The death of Akira Toriyama occurred on March 1, 2024. To many, he was a friend, a parent, and a husband. Many of his colleagues in the profession, who were among his closest friends, have expressed their profound regret at his departure and their happy recollections of their interactions. Without a doubt, Akira Toriyama left behind the best legacy anyone could hope for: to be loved in life and grieved in death by those closest to us.
Beyond this, Akira Toriyama’s vast corpus of work made him well-known to many people worldwide. He was a well-known mangaka who for almost fifty years delighted people all around the world with his drawings and tales. It would be almost humorously superfluous to list them (Dragon Ball, Dragon Quest, Dr. Slump, to mention a few, hehe) because you are either familiar with them, have heard of them, or have come across a work that was influenced by them. The creative river of Toriyama flows through our communities and hearts, with tributaries that span countries and languages.
Like many others, I was first exposed to his work in the 1990s through the Cartoon Network’s Toonami block featuring Dragon Ball. Before this, I had already been a fan of anime for a few years because of Sci Fi Channel’s Saturday Anime and neighborhood video rental shops, which all contributed to my fixation with watching as much anime as I could. However, Dragon Ball struck like a bolt from the sky. While playing Chrono Trigger on the SNES, I had already seen glimmers of his work, but this was something else entirely. My passion was anime, and Dragon Ball took on a life of its own. Every day after school, I would race home from school to see what would happen next in Toriyama’s stories of cosmic warriors, even though I already knew (three times over) that Toonami had looped back to episode one.
This sparked a passion that has lasted my entire life. Together with companions, I conjectured about villains and novel transformations. I created the universe’s role-playing games, authored my own storylines, and drew the characters in my free time. I taped the TV movies and gathered figures and cards. I watched AMVs, watched video games, donned T-shirts, and learned the names of special attacks.
My experience is not special. Millions of people have been impacted by Akira Toriyama’s works, if the global outpouring of love and sorrow has taught us anything. These are stories that people of all ages, languages, nationalities, and backgrounds adore. We feel the same happiness when we laugh together at Arale’s antics. We see the same horizon as we set out as the Dragon Quest Heroes.
We speak the same language when we yell Kamehameha.
It is difficult to comprehend and even more so to measure an impact this long-lasting. His influence and scope of work are extremely significant. One of the most common arguments on playgrounds worldwide is “Can they beat Goku?” Leaders of state have acknowledged his passing and national governments have declared periods of mourning. It’s difficult to identify a single element of his work that hasn’t endured as a cliche, influenced another artist, or been inadvertently added to the canon of popular culture. Entire generations of creatives that followed Akira Toriyama as mentors were inspired by him, and his success forced his contemporaries to improve and keep up with his amazing output.
Furthermore, mastering just one facet of his craft is sufficient to launch a lucrative career. With numerous animated versions, Akira Toriyama’s fighting comic is arguably the most popular and iconic in history. He produced one-shots, spinoffs, and joke manga that demonstrate a sharp sense of comedic timing. He designed the visual aesthetic for one of the most well-known video game franchises ever. He was a phenomenal character designer with a remarkable understanding of sequential art language and action flow. His architectural and mechanical creations somehow convey a fantasy reality that is both plausible and credible. His pacing, story beats, and writing were so effective that it’s difficult to find a work that is comparable to it that hasn’t taken some cues from his toolkit.
The loss of Akira Toriyama can often seem like an unsurmountable grief. What is the process of accepting the person we have lost? a titan of the creative industry who united people worldwide through their love of comedy, art, and action. A man whose influence affects a great number of individuals in a wide range of apparent and subtle ways. And as fellow artists hoping to change the world via our creations, what are we to do? How can we, even slightly, live up to the legacy that he left behind when he transformed the lives of tens of millions of people? With that, how can you compete? Such inventiveness and influence can almost appear supernatural. No one seems to be able to defeat Goku, thus you can’t compare to Akira Toriyama.
But isn’t that not the point?
The artwork of Akira Toriyama depicted a river with numerous tributaries, but rivers also have a source. The manga books of amazing authors like Osamu Tezuka served as inspiration for Akira Toriyama. His most well-known creation, Dragon Ball, is a magnificent parody of Chinese storytelling and Journey to the West. He was a huge fan of pro wrestling, comic books, and kung fu movies from the 1980s. Unquestionably Akira Toriyama’s work was his own, yet it also reflected a magnificent fusion of his numerous passions. He was human just like you or me, an acknowledged procrastinator who submitted work right before the deadline, forgot about plot points and characters he had developed, and generated a ton of ideas more out of need than inspiration from above. The gods themselves are made of clay.
Who is better than whom is irrelevant. The point was never that. When Akira Toriyama first started writing stories, he was simply another artist experimenting with a pen. He would make up puns and tell tales like Sun Wukong running about with Frankenstein’s monster and the Terminator. At the same time that you are experimenting with your craft and striving to distinguish yourself from your influences. Goku also didn’t give a damn who defeated him. “Wow, you’re strong – let’s train together!” was his reply to opponents. Iron sharpens iron. More important than domination is drive.
I’m grateful, Akira Toriyama. I’m going to keep honing my trade and pushing myself to get better every day. And I’ll never forget how your work changed my life and helped me make connections with other people. Peace be with you.
