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ONE OF THE BEST MANGA ARTIST
Akira Toriyama (Japanese: 鳥山明, Hepburn: Toriyama Akira, April 5, 1955 — March 1, 2024) was a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He came to be regarded as one of the most important authors in the history of manga, authoring highly influential and popular series, particularly Dragon Ball.
Toriyama first achieved mainstream recognition for creating the manga series Dr. Slump, for which he earned the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen/shōjo. Dr. Slump went on to sell over 36 million copies in Japan. It was adapted into an anime, with a second series created in 1997, 13 years after the manga ended.
From 1984 to 1995 he wrote and illustrated the Dragon Ball manga, serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump. It became one of the best-selling manga series of all time, with 260 million copies sold worldwide,[1][a][c] and is considered a key work in increasing manga circulation to its peak in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. Overseas, Dragon Ball’s anime adaptations have been more successful than the manga and similarly boosted anime’s general popularity.
Beside his manga works Toriyama acted as a character designer for several video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon.
In 2019, Toriyama was decorated a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions to the arts. In October 2024, Toriyama was posthumously inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame.
