Beyond Dragon Ball: 15 of Akira Toriyama’s Best Manga, Anime and Video Games

by Will Heath | ART

In the worlds of manga, anime, and even Japanese video games, Akira Toriyama needs no introduction. Depending on how fanatical you are about the things you read, watch, and play, it’s easy to know very little about the people behind the art. Toriyama is different; almost anyone with a passing interest in manga and anime has at least heard his name. The man behind the hugely successful Dragon Ball manga and the character artist of the Dragon Quest series is a household name for many. But who is Akira Toriyama? And what makes his art and his stories so timeless and unique?

Who is Akira Toriyama?

Born in Nagoya in 1955, Toriyama is best-known today as the man behind the original Dragon Ball and its shonen genre-defining anime sequel, Dragon Ball Z. Before that, however, Toriyama was a rising star in the world of manga, with his breakout hit work being Dr. Slump. It was this early 80s manga, and its anime adaptation, which established Toriyama’s now signature visual style. Dr. Slump cemented Toriyama as an up-and-coming star in the manga world, and brought him a decent amount of notoriety and financial rewards. From here, however, he leapt almost immediately into Dragon Ball, and the rest is history.

Akira Toriyama’s art and his approach to drawing manga is extremely unique. While it is still, to a Western eye, distinctly Japanese in its features, it is very hard to confuse Toriyama’s art with any other mangaka’s. There is a childish glee to his characters’ expressions, a softness to their physical designs, and a bold clarity to his linework that steers clear of clutter and fine detail. Everything in Toriyama’s works is bold, bright, made from clear shapes that are either round or sharp. His spaces are sparse and his characters large. It’s a sweet and friendly style of art that seems to emanate kindness and fun. Even in black and white it is somehow vibrant and bright.

Akira Toriyama’s art goes beyond style, however. In his manga, Toriyama has a genius eye for framing, flow, and focus. In a 2014 article for Kotaku.com, Brian Ashcraft discusses the genius of the Dragon Ball manga, explaining how the layout of both the individual panels and the full pages encourages a natural flow for the reader to follow with their line of sight. It almost gives the illusion of animation as the placement of characters and the movement of the scene draws the eye from one place to the next. This is incredibly savvy design, and shows an empathy in Toriyama for his readers, especially the children who loved Dragon Ball the most.

It’s not just Akira Toriyama’s art that makes him such a beloved mangaka. It’s also his characters and the stories they live in. Toriyama has a knack for creating positive protagonists with good hearts and a healthy hunger for adventure and discovery. This discovery, best personified by his most famous character, Son Goku, is both internal and external. In both Dragon Ball and its sequel, this boy-turned-man travels more than one world, exploring and adventuring with wide eyes, but he also grows internally, becoming more considered, good, and kind. There are lessons to be learned from Toriyama’s characters, making them both timeless works of art and the perfect form of action entertainment for young kids to enjoy.

Manga lovers should check out the 10 Best Female Manga Artists You Need to Know. If you’re interested in the darker side of manga, take a look at our articles on Kentaro Miura and horror king Junji Ito!

Akira Toriyama’s Manga

While Toriyama has his fingers in several pies across the full spectrum of Japanese media entertainment, from TV, through movies, to video games, he is - first and foremost - a manga artist and a storyteller. And it is these manga that best define his style and his legacy.

1. Dr. Slump

This is where it all began for Akira Toriyama. Dr. Slump was a serialised manga aimed at a younger audience, which appeared in Weekly Shonen Jump for five years, from 1980 to 1984. It was then collected and bound into eighteen volumes of tankobon manga. Dr. Slump also received a popular anime adaptation - Toriyama’s first tryst with anime television - which ran for a very impressive 243 episodes. While Yoriyama is unquestionably best-known for Dragon Ball and its sequels, Dr. Slump was, in itself, an astonishing success story, even though it has been so completely overshadowed since.

The manga of Dr. Slump follows the antics of an inventor named Senbei Norimaki and his invention: a robot girl called Arale. The comedy of the series comes from Arale’s sweet naivete and how that clashes with her superhuman strength, leading to some hilarious situations. Dr. Slump is perfect children’s entertainment, featuring wacky inventions, anthropomorphic animals (a staple of Toriyama’s art and writing), and this blend of goofy comedy with wholehearted sweetness.

Dr. Slump – Available at Amazon

2. Akira Toriyama’s Manga Theater

A sweeping glance across Toriyama’s library of works reveals an eerie recurrence of the word dragon. From Dragon Ball to Blue Dragon via Dragon Quest, Toriyama is synonymous with this word. But, as Dr. Slump proves, there’s a lot more to this genius mangaka than that. And if you really want to see the full scope of Toriyama’s work, there are three collections which fully showcase his breadth of narrative talents: Akira Toriyama’s Manga Theater.

