Akira Toriyama, the Japanese manga artist who created the hugely popular and influential Dragon Ball series, died last week of brain problems at the age of 68, his production studio announced on Friday.
Toriyama was the brain behind the fantasy martial arts franchise about a superhuman from outer space and the monkey-tailed Son Goku, who seeks to find the seven Dragon Balls.
The Dragon Ball universe is one of Japan’s most successful international films, capturing the hearts of many manga-loving teenagers and adults around the world since its debut in the 1980s.
Toriyama’s death was announced Friday via Dragon Ball’s official website in a joint statement from Bird Studios and Capsule Corporation Tokyo. It said, “It’s our deep regret that he still had several works in the middle of creation with great enthusiasm”. “He would have many more things to achieve. However, he has left many manga titles and works of art to this world,” it added, thanking fans for their support on Toriyama’s behalf.
The statement said the artist died of acute subdural hematoma, a form of cerebral hemorrhage.
Akira Toriyama was born on April 5, 1955 in Kyushu City, Aichi Prefecture. He began drawing manga at the age of 23. He debuted as a cartoonist in 1978 by submitting a short story to the manga fan magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump.
His “Dragon Ball” series appeared in the same magazine in 1984 and was front and center in a creative career spanning more than four decades. The franchise bases on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West and the main character Sun Wukong
When Son Goku sets out in search of the seven Dragon Balls, he fights villains along the way and saves the world. When he grows up, the his children and friends tell the story
While collecting Dragon Balls, he can summon Shen Long, a divine dragon who can grant any wish. Son Goku often spends goodwill on his friends or restoring a severely destroyed world in the series. Which focuses on courage, friendship, and kinship.
Japanese author and game designer Yuji Hori, a friend of Toriyama, said they worked together on the game Dragon Quest.
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” he wrote on social media platform X.
EIchiro Oda, author of the “One Piece” manga series, said the thought of never seeing his friend Toriyama again “fills me with sadness.”
Toriyama “took the baton from the era when reading manga would make you unlikable, and created an era where both adults and children read and enjoy manga. He showed us the dream that manga can do things like this and that we can go to the world,” Oda said on the Shonen Jump website.
Many fans also praised the manga heavyweight online.
“Dragon Ball was my textbook for life. It taught me that I could overcome any hardship if I worked on it cheerfully and with enjoyment,” one fan wrote on X.
