Toriyama, Akira

At an early age, Akira Toriyama became interested in drawing and wanted to do it professionally. In 1974 he graduated from the prefectural vocational school in the design department. So the first step was taken. After a short stay at an advertising agency, he began working in 1977 as an artist at Shueisha , the largest manga publisher in Japan. He made his debut as a professional manga in the magazine “ Shonen Jump ” with “Magic Island” in 1978. He didn’t have much success, but Akira saw that he was interested in his works. Then, in Shonen Jump, he published Tomato Girl Detective and Todays' Hightlight Island . But success overtook him only with Dr.Slump manga (1980-1985). His first publication is the Wonder Island manga [Wonder Island] (1978) in the magazine Shounen Jump. From the very first works, Toriyama showed an interest in creating strange and absurd parody worlds and risky "stupid" humor. Toriyama became widely known after the beginning of the publication in 1980 of the Dr. Slamp manga [Dr. Slump] (1980-1985) about the adventures of a mad scientist and his creation - robot girl Aral. This series set a record for the speed at which work began on the film adaptation - just five weeks after the publication began. Since 1993, color manga-continuation of this series has been published - "Baby Aral and Dr. Slamp" [Dr Slump Arale-chan].

In 1985, the most popular currently Toriyama manga series, Dragon Ball (1985-1995), based on the legend of Son Goku (Sun Wukong), very popular in Japan, began to appear on Shounen Jump. Wu Cheng's classic Chinese novel Journey to the West.

This manga series did not tell the story of Son Goku’s adventures at maturity, which they usually wrote about, but the life story of Son Goku as a teenager, the story of how he collected Dragon pearls (gathered together seven pearls fulfill any desire of their owner) and incidentally became the greatest warrior of the universe.

"Dragonball" combines an intricate plot, specific humor and numerous battle scenes and became one of the most popular manga in the whole history of Japan. Two large anime series (totaling 444 episodes, not counting the third, a remake of the second and fifth anime series, made without the participation of Toriyama) and 13 full-length anime films were made based on his motives, and about three sales of related products billion dollars.

In addition to creating a manga, Toriyama works as a character designer in computer console games. His most famous work is the Dragon Quest RPG series and the Chrono Trigger RPG game.

Toriyama is currently one of Japan’s most popular mangaks. His works are even exhibited in the most famous museums of modern art and attract millions of crowds of visitors. Before him, only Tezuka was honored with this honor, and posthumously.

Although his creations are not examples of striking graphics or impeccable plots, they can be immediately distinguished by the very special atmosphere of childlike spontaneity and teenage readiness to laugh at everything that comes to the attention of the author.

• Magic island
• Tomato Girl Detective
• Todays' hightlight island
• Dr.Slump
• Dragon ball
• Sand land
• Mister ho
• Neko majin
• Cowa!
• Kajika
• Dragon Ball x One Piece: Cross Epoch
• Jaco the Galactic Patrolman

Height: 174 cm
Wife: Yoshimi Toriyama
Pets: Cat, dog, bird
Children: son and daughter

• Profile (English) on MobyGames .