The announcement of the death of Akira Toriyama is a shock wave that surprised the world on March 8, 2024. A humble attempt to pay tribute to the artist who revolutionized the genre called “shonen” and inspired countless careers .
With more than 300 million volumes in circulation worldwide, manga Dragon Ballby Akira Toriyama is only surpassed at the top of sales by the manga One Piece. As we enter the fortieth anniversary year of this flagship title, which marked the golden age of Shonen Jump, in the astrological year of the dragon moreover, the party suddenly stops: Akira Toriyama is no more.
There are words that we never want to write, chronicles that we don’t want to participate in. Today, this paper is of this ilk. How can we pay tribute to one of the greatest artists of the 20th century? Perhaps by trying to retrace, briefly, his incredible journey.
From the lines of force to the onomatopoeia, everything in Akira Toriyama’s art denotes and attracts the attention of both Japanese and Western readers. His passion for vehicles (and weapons) allows him to create realistic and incredibly detailed designs. But what fans cite first and foremost is Toriyama’s talent for bringing his characters to life. Whether playing with the Super Deformed (SD) style bordering on caricature that he loves, or in fight scenes where the protruding muscles are slightly deformed. His precise, dynamic and unadorned line remains unrivaled today. But how did this little boy from a modest family become the most respected manga artist in the world?
An unrivaled graphic style
Akira Toriyama is an original graphic design born from an influence shared between Osamu Tezuka and Walt Disney (particularly the film the 101 Dalmatians, since at one time, he produced a daily drawing of Atom – Astro boy – and the 101 Dalmatians) but also an art of graphic composition with a clear reading probably inherited from his short stint as an advertising graphic designer.
Because yes, the illustrious mangaka began his professional career as a designer in an advertising agency! But after two and a half years within this company, the artist understood that this profession was not for him. He became a freelance illustrator and while he was surviving on his irregular income, he saw an ad in Weekly Shonen Jump looking for a mangaka. The first prize was to receive the sum of 500,000 yen (editor’s note: approximately 3,500 euros, not including inflation). It’s decided, the young (23 years old at the time) Akira Toriyama is going to write his first manga.
The latter chooses to go with a gag manga, not out of any particular appetite for the genre, but for a simple reason: the reward is the same even though the number of pages is half as many as for a “classic” story! He did not win the competition, but caught the eye of a young editor: Kazuhiko Torishima. The latter invites him to submit other projects to him. Fan of Star WarsToriyama then produced several parodies of the Georges Lucas saga.
For a year, the publisher – a fervent defender of tough management – will reject all of the young mangaka’s proposals. The latter does not get discouraged despite 500 pages of manga refused and persists for our future happiness. These refusals still impacted his self-confidence, which is why he did not take a pen name, telling himself that the sales of his manga would remain anecdotal. This is his biggest regret regarding his long and successful career as a mangaka.
Complicated beginnings then a real success story
It was in 1978 that he made his official debut with the one shot “Wonder Island”. This first publication does not win the favor of readers who rank it in last position in popularity polls… Torishima and Toriyama do not give up and continue to work to publish a story that will delight readers. After several failures, the series was born which would establish the mangaka’s notoriety: Dr Slump… Commercial success is there: 18 volumes, more than 30 million volumes sold in Japan, two cartoon adaptations, and esteem: grand prize for the Manga Shogakukan of 1981. 44 years after his debut, the character by Arale, the little robot remains a timeless icon in Japan and beyond.
The first anime adaptation peaked at nearly 37% audience share. It is one of the first shonen (manga for boys) to also explode with female readers. With Dr Slump, Akira Toriyama is already a star in Japan. But this is his next series Dragon Ball which will allow him to conquer the whole world.
Dragon Ballmore than a story, an adventure
Very freely inspired by the Chinese novel: The journey to the Westthe Dragon Ball universe harmoniously blends the genres of fantasy, fantasy and science fiction. Dragon Ball offers folklore and a bestiary of staggering richness. Almost too rich in fact, the author and his publisher quickly decided to refocus the story around three key characters: Goku, Krillin and their master Kamé-Sennin. The manga then tends more towards an action manga, the humor diminishes a little and the stakes become major. The hero is no longer content with a quest for power but must also save the world.
It is also at this moment that the author decides to make his protagonist grow, a growth which aptly accompanies that of the readership, even if, according to the author’s admission, it was above all made to make more realistic and interesting action scenes. Over the course of the Dragon Ball series, the artist’s line loses its almost cartoonish roundness to move towards more aquiline features and profiles.
The author will not stop at this single transformation, the hero and the other protagonists will experience many changes. Mainly to support an evolution on the power scale imagined by the author and which finds an incredible resonance with the young readership, eager for numerical comparisons. And sometimes to mark another evolution of the character. Son Goku, for example, goes from child to father to even grandfather.
Prepublication magazines in Japan have a very targeted readership. Weekly Shonen Jump targets young boys, from elementary school to the end of high school. A certain number of values are conveyed by the majority of the works that flourish within this magazine: surpassing oneself, tenacity, sacrifice, team spirit, friendship… Dragon Ball is not to be outdone, and the universalism and timelessness of these values still find an echo in contemporary readers.
The license is today one of the most famous in the world. Well helped by exploitation in all possible formats. Dragon Ball is one of the founding mangas of the 360 exploitation of popular licenses in Japan: video games, cartoons, merchandising, not a part of consumer society seems to escape the conquest of space warriors. In France, Dragon Ball is the license that marked the golden age of Club Dorothée. It’s impossible to imagine the 90s without this monument of popular culture, as the work has conquered the afternoons of teenagers across the country (up to 87% audience share). A new ersatz – Dragon Ball Daima – is scheduled for fall 2024.
Beyond the license itself, the manga Dragon Ball laid the foundations of narration which still serve today as a straitjacket for a large part of the production of manga for adolescents: tournament, team of 5, the taciturn antagonist who becomes “nice”, the units of measurement for the power of protagonists and their adversaries, etc.
But let’s not forget the other works of the master, his contribution as a character designer on the Dragon Quest license, through Yuki Horie, also marked the history of video games. His title Jaco the Galactic Patrolman co-written with his best friend Masakazu Katsura published in 2013 allowed him to return to his loves of crazy SF.
His manga Sand Land has also just been adapted into an animated film in Japan (and will be released in France in 2024).
The curious reader, between two tears, can obtain the collection of his short stories, either in one volume in the language of Shakespeare, or in the French edition in three volumes.
Dragon Ball has undeniably marked the history of manga and pop culture around the world. Vocations were born thanks to the work of Master Toriyama. Former Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi recognized the mangaka’s influence on Japanese “soft power”. Akira Toriyama was inducted as a Knight of Arts and Letters in 2019.
Goodbye Master Toriyama, if your departure provokes a flood of emotions in the fan that I am, I have no doubt for a minute that your work will remain timeless. Thank you again for these hours of joy that reading your stories gave me. Today, many of us regret that the Dragon Balls do not exist, we would have liked to invoke Shenron to bring you back among us and enjoy many more years of your kindness.