Tributes from Naruto and One Piece creators fly in as Dragon Ball icon Akira Toriyama passes away

Akira Toriyama, the beloved creator of Dragon Ball, Dr. Slump, and many more classic manga, has died at the age of 68 from an acute subdural haematoma. The news was confirmed by Toriyama’s own Bird Studio which stated, “It’s our deep regret that he still had several works in the middle of creation with great enthusiasm,” adding, “He would have many more things to achieve.”

Born in Nagoya, Japan in 1955, Toriyama was a keen artist from a young age, citing both One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy as early inspirations.

His first professional job was designing posters for an advertising agency. Following his resignation from that role a few years later, he submitted a parody of Star Wars to Shueisha’s famous Weekly Shōnen Jump title. Editor Kazuhiko Torishima liked the work, though its parodic nature made it ineligible for publication. Still, he encouraged Toriyama to continue drawing, and in 1978 his first professional work, Wonder Island, was published.

Art from Dr. Slump

Alas, it was not an immediate success, with Wonder Island and its sequel proving unpopular with readers. Undeterred, Toriyama continued to draw manga over the next year, publishing Tomato the Cutesy Gumshoe in 1979. The story went down well with readers and, buoyed by its success, Toriyama went on to create another female-led story: Dr. Slump.

Published between 1980 and 1984 in Weekly Shōnen Jump, Dr. Slump is about the adventures of a strong-but-naive robot named Arale Norimaki, and her inventor, Senbei Norimaki. It proved popular with readers and was quickly adapted into an anime series, which ran for 243 episodes, plus several specials and films. Toriyama’s star was now very much on the rise.

Dragon Ball Daima

In 1984, Toriyama created the work for which he is best known. Dragon Ball was heavily inspired by martial arts films, and mixed comedy with action, with young Goku embarking on a quest to find the mystical and wish-granting Dragon Balls.

The series was an instant hit, at its height helping to propel Weekly Shōnen Jump to more than 6 million sales per week. To date, more than 260 million collected editions of Dragon Ball have been sold worldwide and it remains one of the best-selling manga series of all time.

But Dragon Ball wasn’t just a manga. Its popularity was boosted by a pair of anime series, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, which marked the start of a sprawling franchise. In the years since, there have been countless series – including the upcoming Dragon Ball Daima – as well as animated films, a US-produced live action feature (Dragon Ball Evolution), and, of course games. To date, there have been more than 40 video games based on Dragon Ball across many different formats, as well as several popular collectible card games.

Dragon Quest

Away from Dragon Ball, Toriyama was hired as a character designer for the 1986 RPG Dragon Quest, which quickly became its own popular franchise, and which Toriyama would continued to work on over the years, alongside a handful of other video game projects, such as Chrono Trigger.

He also designed the characters and co-wrote (with Toyoo Ashida) the screenplay for animated film Kosuke & Rikimaru: The Dragon of Konpei Island, designed an electric car for CQ Motors, and continued to work on numerous manga, including 2000’s Sand Land – recently transformed into a hit anime, with a video game on the way – and Cross Epoch, a collaboration with One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero

Toriyama’s passing has been met with sadness from fans and creators around the world. In a statement, Eiichiro Oda wrote, “[Toriyama] was one of the founders of an era where both adults and children could read and enjoy manga, from a time when reading manga was considered not good for education. He let us dream of the extent of things manga can achieve and showed [creators] that we can even expand our field to the world.”

Masashi Kishimoto, the creator of Naruto, said, “I grew up with your manga, which became a part of my life. On bad days, the weekly Dragon Ball [series] would help me forget [my troubles]. As a country boy with not much else, it saved me.”

Bird Studios, in its statement on Toriyama’s death, added “We hope that Akira Toriyama’s unique world of creation continues to be loved by everyone for a long time to come.”

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