Akira Toriyama

Akira Toriyama was born in April 1955 in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture. In 1974 he entered high school to study art specializing in publicity but abandoned this endeavor three years later to begin drawing cartoons.

Some time afterwards, he entered Shueisha, the biggest manga publisher in Japan, as a mangaka or cartoonist, where he started drawing for a living. It was here he published his first work as a professional. In December 1978, he published his first manga, Wonder Island in the popular Weekly Shonen Jump, and soon thereafter Dr. Slump, which ran from 1980 to 1984. It was then when he developed the infinitely popular Dragon Ball, which soon saw 42 volumes of material, three full-length series (two with his involvement), movies, video games, and absurd amounts of merchandising.

Toryiama's immense popularity was augmented as character designer for the Dragon Quest series, easily the most popular RPG series in Japan. In 1992, Toriyama was brought into the fold for the monumental classic, Chrono Trigger. Described by director Hironobu Sakaguchi as "playing around with Toriyama's universe," the style and aesthetic of Chrono Trigger, including the world, characters, and monsters, were very much a Toriyama creation. Sakaguchi also attributes the whimsy and humor of Chrono Trigger to Toriyama's abilities to infuse his trademark styles into his creations.1

Toriyama continues to work on the Dragon Quest series to this day alongside his other manga endeavors, with no conceivable end in sight.