Akira Toriyama
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Akira Toriyama | |
 Akira Toriyama |
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| Born | 5 April 1955 Kiyosu, Aichi, Japan |
|---|---|
| Residence | Aichi Prefecture, Japan |
| Occupation | manga artist |
| Children | 2 (son and daughter) |
Akira Toriyama (鳥山 明 Toriyama Akira, born on April 5, 1955 in Kiyosu, Aichi Prefecture) is a Japanese manga artist.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
He debuted in 1978 with the story Wonder Island, published in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, and gained fame for Dr. Slump, serialized weekly in Shonen Jump from 1980 to 1984. In 1984, he was responsible for developing Dragon Ball that became serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump. In Japan, it became a record-breaking best seller with over 120 million copies sold. Aside from the Japanese success, the series was equally successful worldwide as well, including in the United States and Latin America.
He is mostly known for his series Dragon Ball. This work was one of the linchpins for what is known as the Golden Age of Jump. Its success "forced" Toriyama to work 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, so the entire Dragon Ball storyline extends to almost 9,000 pages. Moreover, the success of Dragon Ball led to an animated television series (in two parts, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z), feature-length animated movies, video games, and mega-merchandising. He chose to end the Dragon Ball series so he could "take [his] next step in life," as he put it.[citation needed] However, due to the success of the series, the anime still continued with Dragon Ball GT and Akira Toriyama was still involved a little bit in this project, although in a limited way.
His clean line and design sense led to jobs designing characters for the phenomenally popular Dragon Quest series of role-playing game (formerly called Dragon Warrior in the United States). He has also served as the character designer for the Super Famicom/SNES 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 the spoof Neko Majin Z.
He has most recently been the character designer for Dragon Quest Swords for the Wii and Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS.
He recently worked on a one-shot called Cross Epoch, in cooperation with One Piece's creator Eiichiro Oda.
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.
[edit] Selected bibliography
[edit] 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 series 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-shots)
- 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)
- New Dr. Slump (1994, 3 slim tankōbon, nothing to do with the 1998 anime)
- Chotto Kaettekita DR Slump ( third manga )
- 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)
- Cashman Saving Soldier/New Cashman Saving Soldier (1998, 1 tankōbon)
- Cowa! (1998, 1 tankōbon)
- Tahi Mahi (1998, 1 tankōbon)
- Kajika (1999, 1 tankōbon)
- Sand Land (2000, 1 tankōbon)
- Neko Majin (2000-2005, 5 one-shots, 1 tankōbon/kanzenban)
- Cross Epoch (2006, 1 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.
- 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 series originator Hironobu Sakaguchi.
[edit] Children's Books
[edit] External links
- Akira Toriyama profile on MobyGames
- Akira Toriyama profile on dbzgtlegacy
- Akira Toriyama profile, 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 | |
