Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama dies at 68, manga world pays tribute

Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama has passed away. On Thursday, March 7, a statement published on the official Dragon Ball website announced that Toriyama had passed on March 1 due to an acute subdural hematoma. He was 68 years old.

Toriyama was an acclaimed manga artist and character designer who first gained mainstream recognition in Japan through his sci-fi comedy manga Dr. Slump, published in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1980 to 1984. In 1984, Toriyama began publishing Dragon Ball, a martial arts adventure manga starring a young boy named Son Goku, which would go on to become his most famous work to date and one of the best-selling manga of all time.

The impact of Dragon Ball’s legacy on not only Japanese manga and anime, let alone global pop culture, is incalculable. The long-running anime adaptation of Dragon Ball produced by Toei Animation introduced an entire generation of audiences to the medium, transforming Goku into a globally recognized pop cultural figure and generational icon among anime fans.

Both the manga and anime have been championed as foundational works in the subgenre of Shonen adventure storytelling and have been cited as an inspiration to contemporaries including Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto and One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda. Both mangaka released public statements mourning Toriyama’s passing, as well as My Hero Academia creator Kōhei Horikoshi and Bleach creator Tite Kubo, among others.

“With respect and gratitude for the creative world he has left behind. I pray for his soulful rest in peace,” Oda wrote in a statement published on Shōnen Jump’s website. “May heaven be the joyous world he envisioned.”

“Toriyama-san taught me what it means to be a ‘professional’ and what ‘work’ is,” Sakaguchi wrote in a statement published on X (formerly Twitter). “I deeply respected him from the bottom of my heart. I sincerely pray that his soul may rest in peace.”

Apart from his work on Dragon Ball, Toriyama also worked as a character designer and artist alongside Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii and Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi on the long-running RPG series Dragon Quest, the 1995 sci-fi fantasy RPG Chrono Trigger, and 2006’s Blue Dragon. A new Toriyama video game project will arrive this year; Sand Land, based on his 2000 manga, has been adapted into both an anime and a game set for release in April.

In 2021, it was revealed during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con that Toriyama had been overseeing the story and development of the 2022 film Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero alongside his son Sasuke Toriyama, who is presumed to oversee his father’s estate — and the Dragon Ball franchise going forward — following Toriyama’s death. Prior to his passing, Toriyama had been working alongside his artistic protégé Toyotarou in publishing the manga adaptation of Dragon Ball Super.

Dragon Ball Daima, the first Dragon Ball anime produced following Toriyama’s passing and the last to feature his direct involvement, is scheduled to premiere later this fall.