Akira Toriyama
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| Akira Toriyama | |
| Born | April 5, 1955 Kiyosu, Aichi, Japan |
|---|---|
| Residence | Aichi Prefecture, Japan |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Occupation | Manga artist, game artist |
| Employers | Shueisha, Bird Studio |
| Spouse | Yoshimi[1] |
| Children | 2 (son and daughter) |
- In this Japanese name, the family name is Toriyama.
Akira Toriyama (鳥山 明 Toriyama Akira?) born on April 5, 1955, in Kiyosu, Aichi, Japan,[2] is a widely known and acclaimed Japanese manga artist known mostly for his creation of the Dragon Ball manga in 1984, which began the media franchise of the same name. Toriyama's artwork is influenced by Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy and Walt Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians.[2]
Contents |
[edit] Biography
He debuted in 1979 with the story Wonder Island, published in Weekly Shonen Jump, and first gained popularity for the anime and manga series Dr. Slump, originally serialized weekly in Shonen Jump from 1980 to 1984. In 1982, he won the Shogakukan Manga Award for Dr. Slump for best shōnen or shōjo manga series of the year.[3]
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, 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, his editors agreed to let him end the manga so he could "take some new steps in life," as he put it.[5] Due to the series popularity, the anime still continued with Dragon Ball GT. Toriyama was still involved in the project by supervising its production, although in a limited way.[6] 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.
He was the character designer for Dragon Quest Swords for the Nintendo Wii, Dragon Quest IX for the NDS, and the Mistwalker Xbox 360 exclusive RPG Blue Dragon.
Toriyama 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.
Recently, Toriyama and his studio have begun developing Dragon Ball Online, an MMORPG follow-up to the Dragon Ball manga, with Bandai Namco Games and NTL for release in South Korea and Japan. The game will act as a direct sequel to the manga, and Toriyama will be supervising all aspects of the game, from storyline and setting to character and location designs.[7] In a press conference in South Korea on February 14th, 2008, Kazuhiko Torishima, the director of Shueisha (and Toriyama's original editor), stated that Toriyama had immersed himself in creating character designs and providing editorial supervision for the game for the past five years.[8]
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.
In an interview with Shonen Jump, Toriyama revealed that he does not consider what is to occur in proceeding chapters of his stories.[9]
[edit] Selected bibliography
[edit] Manga
| Name | Year | Collected |
|---|---|---|
| Awawa World | 1977 | Unpublished |
| Wonder Island | 1978-1979 | 2 One-shots |
| Today's Highlight Island | 1979 | One-shot |
| Tomato | 1979 | One-shot |
| Hetappi | 1982 | 1 tankōbon, drawing lesson - Co-author: Akira Sakuma |
| Dr. Slump | 1980-1985 | 18 tankōbon, kanzenban |
| Escape | 1981 | One-shot |
| Pola & Roid | 1981 | One-shot |
| Pink | 1982 | One-shot |
| Mad Matic | 1982 | One-shot |
| Chobit | 1983 | 2 One-shots, This is not to be confused with the later Chobits, by Clamp |
| Dragon Boy | 1983 | 2 One-shots |
| Tongpoo | 1983 | One-shot |
| Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater Vol.1 | 1983 | 1 tankōbon |
| Dragon Ball | 1984-1995 | 42 tankōbon, later reassembled into 34 kanzenban special editions |
| Mr. Ho | 1986 | One-shot |
| Lady Red | 1987 | 3 one-shots, adult gag manga |
| Kennosuke-sama | 1987 | One-shot |
| Sonchoh | 1987 | One-shot |
| Mamejiro | 1988 | One-shot |
| Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater Vol.2 | 1988 | 1 tankōbon |
| Karamaru | 1989 | One-shot |
| Wolf | 1990 | 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 | One-shot |
| Alien X-Peke | 1997 | One-shot |
| Bubul | 1997 | One-shot |
| Akira Toriyama'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 |
| Bitch's Life | 2001 | 1 illustration |
| Kochikame | 2006 | One-shot, omake |
| Cross Epoch | 2006 | One-shot |
| Untitled Masakazu Katsura Collaboration | 2008 | One-shot |
[edit] 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. Toriyama appeared in an alternate ending to the game along with all the other developers.
- Tobal No. 1 and Tobal 2: Fighting games for Sony's PlayStation developed by SquareSoft (now Square Enix).
- 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.
[edit] Children's books
[edit] Blue Dragon
Toriyama 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:
| “ | The offer to direct an animated version of Blue Dragon came in February of last year. Studio Pierrot approached me regarding it. I knew that Sakaguchi had been working on assembling staff to produce a game, although at the time Blue Dragon hadn't yet been formally announced. According to the materials, it was to be a fantasy world like Lord of the Rings, with a detailed world view and story.
This may be my final anime, I'm a little worried (about it). There's incredible pressure, but at the same time, there's a sense of accomplishment — that it's worth doing. Blue Dragon will be a masterpiece, not simply because I'm working hard on it, but because the staff is expecting nothing less.[10] |
” |
Blue Dragon began airing on TV Tokyo on April 7, 2007, featuring a different vocal cast than that used for the game. It is scheduled for 51 episodes.[11] On April 16, 2007, Viz Media secured the license for the anime adaptation[12] and was originally set be released in both North America and Europe later on in the year, but that did not happen.[13] The anime premiered in the United States, on Cartoon Network, on March 28, 2008.[14]
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ Spouse listed as "Yoshimi" in Dr. Slump manga, volume 18
- ^ a b Anime 3000 Biography
- ^ 小学館漫画賞：歴代受賞者 (Japanese). Shogakukan. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
- ^ Shonen Jump
- ^ Referenced in Dragon Ball manga, volume 26, page 244 — ISBN 1-4215-0636-X
- ^ Akira Toriyama at http://www.myfavoritegames.com/
- ^ Bandai Namco Games, "Dragon Ball Online" Officialy Announced, Akira Toriyama to Supervise All Aspects, Service to Start in South Korea in Summer of 2007, Japan in 2008 (バンダイナムコゲームス、「ドラゴンボールオンライン」を正式発表鳥山明氏全面監修、韓国で2007年夏、日本で2008年サービス開始予定?)
- ^ Dragon Ball Online South Korean Press Conferance Report, "It was announced that for five years Akira Toriyama had immersed himself in making character designs and providing editorial supervision for the game, and the author himself revealed that he was concentrating his effort on Dragon Ball Online!" (この5年間、本作のキャラクターデザインや監修ワークに没頭していた鳥山氏のエピソードも披露され、原作者自らがこのドラゴンボールオンラインに力を注いでいることが明らかに！?)
- ^ Shonen Jump: Oct. 2007 issue, page 360
- ^ Blue Dragon, Toriyama's Final Anime? at http://kotaku.com/
- ^ Anime News Network: Blue Dragon (anime). Retrieved on 2008-03-26.
- ^ Anime News Network: Viz Media Acquires Blue Dragon Anime. Retrieved on 2008-03-26.
- ^ Anime News Network: Viz Media Named Master Licensor for Blue Dragon Anime. Retrieved on 2008-03-26.
- ^ Cartoon Network's Schedule. Retrieved on 2008-03-26.
[edit] External links
- Akira Toriyama at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia
- Akira Toriyama profile on MobyGames
- Akira Toriyama information at http://www.dbzgtlegacy.com/
- Akira Toriyama short bio, interviews, and photo gallery at the Square Haven People Database
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Toriyama, Akira |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | manga artist and video game character designer, famous for Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, and other works. |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 5 April 1955 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kiyosu, Aichi, Japan |
| DATE OF DEATH | |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
