AKIRA TORIYAMA

born on 1955-04-05,^[2] in Kiyosu, Aichi Prefecture, Japan,^[2] is a widely known and acclaimed Japanese manga artist known mostly for his work in the ''Dragon Ball'' metaseries, as well as the media franchise of the same name which he began in 1984.

Contents

Biography

Selected bibliography

Manga

Video games (character design)

Children's books

Blue Dragon

Notes and references

External links

Biography

He debuted in 1979 with the story ''Wonder Island'', published in ''Weekly Shonen Jump'', and first gained popularity for the manga and anime series ''Dr. Slump'', originally serialized weekly in ''Shonen Jump'' from 1980 to 1984. In 1982, he won the Shogakukan Manga Award for ''Dr. Slump'' per best ''shōnen'' title of the year.
In 1984, Toriyama was responsible for developing ''Dragon Ball'' which was initially serialized in ''Weekly Shonen Jump''. It became an instant accomplishment—primarily selling over 35,000,000 copies in Japan,^[4] ''Dragon Ball'' eventually became a record-breaking best seller with over 120,000,000 copies sold.^[4] Aside from the Japanese fame, the series was equally successful internationally as well, including in the United States and Latin America.
Toriyama is mostly acknowledged for his major hit ''Dragon Ball''. This work was one of the linchpins for what is accepted as the Golden Age of ''Jump''. Its success "forced" Toriyama to continue working on ''Dragon Ball'' from 1984 to 1995. During that eleven-year period, he produced 519 chapters, collected into 42 volumes. Each volume has an average of 200 pages. Moreover, the benefit of the manga led to an animated television program; it brought forth the famed ''Dragon Ball Z'', numerous feature-length animated movies, several video games, and mega-merchandising. Though Toriyama had been planning to end ''Dragon Ball'' for a long time,^[6] his editors agreed to let him end the manga so he could "take some new steps in life," as he put it.^[6] Due to the series popularity, the anime still continued with ''Dragon Ball GT''. Toriyama was still involved in the project by supervising it's production, although in a limited way.^[8] The ''Dragon Ball'' anime, including installments that followed, spawned over 500 episodes made in Japan, and are produced and licensed for North America and Australia by FUNimation.
Toriyama's clean line and design sense led to jobs designing characters for the phenomenally popular ''Dragon Quest'' series of role-playing games (formerly called ''Dragon Warrior'' in the United States). Toriyama has also served as the character designer for the Super Famicom RPG ''Chrono Trigger'', and the fighting game ''Tobal No. 1'' for the PlayStation (as well as its sequel, ''Tobal 2'', released only in Japan), and continues to produce the occasional manga story.
His works after ''Dragon Ball'' tend to be short (100-200 page) stories, including ''Cowa!'', ''Kajika'', and ''Sand Land'', as well as one-shots, like ''Neko Majin''.
Most recently, he has been the character designer for '' for the Nintendo Wii, ''Dragon Quest IX'' for the Nintendo DS and ''Dragon Ball Online'', an MMORPG based on the series ''Dragon Ball''.
Toriyama recently worked on a one-shot called ''Cross Epoch'', in cooperation with ''One Piece'' creator Eiichiro Oda. The story is a short crossover that presents characters from both ''One Piece'' and ''Dragon Ball'' respectively.
The name of Toriyama's studio is ''Bird Studio'', which is a play on his name, meaning "Bird Mountain". 鳥 ''tori'' means "bird" and 山 ''yama'' means "mountain". 明 ''akira'' means "intelligent" or "brightness". Toriyama does almost all of the work in ''Bird Studio''; his assistant does mostly backgrounds. The studio has not been very active over the last few years and has only done occasional one-shots.

