Tributes from Naruto and One Piece creators fly in as Dragon Ball icon Akira Toriyama passes away

ComicsSand LandTributes from Naruto and One Piece creators fly in as Dragon Ball icon Akira Toriyama passes awayWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works. ComicsSand LandTributes from Naruto and One Piece creators fly in as Dragon Ball icon Akira Toriyama passes awayWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Shueisha) Born in Nagoya, Japan in 1955, Toriyama was a keen artist from a young age, citing both One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy as early inspirations. His first professional job was designing posters for an advertising agency. Following his resignation from that role a few years later, he submitted a parody of Star Wars to Shueisha’s famous Weekly Shōnen Jump title. Editor Kazuhiko Torishima liked the work, though its parodic nature made it ineligible for publication. Still, he encouraged Toriyama to continue drawing, and in 1978 his first professional work, Wonder Island, was published. (Image credit: Toei Animation) Published between 1980 and 1984 in Weekly Shōnen Jump, Dr. Slump is about the adventures of a strong-but-naive robot named Arale Norimaki, and her inventor, Senbei Norimaki. It proved popular with readers and was quickly adapted into an anime series, which ran for 243 episodes, plus several specials and films. Toriyama’s star was now very much on the rise. (Image credit: Toei Animation) The series was an instant hit, at its height helping to propel Weekly Shōnen Jump to more than 6 million sales per week. To date, more than 260 million collected editions of Dragon Ball have been sold worldwide and it remains one of the best-selling manga series of all time. Comic deals, prizes and latest news Get the best comic news, insights, opinions, analysis and more! (Image credit: Square Enix) Away from Dragon Ball, Toriyama was hired as a character designer for the 1986 RPGDragon Quest, which quickly became its own popular franchise, and which Toriyama would continued to work on over the years, alongside a handful of other video game projects, such asChrono Trigger. He also designed the characters and co-wrote (with Toyoo Ashida) the screenplay for animated film Kosuke & Rikimaru: The Dragon of Konpei Island, designed an electric car for CQ Motors, and continued to work on numerous manga, including 2000’s Sand Land - recently transformed into a hit anime,with a video game on the way- and Cross Epoch, a collaboration with One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda. (Image credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment) Toriyama’s passing has been met with sadness from fans and creators around the world. In a statement, Eiichiro Oda wrote, “[Toriyama] was one of the founders of an era where both adults and children could read and enjoy manga, from a time when reading manga was considered not good for education. He let us dream of the extent of things manga can achieve and showed [creators] that we can even expand our field to the world.” Masashi Kishimoto, the creator of Naruto, said, “I grew up with your manga, which became a part of my life. On bad days, the weekly Dragon Ball [series] would help me forget [my troubles]. As a country boy with not much else, it saved me.” For more anime, check out our guide to all of thenew animecoming out and our ranking of thebest anime. 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