Akira Toriyama passes away at age 68

[SlyapBG]

The pop-culture side of the Internet that loves manga and anime has become distraught over the passing of one of the legends of the Japanese comics industry. I think few people of his era are left.

His most known works are Dragonball and Dr.Slump. Dragonball is probably the work that pioneered the shonen format of battle manga that was known from the 80s to the 2000s at least. I don't read new manga so I don't know if this influence continued beyond.

A capable mangaka who could write action and gag stories, being able to adopt a style fitting for each one. His influence extends to other big names in the industry like Musashi Kishimoto of Naruto fame.

His character designs are iconic and recognisable. It will be difficult to replace him as the artist for Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior), a popular fantasy game series he's worked on for decades. Many also know him from the classic Chrono Trigger. I've never played that one, but I've heard it's one of the better JRPGs from the SNES era.

As far as I know, his works, especially Dragonball, were extremely popular in Latin America. Outside of his native homeland, the heartfelt sadness must be incredibly strong there.

A new anime based on his work from 2000, Sand Land, was to come out on 20th March, a pity he didn't live to see it through when it was so close to being broadcast.

I took the image from a 4Chan grieving thread on /a/, although I suppose they took it from Xitter.

 

[Odeon]

dragonball is extremely popular everywhere. its I think the only anime that literally everyone knows, people who don’t watch anime have watched dbz. rappers even reference the show decently often. Its impossible to accurately explain just the insane amount of impact this man has had.

 

[Todd Liu]

一路走好，鸟山明先生。

 

[Patrick]

Rest in peace Toriyama. Your work will be remembered forever.

 

[Parkus]

 

[ApostleBob]

Rest in Peace. Let us not take our time for granted.

 

[Lawliet]

It's hard for me to estimate the impact Akira Toriyama had on me. I've been a fan of him and his works for 2/3's of my life, with Dragon Ball being one of the biggest pillars of my consciousness. It's one of the works that jump-started my desire to become an author, setting me on a trajectory I'm still happy to be on.

RIP, Toriyama-sensei. Say hi to Miura-sensei for us.

 

[SlyapBG]

It's definitely a formal end of an era when so many of the pre-2000s mangaka have left this world. The zeitgeist is different, yet people still hold dear to themselves the memories of their cherished stories. It's not just watching an anime, or reading a manga, or a book, or listing to music, to soundtracks. It's the accumulation of all that had transpired leading up to witnessing and being moved by the story. When one recalls what he's read or watched, or seen, or heard, he remembers the time. Not necessarily accurate, but the spirit is there and it is known, through the toil left by men.

No more men like this means that the spirit of the time has changed.

 

[Dar_Klink]

If there's any creator that expanded my world view and love of the medium of manga/anime as much as Miura and video games as much as the FF series did, it was Toriyama.

Playing Dragon Quest with my dad as a kid on NES was a major formative experience for me, hating "That stupid show about the old turtle man sitting on a toilet"(bad first episode to see lol) before watching the end of the Namek saga on Toonami at midnight and realizing "oh shit this is cool actually," making tons of friends at school because of it, realizing that censorship exists for anime, what filler is, what an AMV is, how different dubs can be vs subtitles, and all that anime stuff you learn if you're even slightly into the medium at some point were all facilitated by Dragon Ball.

Playing Chrono Trigger as well got me into emulating games and looking back at the SNES games I missed. Later on, after years of DB sort of fading into a sort of "yeah that was cool when I was 12" nostalgia, I decided to actually read the manga and man, Toriyama was really a master of his craft. You think of buff shirtless dudes teleporting and doing nonsense when you think back on the anime and it's like "yeah that was cool, but the kid Goku stuff was when it was actually good" but the manga is so perfectly paneled and paced that you never actually get lost on what's happening in these crazy fights even up until the end of the series. Seriously, if you can, go back and read the original manga, Kid Goku to Boo, it's an amazing experience.

I actually just started reading a few chapters of Dr. Slump last week and wish I had read it years ago...

Rest in Peace to another master of comics and one of the best monster and mechanical designers of all time.

 

[Griffith]

I found out from a random YouTube video recommendation titled, "Thank you Akira Toriyama" and immediately thought, "uh oh." Came here to post the news if it hadn't already hit, but SylapBG did a much better job than I'd have anyway.

For one, this doesn't hit me particularly hard because, even though Dragon Ball is the one other manga I own in Japanese and definitely a precursor to my discovery and love of Berserk, and I still enjoy loosely reading up on the events of Super, he was at least a bit older, almost 70, and had gotten to tell his story and largely retired. Super is basically a continual retread of the classics and it's not like they can't end it without him, or just keep going as a tribute, which it kind of already is. Granted, from a life standpoint, I'm sure he was still enjoying it, but he didn't die tragically young at least, and had a GREAT run!

I also can't help but contrast it with the death of Miura, which I do consider tragic objectively and personally for a number of reasons, most selfishly because a part of my life ended as well. Not so much here, I'm sorry for him and his loved ones, but as I said, what a run, and as for my relationship to him as merely a fan of his work, I don't know that this changes much going forward other than they can't continue DB indefinitely with his name on it. Otherwise, I'm glad he got to tell the stories he needed to tell before it was too late.

Rest in peace, Toriyama.