I hear you
asking 'What's a Akira Toriyama?', and that is
wrong. It's an Akira Toriyama. The
answer is that he is the creator of Dragon Ball!
Anyhooz, here is a brief biography:
Childhood
Akira Toriyama was born in Japan on April 5th
1955. As a young child, he was always drawing,
and his school books were covered in doodles.
When young Toriyama wanted something, he would
draw it again and again, so he got a lot of
drawing practise this way. He remembers that he
once really wanted a horse, and can still
remember exactly how to draw one. He was very
interested in all types of movies, and got a lot
of inspiration for his manga from Disney and
Jackie Chan movies.
Career
After graduating, Toriyama started work in an
advertising company, but after a year he got
bored and quit. He began drawing manga when
entering a competition. When he didn't win, he
kept drawing more and sending them in. Toriyama
finally got his big break in 1978 in the weekly
Shonen Jump magazine, with the manga 'Wonder
Island'. After that came 'Dr. Slump', about a
young android girl called Arale, who lived in
Penguin Village with her friends and played with
poo. Dr. Slump was highly successful and was made
into an animated series. When 'Dr. Slump' ended,
Toriyama's next major, and biggest, project was
'Dragon Ball', which was started in 1984. 'Dragon
Ball' lasted for around 10 years. Toriyama has
also worked on many smaller manga, including the
more recent 'Cowa', 'Kajika' and 'Sand Land'. He
has a very distinctive art style and most of his
work is very funny and contains parodies of
famous manga characters. Apart from manga, he has
worked as a character designer for computer
games.
Home Life
Toriyama now lives in Tokyo with his family. He
has a son and a daughter, who he watched Dragon
Ball on TV with when it first aired. He found and
adopted his pet cat, and also likes keeping fish.
Toriyama doesn't like bad weather, so most of his
manga are set in tropical climates. He also
prefers the countryside to the city, and that is
also reflected in his manga, as most characters
live in small villages or isolated places. He is
afraid of rats and wears glasses.
For more information on Toriyama's
lesser known manga, check out Toriyama's
World
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