Akira Toriyama
| Akira Toriyama | |
|---|---|
Akira Toriyama at Shonen Jump launch party, New York (2002)
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| Born |
April 5, 1955 Nagoya, Aichi, Japan |
| Residence | Kiyosu, Aichi, Japan |
| Occupation | Manga artist, game artist, artist, writer, character designer, art director |
| Years active | 1978–present |
| Employer | Shueisha, Bird Studio |
| Notable work |
Dragon Ball Dr. Slump Dragon Quest (character designer) Chrono Trigger (artist) Blue Dragon (artist) |
| Spouse(s) | Yoshimi Toriyama (née Katō, a.k.a. "Nachi Mikami") |
| Children | 2 |
| Awards | Shogakukan Manga Award (1981) |
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Akira Toriyama (鳥山 明 Toriyama Akira?, born April 5, 1955 in Nagoya, Aichi) is a Japanese manga and game artist. He first achieved mainstream recognition for his highly successful manga Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball—his best-known work—and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Blue Dragon, and Chrono Trigger. Toriyama is regarded as one of the artists that changed the history of manga, as his works are highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many manga artists cite as a source of inspiration.
He earned the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen or shōjo manga with Dr. Slump, and it went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan. It was adapted into a successful anime series, with a second anime created in 1997, 13 years after the manga ended. His next series, Dragon Ball, would become one of the most popular and successful manga in the world. Having sold more than 240 million copies worldwide, it is the third best-selling manga of all time and is considered to be one of the main reasons for the period when manga circulation was at its highest in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. Overseas, Dragon Ball's anime adaptations have been more successful than the manga and are credited with boosting anime's popularity in the Western world.
Akira Toriyama was born in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan. He has recalled that when he was in elementary school all of his classmates drew, imitating anime and manga, as a result of not having many forms of entertainment. He believes that he began to advance above everyone else when he started drawing pictures of his friends, and after winning a prize at the local art studio for a picture of One Hundred and One Dalmatians, began to think "art was fun". Toriyama has a love of cars and motorcycles, something he inherited from his father who used to race motorbikes and operated an auto repair business for a brief time.
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