Collected in three separate volumes, these are anthology books of mostly self-contained stories, some of which even saw anime movie adaptations, which all originally appeared in various magazine publications. These are stories of science fiction, police detectives, martial artists, and more, each one uniquely Toriyama but also far removed from the serials he is best known for.

3. Dragon Ball

This is the big one. Dragon Ball is Akira Toriyama’s legacy wrapped up in a single, perfect series. Reading the manga today shows a remarkably respectable ageing process; the Dragon Ball manga is like a fine wine. But what was it about Dragon Ball that made it one of the most beloved and iconic manga of all time?

That’s difficult to say. Ultimately, it’s the sum of its parts. Dragon Ball is a martial arts manga, which was a subgenre increasingly popular in the 80s. But it was unique with its wide-eyed and uppity child protagonist, which had the manga resonating with kids of all ages. Combine this with a smart world populated by original alien character designs and anthropomorphised creatures, and cap it off with the fact that the Dragon Ball narrative is a retelling of the legendary 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West, written by Wu Cheng’en.

This narrative gives Dragon Ball a fairy tale adventure tone that young boys were so heavily drawn to and mesmerised by, but the martial arts excitement and Chinese inspiration is something that any adult can be attracted to and entertained by. In this sense, Dragon Ball is an all-ages martial arts adventure epic that speaks to the positivity and sense of adventure in all readers. A true masterpiece.

Dragon Ball – Available at Amazon

4. Cowa!

While many of Toriyama’s manga works, outside of Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, are short one-shot pieces, collected in Akira Toriyama’s Manga Theater, some spanned multiple chapters. And Cowa! was one of them. Toriyama’s first manga after the end of Dragon Ball, Cowa! spanned fourteen chapters and was collected in a single tankobon.

The story follows two child monsters and a human as they journey out from their village in search of a medicine that will save their home from a spreading and deadly flu virus. Reception to Cowa! was mixed, and it certainly didn’t live up to its predecessor’s legacy.

Cowa! – Available at Amazon

5. Sand Land

Like Cowa!, Sand Land was a fourteen-chapter series collected into a single tankobon manga. This one was released in 2000 and took place in a post-apocalyptic desert world known as Sand Land.

The manga shares similarities with the Mad Max franchise, with one greedy king monopolising the world’s limited water supply, and a detective named Rao heading out in search of a fresh supply of water in order to relinquish the king of his monopoly. Rao teams up with two demons in order to complete his quest. Their designs, as well as those of the land and the vehicles, showcase Toriyama’s unique approach to art and design beautifully. Once again, this manga didn’t reach the heights of Dragon Ball but it was well-received by fans and critics, who loved both the art and the characterisation.

Sand Land – Available at Amazon

6. Jaco the Galactic Patrolman

This was a very unique approach to storytelling for Toriyama. Jaco the Galactic Patrolman is an eleven-chapter series which originally appeared in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2013. It isn’t until the final chapter that it becomes clear: Jaco is a prequel to Dragon Ball. Since this reveal, characters from the series have appeared in Dragon Ball media for the past several years.

The story follows Jaco, who is sent to Earth to protect it from invasion from an evil alien. It’s a short series, collected in a single tankobon, and it was relatively well-received. What makes it unique is its novel way of tying into the world of Dragon Ball, especially beyond its own release, working to further expand the world, timeline, and lore of the Dragon Ball franchise.

Jaco the Galactic Patrolman – Available at Amazon

Akira Toriyama’s Video Games

Running chronologically parallel to his successes with manga and anime have been Akira Toyirama’s work with Japanese video games, beginning with the legendary Dragon Quest series and continuing to this day. Some of the games he has worked on have been adaptations of his own manga, and many more have not.

7. Dragon Quest

Bursting onto the scene in the very same year that the Dragon Ball anime adaptation hit Japanese TV screens, Dragon Ball immediately became a cultural phenomenon in Japan. Part of the reason for its success is the series’ consistently bright, colourful, and sweet art style that helps the whole series feel so suitable for young players as much as adult ones. And this art has been handled by Akira Toriyama from day one, right up to and including 2017’s Dragon Quest XI.

This series is so wonderfully suited to Toriyama’s established approach to art and storytelling. These are simple, focussed stories about good overcoming evil. The character designs are also very recognisably Toriyama, with Dragon Quest XI’s King Carnelian looking delightfully similar to Dragon Ball’s Dr. Gero. The magical pairing of Toriyama’s art and the games’ approach to narrative and theme has made this one of Japan’s most successful and beloved video game franchises.

Dragon Quest – Available at Amazon

8. Chrono Trigger

A JRPG which is still revered as one of the finest games in its genre more than two decades later. Chrono Trigger is a smart and captivating game with an unforgettable story, the likes of which we rarely see even today. Just like with the Dragon Quest series, the art for this game (though not for its sequel Chrono Cross) was done by Akira Toriyama.

