61 Facts About Akira Toriyama

Akira Toriyama is a Japanese manga artist and character designer.

Akira Toriyama first achieved mainstream recognition for his highly successful manga series Dr Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon.

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

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

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

Akira Toriyama 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.

Akira Toriyama cited Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy as the original source for his interest in manga.

Akira Toriyama has 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.

Akira Toriyama believes that he began to advance above everyone else when he started drawing pictures of his friends.

Akira 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.

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

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

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

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

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

In 1981, Akira Toriyama was one of ten artists selected to create a 45-page work for Weekly Shonen Jumps Reader's Choice contest.

Akira Toriyama was selected to participate in the contest again in 1982 and submitted Mad Matic.

An official Toriyama fan club, Akira Toriyama Hozonkai, was established in 1982.

Akira Toriyama's founded Bird Studio in the early 1980s, which is a play on his name; "tori" meaning "bird".

Akira Toriyama began employing an assistant, mostly to work on backgrounds.

Torishima suggested that, as Akira Toriyama enjoyed kung fu films, he should create a kung fu shonen manga.

Akira Toriyama published two Weekly Shonen Jump one-shots in 1988; The Elder and Little Mamejiro.

Akira Toriyama has continued to work on every installment in the Dragon Quest series.

Akira Toriyama has served as the character designer for the Super Famicom RPG Chrono Trigger and for the fighting games Tobal No 1 and Tobal 2 for the PlayStation.

Akira Toriyama came up with the original story idea, co-wrote the screenplay with its director Toyoo Ashida, and designed the characters.

Akira Toriyama was still however involved in some overarching elements, including the name of the series and designs for the main cast.

On December 6,2002, Akira Toriyama made his only promotional appearance in the United States at the launch of Weekly Shonen Jumps North American counterpart, Shonen Jump, in New York City.

Akira Toriyama worked on a 2006 one-shot called Cross Epoch, in cooperation with One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda.

Akira Toriyama was the character designer and artist for the 2006 Mistwalker Xbox 360 exclusive RPG Blue Dragon, working with Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu, both of whom he had previously worked with on Chrono Trigger.

At the time, Akira Toriyama felt the 2007 Blue Dragon anime might potentially be his final work in animation.

Akira Toriyama was engaged by 20th Century Fox as a creative consultant on Dragonball Evolution, an American live-action film adaptation of Dragon Ball.

Akira Toriyama is credited as an executive producer on the 2009 film, which failed both critically and financially.

Akira Toriyama later stated in 2013 that he had felt the script did not "capture the world or the characteristics" of his series and was "bland" and not interesting, so he cautioned them and gave suggestions for changes.

Akira Toriyama drew a 2009 manga titled Delicious Island's Mr U for Anjo's Rural Society Project, a nonprofit environmental organization that teaches the importance of agriculture and nature to young children.

Akira Toriyama collaborated with Weekly Shonen Jump to create a video to raise awareness and support for those affected by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11,2011.

In 2012, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods was announced to be in development, with Akira Toriyama involved in its creation.

The film marked the series' first theatrical film in 17 years, and the first time Akira Toriyama had been involved in one as early as the screenwriting stages.

Akira Toriyama provides the basic story outline and some character designs for Dragon Ball Super, which began serialization in V Jump in June 2015 with an anime counterpart following in July.

Akira Toriyama is a former manga artist from Nagoya under the pen name "Nachi Mikami", and occasionally helped Toriyama and his assistant on Dr Slump when they were short on time.

Akira Toriyama is a well-known recluse, who avoids appearing in public or media.

Akira Toriyama has a love of cars and motorcycles, something he inherited from his father who used to race motorbikes and operated an auto repair business for a brief time, although he does not understand the mechanics himself.

Akira Toriyama has had a lifelong passion for plastic models, and has designed several for the Fine Molds brand.

Akira Toriyama collected autographs of famous manga artists, having over 30 including Yudetamago and Hisashi Eguchi, a hobby he gave to the character Peasuke Soramame.

Akira Toriyama was a fan of Hong Kong martial arts films, especially Bruce Lee films such as Enter the Dragon and Jackie Chan films such as Drunken Master, which went on to have a large influence on his later work.

Akira Toriyama stated he was influenced by animator Toyoo Ashida and the anime television series adaptation of his own Dragon Ball; from which he learned that separating colors instead of blending them makes the art cleaner and coloring illustrations easier.

Torishima has stated that Akira Toriyama aimed to be a gag manga artist because the competitions that he submitted to early on required entries in the gag category to only be 15 pages long, compared to story manga entries which had to be 31.

Akira Toriyama included many real-life people in the series, such as his assistants, wife, and colleagues, but most notably his editor Kazuhiko Torishima as the series' main antagonist, Dr Mashirito.

Akira Toriyama continued to use his characteristic comedic style in the beginning, but over the course of serialization this slowly changed, with him turning the series into a "nearly-pure fighting manga" later on.

Akira Toriyama did not plan out in advance what would happen in the series, instead choosing to draw as he went.

Akira Toriyama was commissioned to illustrate the characters and monsters for the first Dragon Quest video game in order to separate it from other role-playing games of the time.

Akira Toriyama has since worked on every installment in the series.

Akira Toriyama explained in 1995 that for video games, because the sprites are so small, as long as they have a distinguishing feature so people can tell which character it is, he can make complex designs without concern of having to reproduce it like he usually would in manga.

In 2016, Akira Toriyama revealed that because of the series' established time period and setting, his artistic options are limited, which makes every iteration harder to design for than the last.

Manga critic Jason Thompson declared Akira Toriyama's art influential, saying that his "extremely personal and recognizable style" was a reason for Dragon Ball's popularity.

Akira Toriyama himself said he went against the normal convention that the strongest characters should be the largest in terms of physical size, designing many of the series' most powerful characters with small statures.

In 2008, Oricon conducted a poll of people's favorite manga artists, with Akira Toriyama coming in second, behind only Nana author Ai Yazawa.

Akira Toriyama came in second, after only Osamu Tezuka, due to his works being highly influential and popular worldwide.

Akira Toriyama won the Special 40th Anniversary Festival Award at the 2013 Angouleme International Comics Festival, honoring his years in cartooning.

Akira Toriyama actually received the most votes for the festival's Grand Prix de la ville d'Angouleme award that year; however, the selection committee chose Willem as the recipient.

Akira Toriyama was decorated a Chevalier or "Knight" of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government on May 30,2019 for his contributions to the arts.

Akira Toriyama was a 2019 nominee for entry into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame.