The creator of Japan’s hugely popular and influential Dragon Ball comics and anime cartoons, Akira Toriyama, has died, his production team said yesterday.
He was 68.
First serialized in 1984, Dragon Ball is one of the best-selling manga franchises of all time and has spawned countless anime series, films and video games.
Photo: AFP
Toriyama died on March 1 because of a blood clot on the brain, a statement posted to the official Dragon Ball account on X said.
“It’s our deep regret that he still had several works in the middle of creation,” said the statement attributed to Toriyama’s Bird Studio, which praised the artist’s “great enthusiasm.”
“He would have many more things to achieve. However, he has left many manga titles and works of art to this world,” the statement said. “We hope that Akira Toriyama’s unique world of creation continues to be loved by everyone for a long time to come.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
Dragon Ball features a boy named Son Goku who collects magical balls containing dragons to help him and his allies in a fight to protect the Earth from evil enemies.
Toriyama was already famous for his comedy manga Dr Slump in the early 1980s when he created Dragon Ball, which he said was inspired by Chinese-style kung fu movies.
The 1990s brought the beloved cartoon Dragon Ball Z, and Toriyama was also part of the design team for the massively successful Dragon Quest games.
However, not all the spin-offs have been a hit, with the live-action 2009 movie Dragonball Evolution flopping at the box office and attracting withering reviews.
Publishing house Shueisha, whose weekly Shonen Jump magazine serialized the Dragon Ball comics, said it was “greatly saddened by the sudden news of his death.”
Born in Japan’s central Aichi Prefecture in 1955, Toriyama studied design at an industrial high school, according to Animage Plus, part of the anime magazine Animage.
He worked for three years at an advertising agency in Nagoya before making his debut as a professional manga artist in his early 20s.
In an interview with Japan’s Asahi newspaper in 2013, Toriyama described himself as a “difficult” person.
“Dragon Ball is like a miracle, given how it helped someone like me who has a twisted, difficult personality do a decent job and get accepted by society,” he said.
He told the newspaper he had “no idea” why Dragon Ball had become such a huge hit worldwide, saying his comics were “dedicated to entertainment.”
“I just hope that readers will have a fun time reading my works,” he said, adding he had “never been preoccupied with getting a message across through my manga.”
The news of Toriyama’s death immediately made headlines in Japan, with many fans expressing their grief.
Eiichiro Oda, creator of Japan’s One Piece manga franchise, said in a statement that Toriyama’s death was “too soon” and had left “too big shoes to fill.”
“To think I’ll never see him again... I’m overwhelmed by sadness,” Oda said.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and