Chrono Trigger was also directed by Final Fantasy mastermind Hironobu Sakaguchi. Pairing his direction and writing with Toriyama’s art was always going to be a recipe for success, and given just how well-loved this game has remained to this day, that success really shows. Chrono Trigger is a masterpiece, and Toriyama’s video game art is proven here to be as iconic as his manga art.

Chrono Trigger – Available at Amazon

9. Blue Dragon

Though not a huge success upon release, Blue Dragon had all the makings of the perfect JRPG. Written by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, with music from Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu and at by Akira Toriyama, this game, on paper, should have been a masterpiece. What we got instead was a mildly successful game that got a lukewarm reception. This may have been because it launched on the American-made Xbox 360 rather than the Japanese PS3, and so far fewer Japanese players got their hands on it. Either way, Toriyama’s art still shone here as brightly as it always does.

Blue Dragon – Available at Amazon

10. Dragon Ball FighterZ

There have been many Dragon Ball fighting game adaptations, but 2018’s Dragon Ball FighterZ was, arguably, the first true great one. The success of this game is, at least in part, attributed to the fact that its gameplay animations to beautifully mirror the art and animation of the anime which inspired it: Toriyama’s Dragon Ball Z. The dream of countless fans is to be able to play as Son Goku and for it to really feel and look like Goku. FighterZ managed this perfectly.

This game is also unique in that it features a playable character never seen before in any manga or anime: Android 21. This character was designed by Akira Toriyama himself just for this game, which made the game’s release something uniquely special indeed.

Dragon Ball FighterZ – Available at Amazon

11. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

This recent 2020 video game, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, is an action RPG in which players embody series protagonist Son Goku and play through the narrative of the Dragon Ball Z anime. It was received relatively well and proves faithful to its roots. But what makes it a unique game is that, like with Dragon Ball FighterZ, Akira Toriyama himself worked on a unique character for this game which appears in-game as a boss for Goku to fight: Bonyu.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot – Available at Amazon

Akira Toriyama’s Movies and TV Shows

A large part of Akira Toriyama’s global success lies in the popularity of his mangas’ anime adaptations, the biggest of all being Dragon Ball Z. These adaptations were all, in one way or another, hits across the globe, and they all successfully paid homage to Toriyama’s unique and beautiful style of art.

12. Dr. Slump

There have been two Dr. Slump anime adaptations, the first airing for an incredible 243 episodes through the early and mid-eighties. The second adaptation ran for seventy-four episodes during the nineties. Unfortunately, the anime never saw a proper North American release.

Dr. Slump – Available at Amazon

13. Dragon Ball

Akira Toriyama’s magnum opus, Dragon Ball, received a fantastic anime adaptation. It ran for the second half of the eighties and spanned 153 episodes. Interestingly, while the manga follows the life and adventures of Son Goku through his childhood and adulthood, and all of which is simply known as Dragon Ball, the anime was split up differently. This anime adaptation spanned the first 194 episodes of the manga: Goku’s childhood, and is titled Dragon Ball.

Dragon Ball – Available at Amazon

14. Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Ball Z was a continuation of the previous manga, but with a five year gap in-between for Goku to grow up and have a child of his own. It adapts the final 325 episodes of the Dragon Ball manga and was rebranded Dragon Ball Z for television (a name which Toriyama himself decided upon).

This is, arguably, Toriyama’s legacy. This anime had a global success story never seen before or since in the world of anime. Here is the anime that set so many children and teenagers in the West on a path to discovering and loving Japanese animation. It made Toriyama a household name across the whole world, and is still a favourite anime for countless fans to this day.

Dragon Ball Z – Available at Amazon

15. Dragon Ball Super

While the anime Dragon Ball Z did receive a sequel in the form of Dragon Ball GT, Toriyama himself had nothing to do with it and the show was an overall disappointment. Dragon Ball Super, however, is a return to form for both Toriyama and the Dragon Ball franchise, with the manga and anime plotted and written by Toriyama himself, though he does not handle the art this time around. That privilege was given to mangaka Toyotarou, whose accolades are entirely made up of Dragon Ball-related art. The manga of Dragon Ball Super is ongoing, but the anime ran from 2015 to 2018 and received a theatrical sequel in 2018 titled Dragon Ball Super: Broly.

Dragon Ball Super – Available at Amazon

JO SELECTS offers helpful suggestions, and genuine recommendations for high-quality, authentic Japanese art & design. We know how difficult it is to search for Japanese artists, artisans and designers on the vast internet, so we came up with this lifestyle guide to highlight the most inspiring Japanese artworks, designs and products for your everyday needs.

All product suggestions are independently selected and individually reviewed. We try our best to update information, but all prices and availability are subject to change. As an Amazon Associate, Japan Objects earns from qualifying purchases.