Atossa

Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump published the first Dragon Ball chapter by Akira Toriyama in issue 51 of 1984, dated November 20 of that year, and the story arc featuring Puar opens within the first dozen chapters. Puar is introduced as the constant companion of the desert bandit Yamcha, drawn as a small light-blue cat-creature with the ability to transform into any object he can visualize. Toriyama drew heavily on Wu Cheng'en's sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West for the early Dragon Ball cast, and Puar's shapeshifting ability echoes the trickster pig-spirit Zhu Bajie from that source. In Dragon Ball continuity, Puar and the anthropomorphic pig Oolong trained together at the same Shapeshifting Academy, where Oolong was expelled for stealing the female students' underwear; this backstory is established in chapter 7 of the manga. Puar typically transforms into projectiles, surfaces, or small objects that aid Yamcha rather than into intimidating forms, a stylistic choice that emphasizes the character's gentleness against Yamcha's flashier combat persona. The Dragon Ball manga ran for 519 chapters across forty-two collected tankobon volumes between 1984 and 1995, with worldwide sales exceeding 260 million copies by 2024, making it the second-best-selling manga property of all time after One Piece. Toei Animation produced the original Dragon Ball anime adaptation, which ran for 153 episodes between 1986 and 1989; voice actress Naoko Watanabe has played Puar in every Japanese-language anime production from that 1986 series through Dragon Ball Super in 2018. Funimation acquired the North American dub rights in 1995, with Brad Jackson and later Cynthia Cranz voicing Puar in the English Funimation dub. Across the franchise's subsequent expansions, including Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Super, and the 2024 streaming series Dragon Ball Daima, Puar has appeared consistently alongside Yamcha as one of the few non-warrior characters from the original cast to retain a steady supporting role.