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Akira Toriyama was born on 5 April 1955 in Kiyosu, a small town on the outskirts of Nagoya, Japan. One of the most important and influential mangaka of all time, he is best known for his “battle manga” Dragon Ball, as well as other bestsellers like Dr. Slump. Toriyama also designed characters for hit Japanese videogames like Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger.
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Toriyama’s work has touched the lives of millions. Characters like Goku, Vegeta and Piccolo, the concept of Super Saiyan and the countless other enthralling stories he created have enriched the childhood and adolescence of kids and teens across the world, from the 1980s to today. Their influence extends far beyond manga, inspiring artists and creatives in genres like fashion and music too.
Childhood and discovery of manga
Akira Toriyama grew up in a small town together with his parents and younger sister. Although he didn’t have any manga at home, he loved drawing from an early age. His favourite subjects were animals and vehicles, as well as the insects he saw when he played outside in the neighbourhood. When Toriyama first saw Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians, he was mesmerised, and subsequently spent hours of his childhood watching anything and everything on the family’s black and white TV.
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From Godzilla to Osamu Tezuka‘s Astro Boy, from Ultraman to the Gamera kaiju series, the young Toriyama was fascinated by animated fantasy and adventure stories. He eventually discovered manga at a schoolmate’s house and started doing his own drawings that imitated the manga and anime style.
Upon finishing secondary school, Toriyama went to technical college in Nagoya to study design. Afterwards, rather than go on to university as his parents had wished, he instead began working as a graphic designer at a small advertising agency in Nagoya. But he quit three years later, realising a nine-to-five office job wasn’t for him.
Early work and success of Dr. Slump
Having left stable employment behind, Toriyama focused all his energies on becoming a manga author and entered various competitions run by popular manga magazines. His first attempt for Weekly Shōnen Magazine failed. But the story he sent to Weekly Shōnen Jump made an impression on Kazuhiko Torishima, Toriyama’s future editor (although this Star Wars parody was not published in the end: its characters couldn’t be used for copyright reasons).
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The role of editor is crucial in manga publishing, even today. An editor is not just a corrector of drafts, but a sort of guide for authors, advising and sometimes “teaching” them how to produce manga. Torishima encouraged Toriyama to continue sending in new ideas, and eventually published his first manga, Wonder Island, in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1978.
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The year 1979 saw the release of Wonder Island 2, but it flopped. Demoralised, Toriyama almost quit drawing, but Torishima persuaded him to keep going, advising he create a female character for his next story. The result was Dr. Slump, one of the author’s biggest hits.
Dr. Slump was serialised in Weekly Shōnen Jump until the end of 1984 and was also turned into a 243-episode anime series that premiered in 1981. It tells the story of Senbee Norimaki, AKA Dr. Slump, an inventor who can create all manner of things in a flash, usually strange contraptions that defy the laws of physics. One of his greatest inventions is Arale, a bespectacled robot girl created as a ruse to get closer to schoolteacher Midori Yamabuki. Clumsy and awkward, Norimaki is a lech who’s always trying to look at women’s underwear.
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Leaving aside the fact that in the 1980s, especially in Japan, attitudes were very different to today, there has always been a sexual subtext in the work of Toriyama. In Dr. Slump, the author blends a “super deformed” style (characters with heads much bigger than their bodies) with a cuter “kawaii” aesthetic and plenty of slapstick humour, with the blundering Senbee Norimaki the butt of many gags.
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With her superpowers, Arale was hugely popular, especially among little girls with glasses, who identified with the character. The enormous success of Dr. Slump (some 35 million copies were sold in 1981 alone) fuelled Toriyama’s desire for greater independence, leading him to found Bird Studio in 1983. His first two manga for his new outfit were The Adventure of Tongpoo and Dragon Boy, the latter a forerunner to his best-known series. Toriyama loved action films, especially anything with Jackie Chan, so Torishima, still his editor, encouraged him to create a manga shonen – a comic aimed at boys – about kung fu.
