves. There is no ceremony and no gratitude on either side. He is a mechanism with a face, and characters who summon him tend to be nervous rather than awed.
The limits are what make him interesting. Shenron cannot exceed the power of the Namekian who created him, which means a dragon built by Earth's guardian can revive the dead but cannot outmatch a serious villain. He will not bring the same person back twice. Once the wish is spent the balls harden and scatter for a year, so the story always has a countdown running under it.
The kanji 神龍 read Shenlong in Chinese, and Chinese dragons in general are behind the design. Namek has its own version, Porunga, whose name means dream dragon in Namekian and who grants three wishes rather than one, which is why so many characters go to a great deal of trouble to reach a planet on the far side of the galaxy.
Spelling SHENRON
SHENRON is seven letters and the R is a translation artefact. The Chinese reading is Shenlong, with an L, and the Japanese katakana シェンロン has no L available, so the name arrives in English as SHENRON. Two N's, in the fourth and seventh slots. The Namekian dragon PORUNGA is a different answer and a different word entirely.