Akira Toriyama, the legendary creator of global phenomenon Dragon Ball, has passed away at age 68.
Akira Toriyama suffered an acute subdural hematoma, a type of bleeding near the brain, his studio said Friday.
Dragon Ball is hugely popular around the world and the comic series has also spawned cartoon and film versions.
Toriyama’s art also defined Japanese role-playing game classics such as Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger.
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Mr Toriyama had uncompleted works at the time of his death.
He died on 1 March and only his family and very few friends attended his funeral, according to a statement from the Dragon Ball website.
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Many was the afternoon when I’d get home from a long day at college, trudge into the living room, and unwind with Cartoon Network’s Toonami block.
Dragon Ball Z was always a highlight of those low 90s weekdays.
That was back when the Freezer Saga first aired on American TV. And I’d never been so hooked on a show’s plot before.
While I pretty much checked out after Dragon Ball GT, Toriyama’s work brought me hours of fun and left an indelible mark on my otaku years.
It’s sad we won’t get to see his unfinished works as he intended them.
Let the sudden passings of Akira Toriyama, Monty Oum, and Kentaro Miura serve as a warning to creators, and Robert Jordan serve as an example: Have a plan for the posthumous resolution of your work.
Farewell, Akira Toriyama. And thank you!
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I only saw a handful of episodes of DBZ, but I’m a Dragon Quest fan from way back, and Chrono Trigger is one of the all-time greats.
RIP, Toriyama-san.
Legendary game creator Mark Kern called Chrono Trigger the greatest video game of all time.
Dragon Ball was one of my biggest influences growing up. The original manga, all 42 volumes of it, remains one of the best in the medium. I’d highly recommend anyone with a love of wonder and adventure to read it, because it is a ride of pure imagination and love of life.
All his work was unique and yet beloved at the same time. He was quite honestly nearly at Osamu Tezuka levels of influence, and I might argue on par with him since his work heavily influenced three separate mediums. There will never be another Toriyama.
Your high estimation of Dragon Ball comes a something of a surprise – not because it’s without merit, but because you never hear people praising it. I guess everyone just takes it for granted.
My history with Dragon Ball is a bit different than most.
I actually grew up with the original 13 episode dub of the original series back in the day, which I later learned was apparently the least popular part of the entire franchise. And yet, those 13 episodes were enough to enthrall me for years before I saw DBZ in syndication and was absolutely puzzled as to what was going on. But something about it always hooked my interest.
Then Viz licensed the original Dragon Ball manga and released them in floppies, splitting them between the Dragon Ball half and the Dragon Ball Z half. That’s how I got into Dragon Ball as a whole. It was through Viz putting out the original manga at the same time DBZ was airing that I finally managed to catch up to the entire thing, long before Funimation finally got around to dubbing the original series, re-dubbing Z, and putting out GT.
And I can say that it is truly a rollercoaster of a ride. Though it starts out as an at-times crude gag manga, the series quickly turns into fast-paced epic of martial arts, adventure, comedy, and, eventually, space opera and apocalyptic storytelling. Toriyama simply did everything and did it insanely well and filled it with wonder at every step. There is a reason he influenced so much material that came after him. I know he influenced me a lot.
The DBZ anime might not be for everyone these days, especially thanks to the sluggish pacing, but I think the manga absolutely holds up as one of the best of all time and is well worth experiencing today.
There are two ways to approach a TV adaptation of a long-running manga:
1) Draw out each episode as much as possible to keep pace with the comic
2) Produce entire seasons’ worth of noncanonical filler, giving the mangaka time to catch up.
DBZ took the first approach. Bleach took the second. Let history judge.
There’s three more approaches, though for obvious reasons these won’t work in most cases.
3.) Wait several years between seasons (The four year gap between Attack on Titan Season 1 and 2 are one of the most notable examples of this. A lot of “twelve episodes and then gone forever” anime are the result of trying this approach but not maintaining enough interest for season 2.)
4.) Just make up your own ending (Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 being the most notable example of this. I think Trigun is in the same situation, though I don’t know enough about the manga version to be sure.)
5.) Make the adaptation so long after the series started that there’s already a huge buffer for you (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, though obviously this is not really something you plan for.)
The gap between the 7th and “final” seasons of InuYasha falls into category 1, I think. Given what happened with Bleach and FMA 2003, I am glad they waited long enough to tell the mangaka’s story.
The common pattern with Shonen Jump series like Dragon Ball right now seems to be to wait long enough for two seasons worth of material then make one season a year, keeping a buffer between your anime and the manga in case of sickness or misfortune. My Hero Academia’s anime has been going this way since it started in 2016 (the manga was 2014) and they have yet to either catch up or have to resort to filler arcs to keep the manga at bay.
I’d say that 24/25 episodes a year usually results in better quality than 52 and an unending production schedule on top of it.
Sad blow and doesn’t bode well for the franchise outside of games. Super is better than GT but still a very mixed bag. Without his guidance I see Dragon Ball going downhill hard.
The savvy way to watch DBZ nowadays is the Dragon Ball Kai “remaster” that cuts out all the non-manga filler. Much faster paced and exciting, though occasionally you miss out on fun stuff like Goku and Piccolo trying to get their driver’s licenses.
Note to readers: That’s “Dragon Ball Kai,” not “Dragon Ball Z Abridged,” which starts out well enough cutting 20-minute episodes down to 5 minutes, then bloats to 15 minutes within a few seasons.
Ah! That explains the art that I see on Newgrounds today:
https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/bridgeoffaust/1564-farewell-toriyama
If you set out to design a TV show to trigger light-sensitive migraines and seizures… you could do a lot worse than DBZ. Have often wondered if those were a deliberate attempt to induce mass hypnosis/trance states in children. Could never get through more than 3 minutes without feeling pukey– as a kid, I felt cheated. These days? I think I was protected.
Thank you and rest in peace Mister Toriyama.
Chrono Trigger was a significant part of my childhood, and Dragonball is loved by nearly my entire generation.
The thing that speaks most to Toriyama’s greatness is that even though many of his works are criticized (particularly the anime adaptation of DBZ) I don’t think I’ve ever heard a critic hold any ill will against Toriyama himself. The tendency in the anime community is to tear the creator to shreds; contrast how people who don’t like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure or Attack on Titan treat Araki and Isamaya. Everyone recognizes that he was a fun guy whose sense of wonder always came through.
Over 9000!
Memento mori.
Eternal memory.
I loved Dragon Ball Z in my youth like most of you guys. However, where I most appreciate Toriyama is his character and especially monster design in the Dragon Quest games. His sense of humor and creativity really came through there. One reason I never got into any other JRPG as much as DQ is because compared to the standard Toriyama set, the monster design was rarely all that interesting to me. Probably also a reason why I loved the Dragon Quest Monsters games but found Pokemon uninteresting.
Final Fantasy I had Yoshitako Amano designs … but 90% of the actual content was lifted from the AD&D Monster Manual.