Remembering Akira Toriyama

 

Akira Toriyama

5th April 1955 - 1st March 2024

It has been an absolute shock to many, myself included. On 1st March 2024, Akira Toriyama passed away from acute subdural hematoma at the age of 68. The news was announced a week later. A private service was held with his family in attendance, with plans for a commemorative gathering to be held at a later date. There is no doubt that Toriyama had brought joy to people's childhoods over the years and across the globe, especially with the Dragon Ball series, and inspired many people throughout his lifetime.

At a young age, Toriyama drew pictures of vehicles, animals, and during his elementary school years, his own classmates. After graduating from high school, focusing on creative design, he worked for an advertising agency in Nagoya designing posters, before quitting after 3 years, as he got sick of the environment. Following this, Toriyama entered the manga industry, and submitted works for the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine, but things didn't go down well at first, as his first submission was rejected as it was a Star Wars parody instead of an original work, and other submissions that did get published, including his first work Wonder Island, was ranked the lowest in readers surveys. Toriyama considered quitting, but chose to carry own, due to his own stubbornness.

It wasn't until he created Dr Slump that a success was on his hands. Dr Slump was serialised in the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine from 1980 to 1984, and it was awarded the Shogakukan Manga Award for Best Shōnen or Shōjo Manga Series of the Year in 1981. That same year, it spawned an anime adaptation, airing until 1986. Toriyama, encouraged by his editor Kazuhiko Torishima, would make his next manga series more action-based, as the former was fan of martial arts films. Toriyama created the two-part manga series Dragon Boy, released in 1983 to favourable response and would evolve into Toriyama's most successful work to date, Dragon Ball.

Inspired by the Chinese novel Journey to the West, as well as Hong Kong martial arts films, Dragon Ball was serialised in the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine from 1984 to 1995, and became one of the best-selling manga series of all time, having sold 159.5 million tankōbon copies in Japan alone, and was partially responsible for the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine's circulation hitting a record high of 6.53 million copies in 1995. Like Dr Slump, Dragon Ball spawned an anime adaptation, airing from 1986 to 1989 under the Dragon Ball name, and from 1989 to 1996 under the Dragon Ball Z name. Both the manga and the anime adaptation became a huge hit not only in Japan, but across the globe.

At the time of his death, Toriyama was still working on the upcoming anime series Dragon Ball DAIMA, which is due to air this autumn, and an ONA series adaptation of one of his works, SAND LAND, which had a animated movie adaptation released last year, is due to premiere later this month, which features new scenes not featured in the film, famous scenes from the original manga, and an all new story written by Toriyama himself, taking place after the film's storyline.

In addition to Dragon Ball, and manga in general, Toriyama was illustrator and character designer for the long-running video game series Dragon Quest since it began in 1986, and was also part of the "Dream Team", a group of three designers for the video game Chrono Trigger, and also contributed to the art for the video game Blue Dragon.

Over the years, Toriyama has left a lasting impact in the anime and manga industries, the fandom and many other people in general. If anything, the vast popularity of the Dragon Ball series played a significant part in anime and manga's growing popularity across the globe as a whole. Toriyama and the Dragon Ball series have both served as an inspiration for many other mangaka, who launched their own successful series, including Eiichiro Oda (One Piece), Hiro Mashima (Fairy Tail), Tite Kubo (Bleach) and Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto). Actor Yasuhisa Furuhara, on Twitter, cited Toriyama as an inspiration for the hairstyle of his character, Sōsuke Esumi, in Engine Sentai Go-onger. Outside of Japan, Ian Jones-Quartey, supervising producer of Steven Universe, is a fan of both Dragon Ball and Dr Slump, and uses Toriyama's vehicle designs as a reference for his own, and German comic book artist Hans Steinbach, also known as Hanzo, was strongly influenced by Toriyama. In addition, there were many references to the Dragon Ball series in other western shows and films, including The Amazing World of Gumball, The Owl House, and even the New Zealand comedy film, The Breaker Upperers, to name a few.

Toriyama has also played a part in gaining my interest in anime and manga. As a child, I watched portions of the Ocean dub of Dragon Ball Z when it aired on Cartoon Network in the UK, although I have no recollection of watching a full episode, I will admit, but it was thanks to the exposure that got me into checking out the Dragon Ball series years later, and back in 2014, the year after I started properly getting into anime and manga (I actually started getting into the two in late 2013), I bought the first Dragon Ball 3-in-1 manga from my local comic book shop, and in Christmas that year, I got Volume 1 of the Dragon Ball anime on DVD from my parents (watching it in Japanese with English subtitles), and I was hooked instantly. It also sparked my interest further for other series, including other big shōnen series, as well as non-shōnen series. If anything, thanks to the Dragon Ball/Dr Slump crossover episodes of both Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Super, it sparked my interest in checking out Dr Slump (at the time of this writing, the anime adaptation is currently not licensed in the UK, and the paperback manga appears to be out of print and is currently digital only, but I could be wrong about that).

Akira Toriyama has truly left us a legacy that cannot be understated. Inspiring so many people ranging from mangaka, actors, staff from western shows and films, and even people from the general public, and even leaving a mark in general pop culture both within and outside Japan. Toriyama may be gone, but alongside his legacy, he will never be forgotten.

Rest in peace, Toriyama-sensei.