Obituary Note: Akira Toriyama

 

It is with some melancholy that I note the passing of Akira Toriyama (April 5, 1955 – March 1, 2024), manga artist and character designer, at the age of 68. He wrote the popular manga series Dr. Slump before going on to write the world-famous Dragon Ball manga (adapted into the internationally successful and influential anime series) and becoming the character designer for such video games as Chrono Trigger, Blue Dragon, and Dragon Quest. He had been awaiting surgery to remove a brain tumor but died of an acute subdermal hematoma.

He began life as just another kid drawing pictures, citing Astro Boy and 101 Dalmatians as early inspirations. Dr. Slump, his first successful manga (“the adventures of a perverted professor and his small but super-strong robot Arale”) started in 1981 and is full of toilet humor, sexual innuendo, and puns. The Dragon Ball series started life as a more comedic, loose adaptation of The Journey to the West and with elements of Hong Kong martial arts films, but slowly developed into a "nearly-pure fighting manga". Beginning with Dragonball GT, Toriyama had little beyond character design and suggested storylines to do with the animated series.

And Dragonball GT is where I lost interest in the anime. I preferred the quirky, eclectic nature of Toriyama’s early work, the ‘throw it at the wall and see what sticks’ aesthetic of comedy and adventure, in a place where mythology, science fiction and everyday life combine into the ‘streaky bacon’ of a world where dinosaurs, robots, aliens, yokai, and talking animals coexist with ordinary humans. Toriyama had an improvisational approach to his writing, often not having a planned goal but following where the story lead him. The whole concept of ‘Super Saiyan’, where the power levels turn the hair blonde (which comes across as white in the manga) was conceived just to save him the trouble of inking Goku’s hair black every time. The expansion into a somewhat bloated, pretentious space opera where the fate of the multiverse depends on the results of a cage match to determine who is the strongest is, perhaps, unfortunate.

Which does not invalidate Toriyama’s earlier achievements. Dragon Ball is still a seminal work in the manga world, known in many countries, and a stated influence on many other artists in the genre. He became sort of a recluse in his later years (“The man wants his privacy. I can respect that.” – Grunkle Stan), enjoying his many pets, models, and of course, family. He helped keep me entertained for a quarter of a century. Peace to his ashes.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vjJrGeh1c