On March 1, 2024, Akira Toriyama set off to explore new horizons far from this world. Known primarily for Dragon Ball Z in France, the artist revolutionized manga and video games in Japan in the 1980s. For Generation X, he will remain the magician who re-enchanted everyday life.

Osamu Tezuka is generally presented as the father of modern comic books in Japan, having launched the “story manga” in 1947 with New Treasure Island (Shin Takarajima). But for the generation of contemporary creators who grew up with Arale (Dr. Slump) and Son Goku (Dragon Ball), the king of pop culture remains Akira Toriyama. Indeed, he not only managed to create an unprecedented graphic style but also popularized an incredibly effective formula for action narratives.

Moreover, the book DRAGON BALL 30th Anniversary Super History Book (2016) is full of testimonials from artists explaining how the saga marked their childhood and gave them the desire to make manga. It is not for nothing that Eiichirō Oda (One Piece) and Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto) took the time to make a public announcement expressing their sadness and distress at the unexpected passing of their spiritual master.

Similarly in France, a large number of manfra creators (manga designed by French people), including Tony Valente (Radiant), Balak and Sanlaville (Lastman), were influenced by the broadcast of Dragon Ball Z on “Club Dorothée” before discovering the original works in comic book form.

But Toriyama’s work should not be reduced to incredibly dynamic and rhythmic fight scenes between super warriors. The artist’s genius consists in remaining an outsider who defied established conventions.

Telling the Story as It Comes

Paradoxically, two of the biggest commercial successes of Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine were created by creative talents who did not really know manga. Toriyama worked in advertising and had stopped reading comics after elementary school, while his first editor, Kazuhiko Torishima, wanted to pursue literature and did not even know the magazine before being employed there.

After several failures, the duo managed to win over the public with Dr. Slump, a comedy series featuring the lecherous inventor Senbei Norimaki, whose many creations draw on both science fiction and Japanese folklore. But very quickly Arale, a little robot girl designed by the eccentric professor, became the mascot of young readers. Her naive character and superhuman strength made it possible to create particularly memorable visual gags.

Toriyama and Torishima then followed the direction given by the readers, and the eponymous hero became a secondary character. In the same way, the character Vegeta was supposed to die quickly in Dragon Ball, but his popularity with the audience made him one of the pillars of the narrative. This creation on the fly allowed the characters to take on a life of their own, because they were then carried by the readers.

This providential improvisation also occurred at the graphic level. In Dragon Ball, certain elements that became iconic were the result of a search for efficiency. For example, during the transformation into a “Super Saiyan,” the brown-haired characters become blond, which spares the assistant from inking the hair and saves time.

The change in the hero’s silhouette was also a pragmatic response to creative problems. Toriyama needed a body with adult proportions to make the fights more realistic and captivating.

That is why Son Goku is one of the first shōnen manga heroes to completely change appearance. This transition from a childlike appearance to an adult silhouette can later be found in Naruto.

However, one should not believe that Toriyama constantly gives in to the demands of his editors or readership. He long refused to make a sequel to Dragon Ball before agreeing to work on the film Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods (2013), in which he ridicules his heroes and makes his own cat the God of Destruction.

The success of the feature film made it possible to launch an official sequel in animated and manga form, which he supervised in order to preserve the ever-so-slightly zany side. Even when the universe is in danger, there are Super Saiyans (“super vegetable” in Japanese backslang) and humans named after underwear to save us.

The Toriyama Style

Unlike other manga authors who have a precise idea of their narrative and the conventions to follow, Toriyama improvises by incorporating elements from the zeitgeist and his personal tastes. In this way, he engages in a dialogue with the contemporary audience, creates strong bonds of complicity, and crafts his own narrative motifs that the current generation takes up.

He also stands out for his very precise graphic style and his punchy layouts, linked to his first job at an advertising agency. Torishima had moreover initially decided to work with Toriyama because he produced very clean pages and had a personal way of drawing sound effects.

His attention to detail can be seen in the drawing of the many fantastical vehicles that populate his universe. These became so popular that they were turned into model kits, and he was entrusted with the industrial design of an electric car (QVOLT).

As a good graphic designer, visual aesthetics bend to the demands of the narrative. In the humor series Dr. Slump, the round and cute characters make the scatological gags and parodies even more absurd, whereas in the second part of Dragon Ball, where the fights become more epic, the lines harden. The characters become more angular to accentuate the dynamism of the movements. These are laid out in a rhythmic way inspired by the choreography of fights in Jackie Chan films, of which he was a fan.

In a typical sequence, after a wide shot to establish the setting, the frame tightens on the character in the following panels to show the action. It may be a medium shot, where concentric speed lines highlight the character’s face and hand, sometimes with an insert or close-up so that the action is clear.

One panel then shows the impact in a wide shot, and in the next panel the framing is even wider in order to show the characters witnessing the scene and watching a cloud from the explosion rise in the distance.

This wide shot emphasizes the power of the attack through the damage produced. By showing the action several times from different angles, Toriyama makes the fight clearer and reinforces the impression of power.

This type of paneling of action inspires not only contemporary manga authors but also video game creators. Admittedly, the many Dragon Ball adaptations into fighting games or adventure games help increase the visibility of these characters on that medium, but it also inspires all the creatives in the sector.

Thus, in paying tribute to Toriyama on Twitter, Masahiro Sakurai, creator of the game Smash Bros., explains that he wanted to model the characters’ gestures in the game on those of the Dragon Ball heroes.

A Pillar of Role-Playing Games in Japan

Toriyama first made his fortune with Dr. Slump and its gags that transform the schoolchildren of Penguin Village into explorers of the absurd. The success was such that he appeared on the list of the wealthiest people in Japan in 1983.

But this popularity made him a little uncomfortable. He preferred to live peacefully in Nagoya, far from the big cities. That is why he fairly quickly limited his media appearances and used a self-caricature to represent himself instead of a photograph.

The success of Dr. Slump rests partly on the surprising creatures he designs. The sun wears sunglasses, dinosaurs rub shoulders with extraterrestrials, and heroes parodying Hollywood films talk to excrement…

Even the poop emoji on smartphones comes from the colorful universe of Toriyama’s manga. Yes, the poop emoji is a nod to the talking stools of this colorful world, which hosts the entirety of Toriyama’s manga and is simply referred to as “The World.”

This proliferation of absurd creatures continued into video games, a sector then in full expansion in Japan. He is best known for his work as a character and monster designer on the Dragon Quest video game series since 1986.

It was the first successful role-playing game in Japan, which led to the creation of a genre specific to the archipelago (JRPG, or Japanese role-playing game). The series is so popular that new installments are only launched on weekends to prevent people from taking a day off to go play. The game’s mascot, a slime, is today synonymous with RPG in Japan.

Toriyama later worked on the design of Chrono Trigger, a cult game that brought together Square (Final Fantasy) and Enix (Dragon Quest), the two rival JRPG studios. He also helped the creator of Final Fantasylaunch his video game studio by participating in the development of the Blue Dragon series.

His influence in video games is such that many creators publicly expressed their mourning. Hiroshi Matsuyama, president of CyberConnect2 (Naruto Shippuden, .hack//), even decided to close the video game studio for a day.

As can be seen, Akira Toriyama was the most influential creator of the late 20th century in Japan. His drawings were everywhere, on every medium. Today, his work continues without him. Many artists pastiche his style, keeping Arale and Son Goku alive, while the many shōnen manga heroes created at the beginning of the 21st century take up the torch to pass it on to the next generation.

Monkey D. Luffy and Naruto thus perpetuate the legacy of Toriyama, the other god of manga.