Selected bibliography

Manga

★ ''Awawa World'' (1977, unpublished)

★ ''Wonder Island'' (1978-1979, 2 one-shots)

★ ''Today's Highlight Island'' (1979, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Tomato'' (1979, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Hetappi'' (1982, 1 tankōbon, drawing lesson) - Co-author: Akira Sakuma

★ ''Dr. Slump'' (1980-1985, 18 tankōbon, kanzenban)

★ ''Escape'' (1981, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Pola & Roid'' (1981, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Pink'' (1982, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Mad Matic'' (1982, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Chobit'' (1983, 2 one-shots, This is not to be confused with the later Chobits, drawn by Clamp)

★ ''Dragon Boy'' (1983, 2 one-shots)

★ ''Tongpoo'' (1983, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Toriyama Akira's Manga Theater Vol.1'' (1983, 1 tankōbon)

★ ''Dragon Ball'' (1984-1995, 42 tankōbon, later reassembled into 34 kanzenban special editions)

★ ''Mr. Ho'' (1986, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Lady Red'' (1987, 3 one-shots, adult gag manga)

★ ''Kennosuke'' (1987, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Sonchoh'' (1987, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Mamejiro'' (1988, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Toriyama Akira's Manga Theater Vol.2'' (1988, 1 tankōbon)

★ ''Karamaru'' (1989, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Wolf'' (1990, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Cashman Saving Soldier'' (1991, 3 one-shots - 1998, 1 tankōbon)

★ ''Dub & Peter 1'' (1992, 4 one-shots)

★ ''Go!Go!Ackman'' (1993, 11 one-shots)

★ ''Chotto Kaettekita Dr. Slump'' (1994-1997, 4 slim tankōbon)

★ ''Tokimecha'' (1996, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Alien X-Peke'' (1997, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Bubul'' (1997, 1 one-shot)

★ ''Toriyama Akira's Manga Theater Vol.3'' (1997, 1 tankōbon)

★ ''Cowa!'' (1997-1998, 1 tankōbon)

★ ''Cashman Saving Soldier/New Cashman Saving Soldier'' (1998, 1 tankōbon)

★ ''Tahi Mahi'' (1998, 1 tankōbon)

★ ''Kajika'' (1998, 1 tankōbon)

★ ''Neko Majin'' (1999-2005, 5 one-shots, 1 tankōbon/kanzenban)

★ ''Sand Land'' (2000, 1 tankōbon)

★ ''Kochikame'' (2006, 1 one-shot, omake)

★ ''Cross Epoch'' (2006, 1 one-shot)

Video games (character design)

★ ''Dragon Quest series:'' Role-Playing Game (RPG) series published by Enix (now Square Enix). Appeared on Nintendo's Famicom/NES, Super Famicom/Super NES, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Sony's PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and soon Nintendo's Wii.

★ ''Dragon Quest Monsters series:'' Role-Playing Game (RPG) series published by Enix (now Square Enix). Appeared on Nintendo's Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and Sony's PlayStation.

★ ''Chrono Trigger:'' Role-Playing Game (RPG) developed by SquareSoft (now Square Enix) for Nintendo's Super NES. It was relaunched with a few additions for Sony's PlayStation.

★ ''Tobal'': Two fighting games for Sony's PlayStation developed by SquareSoft.

★ ''Blue Dragon'': Role Playing Game (RPG) for Microsoft's Xbox 360 developed by Mistwalker studio for Artoon based on a design by ''Final Fantasy'' originator Hironobu Sakaguchi.

Children's books

★ ''Toccio the Angel''

Blue Dragon

Toriyama recently announced that his help with the making of the ''Blue Dragon'' anime may very well be his final assistance in anime. In his own words, he said:
''Blue Dragon'' began airing on TV Tokyo on Saturday, April 7, 2007.

Notes and references

1. Spouse listed as "Yoshimi" in ''Dr. Slump'' manga, Volume 18
2. Anime 3000 Biography
3. Anime 3000 Biography
4. Shonen Jump
5. Shonen Jump
6. Referenced in ''Dragon Ball'' manga, Volume 26, Page 244 — ISBN 1-4215-0636-X
7. Referenced in ''Dragon Ball'' manga, Volume 26, Page 244 — ISBN 1-4215-0636-X
8. Akira Toriyama at http://www.myfavoritegames.com/

External links

★ ''Akira Toriyama'' profile on MobyGames

★ Toriyama'' information at http://www.dbzgtlegacy.com/

★ ''Akira Toriyama'' short bio, interviews, and photo gallery at the Square Haven People Database