Dragon Ball Managaka Akira Toriyama Passed Away at 68

Akira Toriyama, known for his Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump series, has passed away at the age of 68. The news of his passing was announced on the Bird Studio’s Twitter account. He passed away on the 1st of March due to a blood clot on his brain, and a funeral was held for his family and friends. In the announcement, it states that his family is not accepting flowers or gifts and wants to stay away from the press for a while.

The news arrived on the 8th of March to keep the information away from the public, and now we are hearing about the loss of a great artist who contributed to Japan’s anime industry and became the artist for huge games we love and play today. Starting his work life with Dr. Slump, Toriyama had a great jump in fame when he brought Dragon Ball to the mainstream media. Then his talents were spread to video games as well. Starting his first design task in Armor Project’s Dragon Quest series.

 

Square Enix, who published Dragon Quest at the time, was very fond of Toriyama’s work and he was tasked to take on the role of creating characters for Square Enix’s considerably best RPG title, Chrono Trigger. Toriyama’s art style was just fused with anything that meant quality, and he was ultimately the person who made anime and RPG games all over the world too.

Toriyama’s last contribution is going to be Bandai Namco’s next game, SAND LAND. It is going to be released on the 26th of April and the art design was provided by Toriyama himself. Toriyama’s work has been heavily designed in 2D, however, his art is so fluent and well-thought that converting it to 3D worked out too well. Games like Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkachi and the upcoming SAND LAND will be proof of his elite craftsmanship.

Akira Toriyama will be remembered for his down-to-earth personality and his take on manga during the 1980s, we owe him a lot for shaping the culture and media.

Atilla Turan (@burningarrow)
Editor, NoobFeed