Dragon Ball’s time-traveling swordsman came from the future, but his clothes are ready to take you back to the past.

The storyline for Dragon Ball is anything but straightforward, and one of the trickier character arcs to unravel is that of Trunks. A swordsman sent from the future, Trunks turns out to be the child of two other members of the cast (whose romance itself is a narrative curveball), and it’s not until later in the story that we see Trunks as a child.

Trunks didn’t make his debut in the Dragon Ball manga or anime until 1991, several years after each started. Still, he went on to become one of the franchise’s most popular characters and an instantly recognizable symbol of the series, and now merchandiser Premium Bandai is offering his iconic outfit for fans to wear.

But there’s an additional level of temporal complexity to Trunks. Remember how we said Trunks made his first appearance in 1991? At that time, Dragon Ball was just about the biggest thing in the anime world, and so creator Akira Toriyama’s artwork from that period ended up having a huge influence on other artists. So not only is Premium Bandai’s Trunks outfit a recreation of the time-traveling character’s wardrobe, it’s also a visual short-hand for “cool anime clothes” circa 1990, with an ultra-short jacket and billowy pants.

The jacket’s short hem and the pants’ high waist do help create the appearance of anime character-class long legs (similar to the effect of the fashionable “anime heroine skirts” we looked at a while back). However, Premium Bandai realizes that some Dragon Ball fans might not want to turn the clock back quite so far, and so in addition to the “Trunks length” jacket pictured above, you can also get the garment in medium and large sizes, which keep the Capsule Corp. logo on the sleeve while giving the jacket a longer, more modern cut.

▼ Medium

▼ Large

▼ The pants, however, are equally baggy in either medium or large, the only available sizes.

The all-cotton jacket is available from Premium Bandai’s online shop here priced at 13,200 yen (US$120), and the 9,900-yen pants (made of polyester) here. Shipping for both is scheduled for January.

Source: Premium Bandai
Top image: Premium Bandai
Insert images: Premium Bandai (1, 2)
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