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Akira Toriyama's Biography

The living legend was born on April 5th, 1955 in the Aichi region of Japan. He graduated from the 'Prefectural Industrial High School' as a graphic designer. When this happened, he was working in the industry when he published his first 'Mangain Shonen', in 1978. This was set in a weird world, with flying fish, and skateboarding monkeys. He named it 'Wonder Island'. Another strange tale was published by him in 1979, called 'Highlight Island'. This was the escapades of a young boy, who loved the school food, but couldn't eat it due to dental problems. The youngster was called 'Kanta', another one of Toriyama's strange named heroes. The next thing to be published by Akira was something called 'Tomato Girl Detective', which was one of the first things to place a girl as the lead character and hero, rather than a strong, brave male. This was a big change from what was usually done, and didn't work too badly. Toriyama's first real success though, didn't come until 1980. He published a well-known series called 'Dr. Slump'. This also had a female hero. The two main characters visited his 'Wonder Island', as he seemingly didn't want such a wacky place to go to waste. The manga had only been published for 5 weeks, when he was approached to make it into a TV program. Obviously he didn't hesitate to say yes, and it was a first in Japan for a manga to be published so quickly. The series lasted 5 years, ending in 1985.

Akira Toriyama published many mangas, with each one being fairly popular, but only a select few being ground-breaking. Here they are:

Akira Toriyama Sakugekijou: This consisted of two books, with each one having a set of short stories, written between the times of Dr. Slump and Dragonball. They were both published by Shuiesha (Jump Comics)

Akira Toriyama Laboratory: This book was co-written by a man named Akira Sakuma. It is about Toriyama in a robot form, teaching how to draw manga, using examples from Dr. Slump. It did quite well, and was another innovative idea.

Dr. Slump 1-18: This was a masterpiece, and one of Toriyama's most successful pieces. It tells the story of a little robotic girl named Arale, working hard to stay on top in a crazy world, living in the penguin village. This was hailed by critics worldwide, and was what made Toriyama famous in the first place.

Dragon Ball: Easily Toriyama's best work. The fantastic story of Dragonball was his most successful piece, and is still loved by millions world-wide today. This is what emphasized his fame, and showed that he really is one of the best manga creators in the world today.

Dabu and Peter: This was an on-going colour story about racing cars in V-Jump, a monthly computer games magazine. It was stopped though, because the quality was fairly lackluster. Most of the V-Jump stories were done by Toriyama's Bird Studio assistants.

Go Go Ackman!: Another colour story, this time starring a young demon boy who bared a sword, published monthly in a computer games magazine. From my sources, I have been told that this was so popular that computer games were based on it!

New Dr. Slump: This was continuing Dr Slump, this time in colour, in V-Jump, the monthly magazine. I know very little about this though, so not much can be said for it.

Not only was Akira Toriyama a fantastic manga designer and writer, but he could also design characters brilliantly. He did this for a large quantity of computer games, all of which are listed below:

Dragon Quest: This was the second most popular RPG series in Japan (Final Fantasy being most popular). It was also known as Dragon Warrior, and sold incredibly well. Toriyama did the character and monster design for all 6 of the games, but unfortunately when the games were bought over to America, the designs were changed. The games were so popular that two TV anime were produced on it, of which Toriyama did character design for both.

Torneko Big Adventure: This was an adventure game based on Torneko (Taloon in the American version), a character of the famous Dragon Quest 4. Toriyama worked on this too, although it was never as popular as Dragon Quest.

Chrono Trigger A classic, epic RPG from Squaresoft, the creators of Final Fantasy. It was released on the SNES platform, and was amazing! The character and monster design was done by Akira Toriyama, and it showed! They even kept the designs the same for when they translated the American game and bought it over there.