Akira Toriyama Creator - Dragon Ball
Akira Toriyama is an award-winning Japanese manga artist and character designer. His first breakthrough came with the massively successful Dr. Slump manga serialized in Shonen Jump magazine from 1980 to 1984. His most renowned (and still ongoing) work with the Dragon Ball series. In addition to this, Toriyama has worked on character design for games such as Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger and Blue Dragon.
Born in Nagoya, Japan in 1955, Toriyama and his friends would draw anime and manga characters while at school. Toriyama becoming increasingly proficient at drawing and began to entertain the idea of art as something enjoyable and fun. This eventually led him to win a prize at a local art studio, further solidifying his budding interest in art.
Early Work
Toriyama’s first job was at an advertising agency, where he designed posters for some three years before leaving to pursue a career in the manga industry. His first step was to enter an amateur contest held by Shonen Jump magazine. His work, unfortunately, was not nominated for the prize, but it did catch the attention of Kazuhiko Torishima, who would ultimately become Toryiama’s editor. Toriyama’s debut work was Wonder Island, which was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1978 and ran for about one year. In spite of its originality and creativity, the manga was unsuccessful, landing in last place in the popularity polls. Unscathed by this lack of initial popularity, Toriyama returned in full force with the comedy manga Dr. Slump in 1980 to later dominate popularity polls and, in 1981, earn the yearly Shogakukan Manga Award for best shonen or shojo manga. Dr. Slump went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan. Thanks to the incredible success achieved by the manga, two equally successful anime adaptations were produced. The first from 1981 to 1986, and another running from 1997 to 1999.
Dragon Ball
Toriyama, having conquered the Japanese manga industry, went on to gain international fame with his next series, Dragon Ball. Debuting in Shonen Jump magazine in 1984, the comedy-adventure story was an instant hit, shooting to the top of popularity polls that continued to evolve into a more serious martial arts fighting series before coming to an end in 1995. Despite achieving astronomical success with what is considered by many to be the most influential shonen manga, Toriyama decided to bring Dragon Ball to a close in order to pursue new avenues in life. With over 300 million copies sold worldwide, Dragon Ball is one of the top best-selling manga of all time. Dragon Ball helped pave the way for Japanese manga and anime's massive popularity overseas. However, as successful as it was, Dragon Ball found more popularity in its animated form and helped boost interest in Japanese anime in the mid 90s. Toriyama was even bestowed the title Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in a ceremony held at the French Embassy in Tokyo in 2019.
During the serialization of Dragon Ball, Toriyama was approached by editor Torishima to work on the 1986 role-playing adventure game Dragon Quest as character designer. The end result was overwhelmingly positive and Toriyama was asked to provide character designs for all subsequent Dragon Quest games and others including the Tobal series and Chrono Trigger by Square.
2006 saw the creation of a crossover with One Piece’s Eichiro Oda as a one-off special for Shonen Jump magazine as well as the Xbox 360 exclusive RPG game Blue Dragon by Mistwalker, which also came with the opportunity to direct and animate an adaptation of the game. In 2011, he also collaborated with Weekly Shōnen Jump to raise awareness for and support the areas affected by the tragic events following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
Dragon Ball Super
After an almost 18 year hiatus, Akira Toriyama returned to the Dragon Ball franchise in 2013 with the movie Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods. This was to be the beginning of a Dragon Ball revival spanning so far, three theatrically released movies, an anime and manga series, and a slew of video games with Toriyama at the helm once again. For Shonen Jump’s 45th anniversary, Toriyama created a new series called Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, set before the events of the original Dragon Ball series and based on the character Jaco, who made his debut in the Battle of Gods movie alongside God of Destruction Beerus and his Angelic retainer Whis.
Following up on the success and hype of the recent Battle of Gods movie, the mysteriously titled Resurrection of ‘F’ hit cinemas in 2015. With an original storyline written by Toriyama, the vague title and marketing created hype and anticipation worldwide. Achieving huge success domestically and overseas, it helped to essentially reboot the Dragon Ball series by prompting the creation of Dragon Ball Super, a continuation of the story following the events of the Majin Buu saga. While Toriyama still provides story and character designs, the art itself is handled by the very talented and able Toyotaro, whose work is to the average reader indistinguishable from Toriyama’s and, according to Toriyama, the closest he has ever seen to his own. The Dragon Ball Super anime that followed ended in 2018, leading up to the release of the next movie, Dragon Ball Super: Broly. Toyotaro continues to pen the Dragon Ball Super manga with supervision from Toriyama.
Links
Dragon Ball Series
Dragon Ball Z Series
Dragon Ball Kai Series
Dragon Ball Super Series
Dragon Ball GT Series
Super Dragon Ball Heros
Akira Toriyama