Akira Toriyama

Early Work

Toriyama's first manga was 'Wonder Island' published in the Shonen Jump weekly magazine. Following, he published several other one-shot manga stories for Shonen including 'Today's Highlight Island', 'Tomato' and 'Hetappi'. He soon gained popularity due to a weekly manga and accompanying anime, Dr. Slump which ran for 4 years. In 1982, 2 years into Dr. Slump Toriyama won the Shogakukan Manga Award for best manga. Whilst Dr. Slump was running Toriyama wrote a number of single issue manga's on the side including 'Escape', 'Pola and Roid', 'Pink', 'Mad Matic' and 'Chobit'.

Dragon Ball

The same year that Dr. Slump ended, Toriyama started a new series entitled 'Dragon Ball'. It was initially meant to be a parody of a Chinese folk tale 'A Journey to the West' in which a monkey-boy travels the world to find the Dragon Pearls so that the Eternal Dragon will grant his wish. After the first story ark, or saga, this theme was dropped from the manga, instead moving towards a more martial arts focus. The series then continued on for 11 years, from 1984-1995, garnering Toriyama much fame, selling over 35 million copies in Japan and 120 million worldwide. It was also turned into a sucessful anime titled 'Dragon Ball' and later 'Dragon Ball Z' along with numerous movies and a spin off series 'Dragon Ball GT' in which Toriyama had little involvement.

Other Manga

Akira Toriyama has continued making many short one-issue manga's published in Shonen Jump incluing his self parody 'Neko Majin'. A full list of his manga following Dragon Ball is:

• Mr Ho
• Lady Red
• Kennosuke-Sama
• Sonchoh
• Mamejiro
• Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater Vol.1
• Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater Vol.2
• Karamaru
• Wolf
• Cashman Saving Soldier
• Dub & Peter 1
• Go! Go! Ackman
• Chotto Kaettekita Dr. Slump
• Tokimecha
• Alien X-Peke
• Bubul
• Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater Vol.3
• Cowa!
• Cashman Saving Soldier/New Cashman Saving Soldier
• Tahi Mahi
• Kajkija
• Sand Land
• Bitch's Life
• Kochikame
• Cross Epoch
• Untitled Masakazu Katsura Collaboration
• neko majin
• neko majin mike
• neko majin Z

Games

Due to his success as a manga artist Toriyama has been able to work as a character designer on many high profile Japanes RPG's. He was initially aproached to work on the incredebly popular Dragon Quest and later Dragon Quest Monsters series, and the artwork for the critically-acclaimed Chrono Trigger'. This opened up oppourtunities for him to work on Tobal No 1 and No 2 (not released outside Japan) and most recently Blue Dragon.