Episode 188 – Artist Spotlight: Akira Toriyama

The addicts do another artist spotlight on a prolific member of the anime community: Akira Toriyama.  Best known as the creator of the Dragon Ball franchise but his work is wildly notable by it’s characteristic styling and shonen flare.  We talk about the man, his inspiration, and his art!

Background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Toriyama#Selected_works

Art inspiration for himself began in  elementary school all of his classmates drew, imitating anime and manga, as a result of not having many forms of entertainment.[4] He believes that he began to advance above everyone else when he started drawing pictures of his friends. Won some art competitions for his drawings of Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmations.

Debut anime was in 1978 with the story Wonder Island. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Island

Anime Dragon BAll is credited with spreading manga/anime’s influence in the western world and ushering in the “Golden Age of Jump”, the period between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s when manga circulation was at its highest.

Recently, Toriyama owns a studio called Bird Studio.  He does most of the work for this studio and it mostly makes small one shots that aren’t serialized, including Cowa!, Kajika, and Sand Land, as well as one-shots, like Neko Majin.

Personal influences and Style Notes:

-Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy

-Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmations

-Jackie Chan’s early movies for their action and comedy.

-Dr. Slump has alot of parodies of other movies/shows such as Godzilla, Star Wars and Star Trek.  IT is filled with aliens, time travel and other similarities.

-Dragon Ball bears striking similarities to the Chinese Novel “Journey to the West” or “Adventures of the Monkey God”.

As opposed to some manga which have “manly heros” such as City Hunter or Fist of the North Star, Dragon Ball has cartoonish characters and small heros.  All the way until the present Toriyama carries a trend that the most powerful characters in his work tend to be smaller in stature.  This goes against convention.  We see it in Dragon Ball (e.g. Freiza, child Goku, Vegeta, Buu, Krillin, etc…)

Notable Works:

Anime/Manga: Dr. Slump – (original creator) –  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Slump – was what originally launched Toriyama to fame and this manga sold over 35 million copies in Japan.

Dragon ball – (original creator) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball – One of the most influential anime/manga works of all time.  This manga, the best seller in Shonan Jump’s history at 386 million copies sold (230M worldwide and 156M in Japan) ((http://matome.naver.jp/odai/2135021181685354501?) is bigger than even one piece and is credited with expanding the influence of anime and manga to the western world.

Dragon Ball z – (original creator) –

Sand Land – Short fantasy manga series about an old sheriff and a couple of demons in a post-apocalyptic wasteland looking for a bountiful water supply for the world and her people.

Video Games:

Dragon Quest – (artist) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest

Blue dragon (art)

Crono Trigger (art)

Host’s Favorite’s NOT Dragon Ball:

Mitsugi –  Dragon Quest 8

Chiaki – Blue Dragon

Kram – Chrono Trigger