Akira Toriyama
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Akira Toriyama born on the 5th of April, 1955, is a Japanese manga artist, most famous for his Dragon Ball series.
[edit] History
His first manga comic was the the story Wonder Island, published in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1978, and first gained fame for his Dr. Slump, published in Shonen Jump from 1980 to 1984.
He is best known for his Dragon Ball series. Its success "forced" Toriyama to work on Dragon Ball from 1984 to 1995. During that time, he made 519 chapters, collected into 42 volumes. Each volume has an average of 200 pages, so the entire Dragon Ball storyline extends to almost 9,000 pages. The success of Dragon Ball led to three animated television series (Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT), feature-length animated movies and video games. Unlike Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT was not based on Toriyama's original manga, instead being created by Toei Animation as a sequel. For this reason, some fans consider it to be non-canon, though Toriyama did oversee its production and offer insights and ideas for the series.
[edit] Trivia
- Toriyama created a character based off himself called Tori-Bot, and made few appearances in the early parts of the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z manga, chapters 1 and 42 as well as in the crowd of fighters watching Goku fight Pikkon. And looks a lot like a character in Dr.Slump.
- This character appeared as an icon at Gohan's computer when he chatted with Videl in Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return!!
- His works after Dragon Ball tend to be short (100-200 page) stories, including Cowa!, Kajika, and Sandland, as well as one-shots, like the spoof Neko Majin Z.
- He has also stated that his favorite character in Dragon Ball was Piccolo and that his favourite Dragon ball, Z or GT movie/special was Bardock: The Father of Goku.
- 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 North America). Toriyama has also served as the character designer for the Super Famicom RPG Chrono Trigger, the fighting game Tobal No. 1 for the PlayStation (as well as its sequel, Tobal 2, released only in Japan), and the Mistwalker Xbox 360 exclusive RPG Blue Dragon.
- In Dragon Ball Z: Broly - Second Coming when Goten talks about what he wants to wish for, at the bottom of the screen you can see Tori-Bot.
- In Episode 3 of Dragon Ball ("Nimbus Cloud Of Roshi"/"The Turtle Hermit's Kinto Un" (亀仙人のキント雲)) you can see Tori-Bot on a tree when Bulma and Goku walk to the beach. In the Japanese version he mumbles "Penguin Village...this is not".
- Jackie Chan's early movies had a noticeable influence on Toriyama's stories
- Toriyama said that One Hundred and One Dalmatians, is one of his all time favorite movies.
- Toriyama has stated that he is a fan of the Star Wars series. He also said he would listen to the film's music whilst drawing.
