If Osamu Tezuka is the father of Manga (and a good number of genres in it therein), then Akira Toriyama (April 5, 1955 — March 1, 2024) is the father of modern Shōnen. He was one of the most famous manga writers out there, and also did work on character designs in video games.
Toriyama was born in the town of Kiyosu, Aichi Prefecture. He was interested in art and drawing from from a young age; in later interviews he would cite Disney's 101 Dalmatians and Tezuka's Astro Boy as his main artistic inspirations in his youth. Due to his interest in drawing, he considered taking a graphical design education a "non-brainer" and enrolled at the Okoshi Technical High School. After graduation, at the age of 20, Toriyama decided to go into the workforce instead of pursuing a college education. He then spent three years working as a graphic designer for a advertising agency in Nagoya, but eventually decided that that a job with regular hours and a mandated dress-code wasn't for him, and ended up quiting.
Looking for other ways to support himself, Toriyama, noticed that several of the manga magazines he was reading held regular submissions contests for amateur artists, and he decided to take a crack at them. One of his submissions then caught the eye of one Kazuhiko Torishima, an editor at Weekly Shonen Jump. While Toriyama's first submission ultimately didn't make the cut (due to it being a Star Wars parody instead of an original work), Torishima was impressed enough by it to write him a letter of praise and encouraged him to continue to keep working at his craft and send in manga. Thus, Toriyama got his foot in the door.
Toriyama's manga career would then start off in 1978 with the one-shot story Wonder Island published by Shonen Jump. What would be his Breakthrough Hit, however, came in 1980, in the shape of the gag series Doctor Slump, which gained large popularity in Japan. Riding on this success, in 1984, Toriyama would begin the project that he would eventually become world-famous for: Dragon Ball. Ironically, it was meant to only be about two volumes, but we know how that ended up.
Around the same time as his Dragon Ball series was taking off in Japan, Yuji Horii approached him to work on Toriyama's most influential and famous video game work, the character designs and art for Dragon Quest, the game that would introduce computerized role playing games to the mainstream Japanese market and set the standard for all Eastern RPGs to follow. He continued to do every single piece of artwork, monster and character design as part of the same three-person team (with Yuji Horii (story) and Koichi Sugiyama (music) ) for every single Dragon Quest game until his passing, including spinoffs.
Other video games where he worked on the character designs include Chrono Trigger (with Chrono Cross departing from his artwork) and Blue Dragon (which managed to double as The Anime of the Game). The Tobal series wasn't nearly as much of a hit. Toriyama would also provide original and adjusted designs for characters in the various Dragon Ball films, and provided some pieces and the logo design for Dragon Ball GT.
On the manga side of things, after Dragon Ball he went on to do Kajika, Cowa!, Neko Majin and Sand Land, as well as sporadic one-shots — although he stopped putting out omnibus style tankoubon in 2005 after Neko Majin. He contributed greatly to the modern revival of Dragon Ball, starting with his joining the production of Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods in 2012 and its sequels. He also provided character designs and story ideas for the Dragon Ball Super anime and oversaw the direction of its manga with Toyotarō.note
Toriyama was known for his distinctive art style; while he suffered heavily from being able to draw Only Six Facesnote , his artwork is very stylized, and thus is hard to imitate without lots of careful study and practice. Another well-known facet is his rather unconventional style of storytelling, born through Writing by the Seat of Your Pants and unique sense of juvenile and pun-based humour.
Notably, a lot of the Mangaka that first started in The '90s were inspired by him, including Yoshihiro Togashi (YuYu Hakusho, Hunter × Hunter, Level E), Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto), and even Eiichiro Oda (One Piece). In fact, Toriyama and Oda worked together on a Manga in 2006 called Cross Epoch, a crossover that contains Dragon Ball and One Piece characters.
Perhaps the greatest indicator of his popularity was one specific timeslot on Japanese television known to fans as the Toriyama Block: from 1981 to 1999, a period of eighteen straight years, the Wednesday 7 p.m. timeslot on Fuji Television was taken up by something adapted from or inspired by one of Toriyama's most famous works.Breakdown
He died at the age of 68 on March 1, 2024 due to acute subdural hematoma,
a type of bleeding where blood accumulates in between the brain and the dura mater. According to sources close to Toriyama, the cause of his death was related to a brain tumor that he was scheduled to undergo surgery for. His death was not publicly announced until a week later, after his family held a private funeral. News of his death lead to official eulogies and statements of condolences not just from the Japanese government, who highlighted Toriyama's work as a prime example of Japan's soft power due to its widespread cultural impact worldwide, but also several international government officials, most prominently the French President and Prime Minister and the foreign ministers of China and El Salvador.
Works credited to Akira Toriyama:
- Dr. Slump (1980-1984)
- Dragon Ball (1984-1995)
- Go! Go! Ackman (1993-1994)
- Cowa! (1997–1998)
- Kajika (1999)
- Sand Land (2000)
- Jaco the Galactic Patrolman (2013)
- Lady Red (1987, Oneshot)
- Dub & Peter 1 (1992-1993)
- Kintoki (2013, Oneshot)
- Sachie-chan GOOD! (2008, script and storyboard; art by Masakazu Katsura)
- Jiya (2009–2010,script and storyboards; art by Masakazu Katsura)
- Dragon Ball Super (story concept and supervision; manga by Toyotarō, 2015–ongoing)
Akira Toriyama has referenced or paid homage to
Akira Toriyama and his career provide examples of:
- Art Evolution: Went from round and super-cartoony to angular and more streamlined, with his coloring shifting from a smoother effect to the harder lines of animation (inspired by the Dragon Ball anime, as well as his collaboration with Toyo'o Ashida on an original anime in 1988). He later went through another shift as he left pen and paper behind to do everything by computer starting in 2003. His art since then took on a rounder (yet even leaner and more streamlined) appearance, with finer-grained shading and some CG effects. His famously-sparse use of screen tone also increased in what little manga he did, presumably because it no longer involves having to actually paste it onto the page.
- Author Appeal:
- Cool Cars, Cool Planes, or anything else mechanical, thanks to his background in graphic design and love of plastic models. He admitted he drew Sand Land just as an excuse to draw tanks. He even designed his own car, the QVolt.
- He was also fascinated with machine guns. It's not uncommon for him to draw characters holding guns that are far more detailed than they are.
- Also, poop jokes.
- Since the 2010s, he had been fond of drawing characters in tracksuits, and photos of him wearing those have been found dating at least since 2004. To name a few examples, Goku, Gohan and Android 18, and Toribot.◊
- Inverted with Superheroes and self-described "Heroes of Justice", whom he tends to depict as flawed people that are often the butt of jokes (even the ones that are ultimately good people don't escape this treatment): Suppaman is an incompetent Jerkass, Lady Red is Too Dumb to Live, Mr.Satan is an opportunistic charlatan, Great Saiyaman is an Atrocious Alias that's careless about his secret identity, Jaco is an unscrupulous and cowardly jerk, Jiren only cares about strength and rejects the concept of friendship, and Dr. Hedo and the Gammas are easily manipulated into villainy due to their naivety (and Dr.Hedo later admits he knew his employers were evil and just wanted money).
- Cool Cars, Cool Planes, or anything else mechanical, thanks to his background in graphic design and love of plastic models. He admitted he drew Sand Land just as an excuse to draw tanks. He even designed his own car, the QVolt.
- Author Avatar: A few. Early on in Doctor Slump, it was a bird with a pen nib for a beak, as a pun on his name ("Tori" means "bird" in Japanese). This transitioned into a little robot with grabber claws for hands and a gas mask for a face, which he has continued to use as his "self portrait" for the majority of his career. The few times he draws himself as a human being, he's usually wearing a surgical mask and deliberately dressed in "unfashionable" outfits, such as a tank top and straw hat or a sweatsuit and baseball cap. Once in Doctor Slump he portrayed himself as a Xenomorph!