Dragon Ball: the phenomenon that redefined manga
Dragon Ball is to Akira Toriyama what Star Wars is to George Lucas: it’s a work so powerful and pervasive that it has “fused” with its creator. Serialised in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1984 to 1995, Dragon Ball became not just a publishing phenomenon, but an incredibly successful media franchise: in Japan alone, its tankōbon (collection of episodes) sold 160 million copies, making it one of the bestselling manga of all time.
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Inspired by the Chinese literary classic Journey to the West, it tells the tale of Son Goku, a little boy with a monkey tail, superhuman strength and a magic staff that grows and shrinks at his command. Together with his companion Bulma, he embarks on a quest to find the seven dragon balls, which, once collected, enable the holder to conjure a dragon that will grant them one wish.
The overarching plot of Dragon Ball is familiar to many and contains a series of adventures combining comedy, action, combat and drama. Toriyama’s expressive drawing style is instantly recognisable thanks to its clean and clear lines.
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Pages are extremely dynamic, but the action is always clear and easy to read. This clarity stems from Toriyama’s laziness: he often set fight scenes in deserts or uninhabited places just so he didn’t have to draw the backgrounds. He also introduced devices to make the story unfold as quickly as possible, such as Goku’s ability to teleport.
Over the episodes, Dragon Ball morphs from a kung-fu manga into a science-fiction saga, complete with fearsome baddies such as Freezer, Cell and Majin Bu. It’s a story that spans generations, with characters that fall in love, have children, die and come back to life. Indeed, so iconic are elements of the Dragon Ball world – from the Hyperbolic Time Chamber to Super Saiyan, Senzu Beans and the concept of character fusion – that they are now a cultural reference for millions.
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Its place in popular culture has been cemented over the years by anime series, from Dragon Ball Z and GT to the recently released Dragon Ball DAIMA, not to mention the 21 animated films and three TV specials produced by Toei Animation, and an avalanche of merchandising.
Dragon Ball’s success is in part down to Toriyama’s boundless imagination, fast-paced narration and charismatic characters: indeed, with his blend of classical hero traits and easy-going humour, Goku was an iconoclastic protagonist when first revealed to the world.
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It’s also due to Toriyama’s ability to switch register, effortlessly shifting from humour in one panel to drama in the next. And so, with masterful storytelling and timeless characters, this series helped to popularise manga in the West, and paved the way for sagas like One Piece and Naruto.
Other stories and videogames
Although best known for Dragon Ball, Toriyama worked on hundreds of other series and stories, and designed characters for hit videogame franchises like Dragon Quest (worth a read is his manga Go! Go! Ackman, published in 11 chapters between 1993 and 1994.)
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More recent work includes Cowa! (1997–1998), Kajika (1998) and Sand Land (2000), for which a videogame adaptation was released in 2024. Toriyama also worked with other famous mangaka, including Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, with whom he collaborated on Sachie-chan Good!! And his decades-long career was not confined to the world of comics: in 2005, he even produced an electric car design for CQ Motors.
An evolving style
Akira Toriyama’s style is instantly recognisable in all of his work: clean lines, expressive characters and “physical” humour, as well as meticulous attention to detail and compelling visual storytelling.
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While slapstick comedy and absurd situations make Dr. Slump accessible and entertaining, in Dragon Ball Toriyama’s style evolves to become more dynamic and action oriented. Fight scenes in particular are choreographed to convey a sense of movement and intensity that captures the reader’s imagination.
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Toriyama doesn’t just tell engaging stories, he builds coherent universes. And the evolution of his style can be seen in the way he draws characters and backgrounds: in early manga, his drawings were simpler and rounder, while in later work, like Dragon Ball Z, they become more detailed and angular, reflecting a change in approach and the need for more mature and complex storytelling.
Toriyama’s legacy
Akira Toriyama left an indelible mark on many genres of popular culture, none more so than manga. His legacy is monumental, for readers and authors alike. A man who taught himself to draw by copying the work of others became the mangaka who schooled a generation artists in the very same way.
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Akira Toriyama passed away on 1 March 2024 at the age of 68.