It is with an extremely heavy heart that we share with you the news of manga artist and character designer, Akira Toriyama, who died of acute subdural hematoma on March 1st, 2024.
Calling him a “legend” doesn’t even begin to describe the colossal impact of Toriyama’s life and work on the export and rise to popularity of Japanese manga and animation across the globe. Indeed, even people who’ve never read a manga before have at least heard of or seen Son Goku, the main protagonist of Dragon Ball, his masterpiece created in 1984 and published in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. However, his first big hit was Dr. Slump, a comedy manga starring Arale-Chan, a little girl robot that became a real social phenomenon in Japan in the early 80s. While writing numerous other one-shots and short stories over the decades, he didn’t limit his talent to the world of manga, as he has also been the main character designer of the video-game series Dragon Quest since the very beginning, giving life to hundreds of unforgettable monsters and characters, most-notably the famous Slime. In more recent years, he worked as a scriptwriter and scenarist on animated movies and TV shows based on his works, the latest ones being Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero and Sand Land.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Dragon Ball, and a new anime Dragon Ball Daima for which Toriyama provided the story, the world settings and many of the designs. It’s planned to air worldwide this fall. And the global release of Sand Land: The Series – based on one of his manga originally published around 20 years ago – that will stream globally on Disney+ from 20 March 2024 has just been announced. It’s part of the Sand Land Project that also includes a video game to further develop the world simultaneously, in which Toriyama was deeply involved. Other than that, there is a whole bunch of Dragon Ball related manga, video games, goods and other merch being released on a weekly basis.
His mark on the manga, anime and video game mediums certainly influenced the life of a lot of people in several countries over the world during the last 40 years. He will be deeply missed, and we hope he now rests in a similar place to the wonderful afterlife he depicted in Dragon Ball.
Our thoughts go to his family and friends during this difficult time.
Great piece. He will be sadly missed.