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Who is Akira Toriyama? Top 5 anime characters created by Akira

Akira Toriyama, who was born in Nagoya in 1955, is best known today as the creator of the original Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. He  was an emerging star in the field of manga before that, with his hot streak of hit work being Dr. Slump. Toriyama’s now-signature visual style was formed by this early 1980s manga and its anime adaptation. Dr. Slump established Toriyama as a rising star in the manga world, bringing him fame and financial benefits. However, he nearly immediately jumped into Dragon Ball, and the inevitable happened.

Akira Toriyama’s art and method of drawing manga are extremely distinctive. While it retains distinctly Japanese characteristics to a Western eye, Toriyama’s art is difficult to confuse with that of any other manga. His protagonists have a childish glee to their gestures, a lightness to their physical designs, and a bold clearness to his linework that avoids clutter and fine detail.

Akira Toriyama’s Work

Toriyama’s works are all bold and bright, with clear forms that can be round or sharp. His characters are large and his spaces are small. It’s a lovely and amiable art style that exudes kindness and joy. It is lively and vibrant even in black and white.

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However, Akira Toriyama’s art transcends style. Toriyama’s manga has a brilliant eye for structure, flow, and emphasis. Brian Ashcraft mentions the brilliance of the Dragon Ball manga in a 2014 article for Kotaku.com, describing how the layout of both individual panels and full pages inspires a natural movement for the viewer to embrace with their line of vision. It almost appears to be animated due to the placement of the protagonists and the motion of the scene drawing the eye from one location to another. This is brilliant design, and it demonstrates Toriyama’s empathy for his readers, particularly the kids who adored Dragon Ball the most.

Akira Toriyama’s art isn’t the only reason he’s such a popular mangaka. It is also his protagonists and the tales in which they live. Toriyama has a talent for creating heroes with big hearts and a healthy appetite for discovery and adventure. This revelation is both internal and external, as best exemplified by his most beloved character, Son Goku. This boy-turned-man journeyed more than one world, discovering and questing with wide eyes in both Dragon Ball and its sequel, but he also develops from within, to become more regarded, great, and kind. Toriyama’s characters teach lessons, making them both unforgettable art works and the ideal form of action amusement for young children.

Five of the best anime characters created by Akira Toriyama

Dragon Ball

all dragon ball series listed

This is the important one. Dragon Ball is Akira Toriyama’s legacy encapsulated in a single, flawless series. Reading the manga today reveals an incredibly respectable aging process; the Dragon Ball manga is comparable to a vintage wine. However what made Dragon Ball among the most adored and recognisable manga series of all time?

That’s a difficult question to answer. Finally, it is the entirety of its components. Dragon Ball is a martial arts manga that was a popular subgenre in the 1980s. Yet it was the manga’s wide-eyed and snooty child protagonist that made it popular with children of all ages.

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Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger - Akira Toriyama

A JRPG that is still regarded as one of the best in its genre after more than twenty years. Chrono Trigger is a clever and engrossing game with a memorable story, the likes of which remain uncommon even today. Akira Toriyama created the art for this game, as he did for the Dragon Quest series.

Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, also directed Chrono Trigger. Combining his direction and writing with Toriyama’s art was always going to be a winning combination, and given how popular this game has stayed to this day, that achievement is evident. Chrono Trigger is a work of art, and Toriyama’s video game art is as distinctive as his manga art.

Dr. Slump

Dr. Slump - Akira Toriyama

Here is where Akira Toriyama’s career began. Dr. Slump was a serialized manga targeting a younger audience that ran for five years in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1980 to 1984. Then it was gathered and obligated into eighteen tankobon manga editions. Dr. Slump also earned a popular anime adaptation, Toriyama’s first foray into anime television, which lasted 243 episodes. While Yoriyama is unquestionably better known for Dragon Ball and its sequels, Dr. Slump was an astounding successful story in its own right, even if it has since been largely overshadowed. 

Blue Dragon

Blue Dragon - Akira Toriyama

Blue Dragon is a role-playing game developed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the founder of Final Fantasy. It was released in 2006. While the match is a pretty classic JRPG, it is notable in that it once again attributes Akira Toriyama as a character designer. His distinct art style has become one of the game’s most appealing features.

Blue Dragon casts players as five young kids with the ability to transform their shadows into strong monsters. Shadows can gain strength by empowering classes and acquiring new abilities. A manga adaptation of the game exists as well, though it concentrates on various protagonists and is not drawn by Akira Toriyama.

Cowa!

Cowa!

Cowa! is among Akira Toriyama’s many mini series and one of his first works after completing Dragon Ball. The story, which is only fourteen chapters long, introduces a trio of monsters as they travel to get treatments in order to save their fellow demons. It’s a series filled with childish whimsy and humor.

Cowa! is quite immature in comparison to Dragon Ball, but it has a fantasy allure that keeps it interesting. It is not a masterwork, but it is fun to read for people of all ages.

Conclusion

Akira Toriyama is well-known in the worlds of Japanese anime and even Japanese video games. Depending on how obsessed you are with the things you read, enjoy, and play, you may know little about the people who create the art. Toriyama is unique in that almost everyone who has even a genuine interest in manga and anime has heard of him.

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