83 Facts About Kazuhiko Torishima

Kazuhiko Torishima is a Japanese publishing executive and former manga magazine editor, who is currently serving as an outside director at Bushiroad.

Kazuhiko Torishima formerly worked at Shueisha, where he began as an editor in 1976, before becoming a senior managing director, and later a Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions director.

Kazuhiko Torishima began working for Bushiroad at the end of 2022.

Kazuhiko Torishima is often associated with works from the manga magazine Weekly Shonen Jump, for which he was editor-in-chief from 1996 to 2001.

Kazuhiko Torishima discovered Akira Toriyama and was his editor throughout the run of Dr Slump and during the first half of Dragon Ball.

Kazuhiko Torishima received a Special Achievement Award at the 2022 Japan Media Arts Festival for his work in manga.

Kazuhiko Torishima was born in the small community of Ojiya, Niigata on October 19,1952.

Kazuhiko Torishima described his mother as very positive, but said he did not have a good relationship with his father.

Kazuhiko Torishima has repeatedly spoken of his dislike for his hometown, which he described as a "stifling" place where nothing changes, and its residents, who he feels are "incredibly complicated" to deal with.

When he had enough of philosophers writing different and contradictory things, Kazuhiko Torishima switched to erotic novels such as Story of the Eye and Story of O Kazuhiko Torishima said that because he could not get into a university, he moved to Tokyo to enter a college-preparatory school, where he was liberated having found people that were smarter than himself and who shared his interests.

Kazuhiko Torishima went on to attend Keio University, which he chose because its tuition was cheap, against his father's wishes because he thought it would be the best way to achieve financial independence.

Kazuhiko Torishima later stated that the people he met at Keio became lifelong friends.

Kazuhiko Torishima chose the latter because he said he lacked almost all the skills needed for the former.

Kazuhiko Torishima wanted to work at Bungeishunju, but they were one of many publishing companies not hiring due to the recession from the 1973 oil crisis.

Kazuhiko Torishima wanted to work on Monthly Playboy because of their high-quality short stories and novellas by famous authors, both domestic and foreign.

Kazuhiko Torishima said he considered quitting after only a week.

Kazuhiko Torishima was put in charge of Buronson and Shinji Hiramatsu's Doberman Deka.

Kazuhiko Torishima studied the first chapter of Ore wa Teppei panel by panel and the layout and angles in each one, because he felt it was the easiest manga to read and tried to impart this basic structure to his artists.

Kazuhiko Torishima was most notably editor to Akira Toriyama throughout Dr Slump and for the first half of Dragon Ball.

Kazuhiko Torishima though it was beautiful and funny, but it was ineligible to compete because it was a parody, so Torishima sent the artist a telegram and encouraged him to keep drawing and sending him manga.

However, it took 18 months, with Kazuhiko Torishima rejecting 500 pages of work, until Toriyama began his first serialized work in Dr Slump.

However, Kazuhiko Torishima felt the anime was unsuccessful because it greatly deviated from the original manga.

Kazuhiko Torishima believed the reason for its deficiency was due to no one at Weekly Shonen Jump knowing how to manage an anime adaptation based on one of their manga as this was "the first real time" it had been done.

Kazuhiko Torishima has said that a lot of "terrible" merchandise was released under the Dr Slump name without prior consultation.

When he felt the Dragon Ball anime's ratings were gradually declining, Kazuhiko Torishima went so far as to ask the studio to change the producer because he had a "cute and funny" image connected to Toriyama's work due to previously working on Dr Slump, and was missing the more serious tone of the new work.

Kazuhiko Torishima discovered Masakazu Katsura, and worked as his editor on Wing-Man and Video Girl Ai.

Kazuhiko Torishima cited Makoto Isshiki as the most difficult manga artist he has worked worth, explaining that she wanted to end Hanattare Boogie as soon as he told her it had been approved for serialization.

Kazuhiko Torishima became a fan of video games around 1977, and prefers them over manga.

Kazuhiko Torishima agreed on the condition that Sakuma, who later created the Momotaro Dentetsu video game series, be put in charge of it.

Kazuhiko Torishima brought Horii into the Jump fold to write articles about video games.

Kazuhiko Torishima's colleagues were against his bringing of outsiders into the company, for reasons such as worrying about the survey results being leaked.

Kazuhiko Torishima agreed as long as Jump was the exclusive magazine sponsor, and assigned Horii to cover the event.

When his manager told him to figure out why Shogakukan's CoroCoro Comic was doing so well, Kazuhiko Torishima determined it was because of the sealed pages that had to be cut open to reveal cheats and tips for video games.

The column was a hit that reached third in the magazine's readers poll and led to non-stop phone calls about the games, forcing Kazuhiko Torishima to pay Horii and Hiroshi Miyaoka just to answer the phones.

Kazuhiko Torishima claimed that he purposefully had Enix fully fund the game, intentionally keeping Shueisha out of the decision making process not only for the good of the product, but because it would have cut into Toriyama's share of the profits.

Around 1989, Kazuhiko Torishima was promoted to deputy editor of Weekly Shonen Jump.

Kazuhiko Torishima had Horii supervise the manga to make sure it did not feel out of place in the Dragon Quest world.

Kazuhiko Torishima then received permission to re-launch the magazine with the new goal of containing manga, anime, and video game content all in one medium.

Kazuhiko Torishima later claimed to have predicted people being able to access all of these in one place like smartphones, and wanted to "get off the sinking ship" that was print manga magazines as soon as possible.

Kazuhiko Torishima wanted to begin promoting games while they were still in development, and personally went around to major game studios and asked them to publicize the names and faces of the individual creators.