- Black Comedy: Despite Akira Toriyama working on series for teenage boys, his style of comedy has always had a dark irony to them. A particular example is Majin Buu giving a blind kid some milk made of people. Outside of these series he has also drawn comics for adults, including the controversial Lady Red, portrays rape as a punchline.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: He admitted that he spends most of his time watching TV or building plastic models. When writing a manga, he always puts it off until the end of the week, drawing and submitting each chapter within the last two days. While Toriyama sees it as proof of his laziness, many are amazed that he can do a week's worth of material in just a day and a half.
- The Cameo: He had an uncredited role as an extra in The Return of Godzilla. And this is when he was writing Dragon Ball at the time.
- Canon Welding: Of Doctor Slump and Dragon Ball, though it was just a one-off that was never intended to be taken seriously (among many other things, Doctor Slump is contemporaneous to when it was written and uses the Gregorian calendar, while Dragon Ball has its own, completely-fictional "Age" calendar).
- Children Are Innocent: Played straight in most of his works, though it's usually for comedic purposes. For example, a lot of humor in the original Dragon Ball series is derived from Goku's complete lack of awareness of societal rules.
- Edible Theme Naming: The most common form of Theme Naming he uses, which reached its peak in Dragon Ball.
- Forgetful Jones: One of the presiding reputations Toriyama accrued over the years regarding Dragon Ball. Perhaps most infamous was Lunch, who was handwaved out of the cast at the start of the Saiyan Arc to keep the cast lineup simple, and wasn't included in the Namek Arc (alongside many other cast members) due to the journey into space. By the time the story took them back to Earth, he completely forgot to put her back into the cast for the Android Arc.
- Harpo Does Something Funny:
- While he is credited as the scriptwriter and character designer of the Dragon Ball movies from Battle of Gods to Broly, he largely left the fight scenes for the animators to decide what kind of action they wanted.
- The same applies to the basic outlines he provided to Dragon Ball Super, both anime and manga. He provided a series of events, but at times didn't even describe how to reach the point. This is why when Goku fought Hit in the Champa saga, he used Super Saiyan God in the manga, but Kaioken combined with Super Saiyan Blue in the anime.
- Kid Hero: Many of his comics feature children as the main characters. For example, Doctor Slump has Arale, while Dragon Ball has Goku, Gohan, Goten, Trunks, Gotenks, Uub and Pan.
- Line-of-Sight Name: Frequently. To name just one example, the three girls abducted by Oolong in an early Dragon Ball episode are named after the model "Hedgehog" and "Lee" tanks he happened to have near his desk at the time.
- A number of characters in Kajika are named after fish, for the sole reason that Toriyama had multiple tanks full of tropical fish in his workroom at the time he was drawing it.
- No Fourth Wall: Often applied, especially in Dr. Slump. Dragon Ball was like this early on, phased the fourth wall jokes out over time, then had them start creeping back in when the Buu saga started.
- Only Six Faces: Which he mocks in Doctor Slump. While his art style can be very distinctive, at one point you will start to notice all the similar character designs across his entire works.
- Reclusive Artist:
- Akira Toriyama was a very private person. He rarely made public appearances, he didn't like to show his face (which is why his self-portraits either have his face covered up or don't resemble him at all), and not many photos of him exist. He was so reclusive that in the late 90s he was rumored to have died of a heart attack. A photo of him was obtained in 2017, but only because a reporter ambushed him while he was taking out his garbage (and it's implied that the photo was taken without his permission).note
- During the production of Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Toriyama met with the director in person only once. Every other time he was communicating through email.
- Akira Toriyama was a very private person. He rarely made public appearances, he didn't like to show his face (which is why his self-portraits either have his face covered up or don't resemble him at all), and not many photos of him exist. He was so reclusive that in the late 90s he was rumored to have died of a heart attack.
- Self-Deprecation:
- When his Author Avatar went to the future in Doctor Slump, it turned out that his future self has changed his profession to beggar.
- In one chapter of the Buu arc in Dragon Ball, Krillin complains that the artist is lazy, because the last two pages were copies. Toriyama's Author Avatar then sheepishly appears in the next panel to say "Uh, Mr. editor, you don't have to pay me for those ones, honest."
- His Author Avatar, "Tori-bot", is invariably depicted as short, fat, and hunchbacked, often with tacky old man clothes as well.
- He wrote a comic◊ for Dragon Ball's 30th anniversary, wherein Goku, Vegeta and Frieza are unimpressed by this fact and of himself (in his Tori-bot representation).
- Shōnen: The large majority of his work belongs to this demographic, with few exceptions such as Jiya, published in Young Jump (a Seinen magazine), and Lady Red, which appeared in Super Jump (nominally for adults).
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: On the surface, most of his works seems to be extremely idealistic and light-hearted. But on the other hand, as it is mentioned above, he also seems very keen to include plenty of Black Comedy on his works. He also disliked the anime crew trying to make his work more "wholesome", particularly when it came to the The Power of Friendship, which he always had a cynical attitude towards. And the following quote has been attributted to him: "Too much fantasy loses reality, too much hope may seem somehow empty".
- Unbuilt Trope: Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball are often credited with codifying many cliches of shonen (with Goku in particular being the Trope Codifier and most well-known example of the Stock Shōnen Hero), but he was more likely to subvert them where his imitators such as Oda would play them straight. For example, he mentioned in an interview that he disliked the anime crew trying to make his work more "wholesome", particularly when it came to the The Power of Friendship, which he always had a cynical attitude towards. Son Goku and his friends were also intentionally written as selfish and apathetic people (to the point that what he "wanted to depict the most was the sense that the main character might not be a good guy at all"), another instance where he got annoyed by the anime staff changing his work, in contrast to the straight heroes that would populate the Dragon Ball-inspired Shonen battle mangas that came later.
- Writing by the Seat of Your Pants:
- Akira Toriyama never planned his stories beyond the next ten or so chapters, and mostly figured out the details in the most immediate chapter. Despite the countless (and infamous) myths of him planning of ending Dragon Ball at one point, the true fact is that all of his stories were written on the fly, up to and including who would win each matchup in the Tournament Arcs. Quoting the man from an interview:"Getting ideas is difficult. You have to open your sketchbook and go through different concepts. Since I’m not an ordinary guy, I try to avoid simple stories. The right combination of firmly planned ideas and spontaneous ideas that come to mind is very important."
- Possibly the clearest instance of Toriyama having planned a plot development way ahead was the alien origins of Kami and Piccolo at the end of the Piccolo Daimao arc, as he told in the Daizenshuu 4 interview. This was also further hinted at during the Kami v. Piccolo battle in the following Piccolo Jr. arc, and was only revealed in the following one (the Saiyan arc).
- There is other evidence to suggest he did plan ahead some of his stories, mostly plot-points. From Dragon Ball Z, we have plot points that wouldn't appear in the manga until after they were used in the movies, which Toriyama had very little involvement in. The Super Saiyan first appeared in Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug (March 9, 1991), a month before its manga debut; Dende is Earth's guardian in Dragon Ball Z: The Return of Cooler (March 7, 1992), months before this happens in chapter 393 of the manga (October, 1992). Keep in mind it takes months to work on those movies, meaning there is roughly a year of difference between these plot points. Perhaps it would be fitting to suggest that Toriyama did plan ahead, he just didn't know how the plot points will connect to one another.
- Another good example is Gohan. After spending the entirety of the Z period alluding to Gohan matching or even supplanting his father as the strongest fighter, Toriyama finally does it at the end of the Cell Games Saga. This lasts about 10 chapters however, as he finds Gohan doesn't feel like a natural lead for Dragon Ball (likely because he doesn't have the same fighting drive as Goku), thus Toriyama takes efforts to put Goku back in as the lead despite technically still being dead.
- Akira Toriyama never planned his stories beyond the next ten or so chapters, and mostly figured out the details in the most immediate chapter. Despite the countless (and infamous) myths of him planning of ending Dragon Ball at one point, the true fact is that all of his stories were written on the fly, up to and including who would win each matchup in the Tournament Arcs. Quoting the man from an interview
- Worldbuilding: In Dragon Ball especially, though much of it seems to have come together accidentally rather than planned from the outset; he claims never to have been thinking further ahead than the next week's chapter.
