Akira Toriyama

Akira Toriyama is a successful manga artist, most famous for his manga and anime series Dragon Ball. He has also worked as character designer on a number of well known JRPG's, most notably Dragon Quest.

Early Work

Toriyama's first manga was 'Wonder Island' published in the Shonen Jump weekly magazine. Following, he published several other one-shot manga stories for Shonen including 'Today's Highlight Island', 'Tomato' and 'Hetappi'. He soon gained popularity due to a weekly manga and accompanying anime, Dr. Slump which ran for 4 years. In 1982, 2 years into Dr. Slump Toriyama won the Shogakukan Manga Award for best manga. Whilst Dr. Slump was running Toriyama wrote a number of single issue manga's on the side including 'Escape', 'Pola and Roid', 'Pink', 'Mad Matic' and 'Chobit'.

Dragon Ball

The same year that Dr. Slump ended, Toriyama started a new series entitled 'Dragon Ball'. It was initially meant to be a parody of a Chinese folk tale 'A Journey to the West' in which a monkey-boy travels the world to find the Dragon pearls so that the eternal dragon will grant his wish. After the first story ark, or saga, this theme was dropped from the manga, instead moving towards a more martial arts focus. The series them continued on for 11 years, from 1984-1995, garnering Toriyama much fame, selling over 35 million copies in Japan and 120 million worldwide. It was also turned into a sucessful anime titled 'Dragon Ball' and later 'Dragon Ball Z' along with numerous movies and a spin off series 'Dragon Ball GT' in which Toriyama had little involvement.

Other Manga

Akira Toriyama has continued making many short one-issue manga's published in Shonen Jump incluing his self parody 'Neko Majin'. A full list of his manga following Dragon Ball is:

Mr Ho
Lady Red
Kennosuke-Sama
Sonchoh
Mamejiro
Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater Vol.1
Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater Vol.2
Karamaru
Wolf
Cashman Saving Soldier
Dub & Peter 1
Go! Go! Ackman
Chotto Kaettekita Dr. Slump
Tokimecha
Alien X-Peke
Bubul
Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater Vol.3
Cowa!
Cashman Saving Soldier/New Cashman Saving Soldier
Tahi Mahi
Kajkija
Sand Land
Bitch's Life
Kochikame
Cross Epoch
Untitled Masakazu Katsura Collaboration

Games

Due to his success as a manga artist Toriyama has been able to work as character designer on many high profile Japanes RPG's. He was initially aproached to work on the incredebly popular Dragon Quest and later Dragon Quest Monsters series'. This opened up oppourtunities for hom to work on Tobal No 1 and No 2 (not released outside Japan) and most recently Blue Dragon.

Name	Platforms	Developer
Dragon Quest IX: Hoshizora no Mamoribito	DS	Square Enix, Level-5 Inc.
Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow	DS	tri-Crescendo Inc., Mistwalker Corporation
Blue Dragon Plus released on Feb. 24, 2009	DS	Mistwalker Corporation, Feel Plus, Brownie Brown Co. Ltd.
Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride released on Feb. 17, 2009	SNES, DS, PS2	ArtePiazza, Heart Beat, Chunsoft, Matrix Software
Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit released on June 10, 2008	PS3, X360	Dimps Corporation
Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and The Tower Of Mirrors released on Feb. 19, 2008	WII	Eighting/Raizing, Genius Sonority, Inc.
Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker released on Nov. 6, 2007	DS	TOSE Co., Ltd.
Blue Dragon released on Aug. 28, 2007	X360	Artoon Co., Ltd., Mistwalker Corporation
Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime released on Sept. 19, 2006	DS	TOSE Co., Ltd.
Super Dragon Ball Z released on July 18, 2006	PS2	Crafts & Meister

Full Name:	Akira Toriyama
Gender:	Male
Birthday:	April 5, 1955
Death:	n/a
Credited In:	27 games
1st Game Credit:	n/a
Currently Working For:	Bird Studio
Hometown:	Aichi
Country:	Japan
Website:
Email Address:
Aliases:

	Goku
	Vegeta
	Gohan
	Piccolo
	Krillin
	Cell
	Nappa
	Trunks
	Yamcha
	Tien
See All »