Kazuhiko Torishima left Weekly Shonen Jump to re-launch V Jump in 1992, and serve as its editor-in-chief.

Kazuhiko Torishima was approached by Hironobu Sakaguchi to include coverage of Final Fantasy IV in Jump.

Kazuhiko Torishima stated that he tricked the Jump editorial department in regards to Chrono Trigger; after the first publication in Weekly Shonen Jump, coverage of the game was mainly done in V Jump in order to give the newly-launching magazine attention.

Kazuhiko Torishima cited the 1995 end of Dragon Ball as the biggest reason for the rapid fall, explaining that, when a long-running hit series ends, the regular readers tend to leave.

Kazuhiko Torishima's plan was to return to the magazine's roots which its first editor-in-chief had set; new serializations by new authors, working together with editors to create, and reader surveys.

Kazuhiko Torishima cut all of the veteran artists and increased the competitive principle amongst the editors by giving them more freedom, but firing any who failed to produce hit series.

Kazuhiko Torishima served during the establishment of Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions in 2008.

Kazuhiko Torishima became a managing director at Shueisha in August 2009 and promoted to Senior Managing Director in August 2010.

Kazuhiko Torishima retired from Shueisha in August 2015 and became president of Hakusensha in November 2015.

Kazuhiko Torishima was a member of the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games' Mascot Selection Panel, who determined the process for choosing the mascots of the 2020 Summer Olympics.

In 2021, Kazuhiko Torishima began Dr Mashirito's Ultimate Manga Technique in Saikyo Jump.

From 2021 to 2022, Kazuhiko Torishima was an advisor to Hakusensha.

On December 31,2022, Kazuhiko Torishima was approved as an outside director at Bushiroad.

Rejected: Shonen Jump's Legendary Editor-in-chief's "Unpleasant" Work Techniques, Kazuhiko Torishima's book recounting stories about notable titles he worked on in his career, will be published on May 22,2025.

Kazuhiko Torishima stated that editors in charge of hit manga are the most important people at a manga magazine.

Kazuhiko Torishima called an editor-in-chief's opinion on manga "basically irrelevant" because they are motivated by the response from readers.

Kazuhiko Torishima stated that editors do not need to be liked and are not friends with the manga artists.

Kazuhiko Torishima said he could only deal with up to five manga artists at one time.

Kazuhiko Torishima said his meetings about manga were only around 30 minutes long and he would only read a storyboard twice; the first time to get everything in his head, and the second time to explain what needed to be changed.

Kazuhiko Torishima aimed to get new authors serialized within three years, preferably between two and three.

Kazuhiko Torishima believes it is best for editors to not read too much manga, as an editor who loves manga will force their own preferences on the artists.

Kazuhiko Torishima believes manga can be either easy or hard to read, and that this readability is determined by panel layouts and their perspectives.

Kazuhiko Torishima would read a manga 50 times, researching and analyzing where each and every panel should go, so that he could then explain this to the artists.

Between panels, dialogue, and pictures, Kazuhiko Torishima believes pictures are the least important in manga.

In 2022, Kazuhiko Torishima said some modern manga, where the story progresses through dialogue between characters, felt a bit unnatural because they had too much talking.

Kazuhiko Torishima said every new artist has something they desperately want to depict, but these often end up as copies of series that they like and you can not make a hit out of an imitation.

Kazuhiko Torishima explained, the only way to realize their originality is through trial and error, writing and drawing like Toriyama and his 500 failed manuscripts.

Kazuhiko Torishima said it is easier for new writers to create a hit because their sensibilities are closer to the readers.

Kazuhiko Torishima explained that while they have less ability to compose, their manuscript fees are cheaper when compared to veteran artists.

Kazuhiko Torishima explained the settings are too elaborate, and it is the editors' jobs to cut this down, but they are unable to do so.

Kazuhiko Torishima explained that major publishers are reluctant to shift to digital distribution because it cuts out the printing companies, distribution companies, and bookstores, and they are using manga sales to cover other loss-making divisions instead of putting it back into the manga industry.

Kazuhiko Torishima believes the only way forward is for editors to take on more responsibilities and be hired as free agents by publishing houses, who will pay more to those who produce hits and release those who do not.

Kazuhiko Torishima pointed out that the shift to digital sees manga having to now compete against anime and video games for screen time.

Kazuhiko Torishima received a Special Achievement Award at the 2022 Japan Media Arts Festival for his work in manga, including the discovering of Toriyama and establishing the now "indispensable cross-media production method".

Kazuhiko Torishima claimed that when he became a deputy editor at Weekly Shonen Jump he created teaching materials for how editors should help their manga artists that are still used as of 2016.

Kazuhiko Torishima convinced Toriyama to make Arale the main character of Dr Slump instead of Senbei Norimaki, which the author agrees turned out better.

Toriyama stated that Kazuhiko Torishima enjoys romance and that the relationships of Arale and Obotchaman, Akane and Tsukutsun, and Taro and Tsururin in Dr Slump were all his ideas.

Kazuhiko Torishima stated that when starting Dragon Ball, Torishima had wanted Goku and Bulma to form a relationship.

Loosely basing Dragon Ball on Journey to the West was the idea of Kazuhiko Torishima, who chose the novel largely because it was a free intellectual property, but because its Chinese setting was not common in manga at the time and would make it both unique and differentiate it from Dr Slumps US West Coast feel.

Kazuhiko Torishima said he was disappointed when Masakazu Katsura told him he wanted to draw a transforming superhero manga.

Kazuhiko Torishima explained that science fiction works in television with its special effects, but it does not come across visually in manga.

Katsura credited Kazuhiko Torishima with coming up with ideas for Video Girl Ai.

Kazuhiko Torishima has been parodied often in many manga series serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump.