Akira Toriyama was born on April 5, 1955, in Kiyosu, Japan. From a young age, Toriyama had a passion for drawing pictures of animals and vehicles. Toriyama often times credited the animated version of Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) as being the movie that made him want to become better at drawing and illustrating. Toriyama also credits Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (1952–1968) as the first series that made him interested in manga. His elementary school classmates oftentimes would draw pictures based off of anime and manga because this was one of the only forms of entertainment that many of them had. Toriyama stated that he began to become better at drawing than all of the kids his age when he started drawing pictures of his friends.
"Tackle life with as much energy as Goku! I'll try to do the same." — Akira Toriyama
Toriyama's fondness for drawing and illustrating made him adamant about attending a high school that was focused on creative design. Even though he had this fondness for drawing and illustrating, Toriyama would often be distracted because he was more interested in hanging out with his friends than focusing on schoolwork. At this point in his life, Toriyama still didn't read much manga but would have fun drawing his own manga. His parents strongly opposed his interest in manga, hoping their son would follow a different path. Because Toriyama wasn't very interested in school, he decided to skip postsecondary education and enter straight into the workforce. The first job that Toriyama got after high school was at an advertising agency where he would design posters. Toriyama had this job for three years, but since it wasn’t the kind of illustration he was truly passionate about, he quickly grew tired of the job. Because he quickly grew tired of this job, he would often show up late to work stating that he wasn't a "morning person" and would often time get in trouble for dressing casually. After three years at this "boring" job, Toriyama finally decided that he had enough and quit.
At this time, Toriyama was 23 years old and had to ask his mother for money while he was still unemployed. While Toriyama was unemployed, he started drawing manga again with all of his free time. While randomly in a coffee shop one day, Toriyama picked up a magazine titled "Weekly Shōnen Magazine" and in this magazine was an amateur manga contest. Sadly this contest was already over, but Toriyama found that in another magazine there was a newcomer award that held submissions for every month. Again, Toriyama was not eligible for this contest, but this time it was because his submission was a parody of Star Wars which was against the contest rules. Despite this setback, his work caught the attention of Kazuhiko Torishima, a publishing executive who would later become his editor. Impressed by Toriyama’s talent, Torishima sent him a telegram encouraging him to continue drawing and submitting his manga. This encouragement gave Toriyama the determination to keep on pursuing being a mangaka and he ended up creating Wonder Island, his first published work which appeared in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1978. Wonder Island flopped and ended up coming in last in the readers survey. Toriyama tried once again with Wonder Island 2 but this manga also flopped. Toriyama originally started submitting his manga so that he wouldn't have to rely on his mother for money, but because of these two flops, he wasn't willing to give up that easily. Despite his increased determination after the two previous failures, Toriyama continued to have several more unsuccessful manga attempts over the course of the following year. Even though Toriyama kept failing, he has said that during this time he had learned a lot and even had a lot of fun with these stories.
Torishima then encouraged Toriyama to try and draw a female lead which caused Toriyama to find mild success. Feeling a slight bit of success, Toriyama decided to try and draw another female lead and created what would become the Dr. Slump manga series. Dr. Slump was a manga series that was published in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1980-84 and it was Toriyama's first major success. An anime adaptation of Dr. Slump began airing that same year. The Dr. Slump manga series went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan. For a few years after creating Dr. Slump, Toriyama kept working on one-shot manga stories.
In 1983, Torishima recognized Toriyama’s love for kung fu movies and encouraged him to create a kung fu-inspired manga. This led to the creation of Dragon Boy, a two-part manga published in "Fresh Jump Magazine" in the August and October issues of that year. The story followed a young boy trained in kung fu who is tasked with escorting a princess back to her homeland. Although Dragon Boy was a short series, it was well received and ultimately became the foundation for The Dragon Ball manga, which debuted in 1984. Toriyama also created another manga series, The Adventures of Tongpoo, which also featured elements that would be incorporated into Dragon Ball.
The Dragon Ball manga was serialized in the "Weekly Shōnen Jump Magazine" from December 3, 1984, to June 5, 1995. In 1986, the series was adapted into an anime of the same name, premiering in Japan on February 26. Dragon Ball quickly became a massive success in Japan, both as a manga and an anime. In 1989, starting with Chapter 195 of the manga, titled "Enter the Alien!!", the story was adapted into a sequel anime, Dragon Ball Z (or DBZ for short), which continued Goku's journey into the Saiyan, Frieza, Cell, and Majin Buu Sagas. During the '90s, Turner Broadcasting System (an American broadcasting company) had started a new TV channel called Cartoon Network (borrowed heavily from the Hanna Barbera catalog of characters). Turner Broadcasting wanted to start a new programming block on Cartoon Network called Toonami. In 1997, Toonami debuted as a weekday afternoon block on Cartoon Network.
Toonami originally aired Western action-oriented cartoons but in 1999, Toonami aired DBZ and Sailor Moon. Originally, DBZ was aired in the US with the Harmony Gold dub. The Harmony Gold DBZ dub was syndicated for different TV channels across the US. The Harmony Gold dub was lacking in quality and on May 23, 1998, it ended after only 56 episodes. The last Harmony Gold dubbed episode of DBZ was "Goku... Super Saiyan?" The Harmony Gold dub was heavily edited and censored for the Western audience. Originally, Funimation (Funimation Productions, a Texas-based company) wanted to continue from where the Harmony Gold dub left off and had two seasons on syndication until they ultimately decided to start over from scratch. Funimation opted to start over with an in-house dubbing of DBZ. Funimation held auditions for the in-house dub of DBZ from late 1998 to early 1999. This is when Funimation hired iconic English voice actors for DBZ such as Sean Schemmel (Voice of Goku) and Christopher Sabat (voice of Vegeta, Piccolo, Yamcha, and Shenron, among others). The original syndicated Funimation version of DBZ started airing on Toonami on August 31, 1998, with only two seasons. The later in-house Funimation dub of DBZ started airing on Toonami in 2001. Ultimately, Toonami and Funimation's efforts played a significant role in making DBZ extremely popular outside of Japan, helping spark the anime boom of the late 90s and early 2000s in the West.
Toriyama continued the Dragon Ball manga series until the final issue on August 4, 1995. This issue was titled "Goodbye, Dragon World". The Dragon Ball manga ran for almost 11 years with 519 chapters (and one bonus chapter) and spanned across two anime series (Dragon Ball and DBZ) and a bunch of anime-only storylines in the form of feature-length films. After the conclusion of the Dragon Ball manga and the DBZ anime, Toei Animation, the studio behind the anime adaptations, wanted to create a new series that would continue the legacy of DBZ and attract a similar audience. In 1996, Toei began working on Dragon Ball GT, an anime-only series that was set in the Dragon Ball universe but featured an entirely new storyline, not based on Toriyama's manga. Dragon Ball GT premiered on February 7, 1996, but it received mixed reviews. Some fans disliked it because it wasn’t based on Toriyama’s original manga, while others enjoyed it as a fun, non-canon addition to the Dragon Ball franchise, choosing to view it as an alternate story rather than a direct continuation of the original saga. Dragon Ball GT ran for only 64 episodes and ended on November 19, 1997.
After the final issue of the Dragon Ball manga, Toriyama took a hiatus from the franchise and began working on other shorter stories. However, the Dragon Ball franchise made a return in 2013, with the release of the movie "Dragon Ball Z: Battle of the Gods". Fans were thrilled to finally receive new Dragon Ball content after nearly 13 years. Although Dragon Ball had a brief return in 2008 with a special titled "Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return!", it wasn’t until 2013 that the franchise officially returned with a full-length film. Following Battle of the Gods, on April 18, 2015, another Dragon Ball Z movie, "Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F", was released. This film marked the return of one of the franchise’s most iconic villains, Frieza, as the main antagonist. Later that same year, in June 2015, Toriyama made his return to the franchise with the debut of the Dragon Ball Super manga. Dragon Ball Super was also adapted into an anime series, with the Battle of the Gods and Resurrection 'F' movies serving as the basis for the first two arcs of the series. The Dragon Ball Super Anime series ran until its final episode on March 25, 2018. The final episode was titled "The Miraculous Conclusion! Farewell, Goku! Until We Meet Again!". The Dragon Ball Super manga continued without the anime with the Moro Arc.
In 2023, Toei started working on a new anime-only series called Dragon Ball Daima and originally planned to not have Toriyama's input but Toriyama ended up being heavily involved in the creation of the story, characters, and world of Daima. Dragon Ball Daima was set to release in the fall of 2024. Ahead of the launch of Daima on March 8, 2024, Bird Studio (Toriyama's production company) announced that Toriyama had passed away a week earlier on March 1, 2024, at the age of 68, from an acute subdural hematoma (a form of brain bleeding). The passing of Toriyama came as a complete surprise to his fans and followers because of how private his personal life really was. The news of Toriyama's tragic passing sparked a massive wave of social media tributes, celebrating his life, legacy, and the global impact of the Dragon Ball franchise. On Twitter, the announcement of his death quickly became a trending topic, even surpassing the attention given to U.S. President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, which was held around the same time. Tributes to Toriyama also poured in from well-known mangakas, including One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda.
Akira Toriyama was a monumental figure in the world of manga/anime and a major reason why anime gained worldwide popularity. His work, especially with Dragon Ball, has left an indelible mark on global pop culture. Toriyama’s legacy will continue through the enduring success of the Dragon Ball franchise, which spans multiple manga series, anime adaptations, movies, video games, and merchandise.
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