Akira Toriyama

Akira Toriyama (鳥山 明) was a Japanese manga artist and character designer.

He first achieved mainstream recognition for creating the popular manga series Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball (his most famous work) and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon.

Toriyama came to be regarded as one of the most important authors in the history of manga with his works highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many manga artists cite as a source of inspiration.

He cited Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (1952–1968) as the original source for his interest in manga.

Toriyama recalled that when he was in elementary school all of his classmates drew imitating anime and manga, as a result of not having many forms of entertainment.

He believed that he began to advance above everyone else when he started drawing pictures of his friends.

Despite being engrossed with manga in elementary school, Toriyama said he took a break from it in middle school, probably because he became more interested in films and TV shows.

When asked if he had any formative experiences with tokusatsu entertainment, Toriyama said he enjoyed the Ultraman TV show and Gamera series of kaiju films.

Toriyama said it was a "no-brainer" that he would attend a high school focused on creative design, but admitted he was more interested in having fun with friends.

Although he still did not read much manga, he would draw one himself every once in a while.

Despite his parents' strong opposition, Toriyama was confident about going into the work force upon graduation instead of continuing his education.

He worked at an advertising agency in Nagoya designing posters for three years.

Although Toriyama said he adapted to the job quickly, he admitted that he was often late because he was not a "morning person" and often got reprimanded for dressing casually, until he got sick of the environment and quit.

Needing money after quitting his job at the age of 23, Toriyama entered the manga industry by submitting a work to an amateur contest in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine, which he had randomly picked up in a coffee shop.

The timing did not line up for that contest, but another manga magazine, Weekly Shōnen Jump, accepted submissions for their Newcomer Award every month.

Kazuhiko Torishima, who would become his editor, read and enjoyed Toriyama's manga, but it was not eligible to compete because it was a parody of Star Wars instead of an original work.

Torishima sent the artist a telegram and encouraged him to keep drawing and sending him manga.

He related being blown away after seeing One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), and said he was drawn deeper into the world of illustration by hoping to draw pictures that good.

He was shocked again in elementary school when he saw the manga collection of a classmate's older brother, and again when he saw a television set for the first time at a neighbor's house.

This resulted in Wonder Island, which became Toriyama's first published work when it appeared in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1978.

It finished last place in the readers survey.

Toriyama later said that he had planned to quit manga after getting paid, but because Wonder Island 2 (1978) was also a "flop", his stubbornness would not let him and he continued to draw failed stories for a year; claiming around 500 pages' worth, including the published Today's Highlight Island (1979).

He said he learned a lot during this year and even had some fun.

When Torishima told him to draw a female lead character, Toriyama hesitantly created 1979's Tomato the Cutesy Gumshoe, which had some success.

Feeling encouraged, he decided to draw another female lead and created Dr. Slump.

Having sold 260 million copies worldwide, it is one of the best-selling manga series of all time and is considered to be one of the main reasons for the period when manga circulation was at its highest in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s.

Overseas, Dragon Ball's anime adaptations have been more successful than the manga and are credited with boosting anime's popularity in the Western world.

Dr. Slump, which was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1980 to 1984, was a huge success and made Toriyama a household name.

It follows the adventures of a perverted professor and his small but super-strong robot Arale.

He earned the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen manga with Dr. Slump, and it went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan.

In 1981, Dr. Slump earned Toriyama the Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen or shōjo manga series of the year.

An anime adaptation began airing that same year, during the prime time Wednesday 19:00 slot on Fuji TV.

It was adapted into a successful anime series, with a second anime created in 1997, 13 years after the manga ended.

His next series, Dragon Ball, would become one of the most popular and successful manga in the world.

Adaptations of Toriyama's work would occupy this time slot continuously for 18 years—through Dr. Slump's original run, Dragon Ball and its two sequels, and finally a rebooted Dr. Slump concluding in 1999.

By 2008, the Dr. Slump manga had sold over 35 million copies in Japan.

In 2019, Toriyama was decorated a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions to the arts.

Akira Toriyama was born in the city of Kiyosu, Aichi Prefecture, Japan.

He had a younger sister.

Toriyama drew pictures from a young age, mainly of the animals and vehicles that he was fond of.