Akira Toriyama has died | Hacker News Reader

Akira Toriyama has died

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1,065 pointsgaoryrt207 comments

You can't overstate Toriyama's cross cultural influence. Manga, anime, video games, pop culture. A legend. Just look at his influence on Central and Southern America alone. He was a genius, and he died too soon. Just like Miura. RIP to a legend.

EDIT: gah, I've been crying on and off about this. It's silly, but there's something about Dragon Ball and Goku especially that always spoke to a deep part of myself. I think it's the combination of positivity, humor, child-like naivety, happiness, strength, and pursuit of growth.

I'm not sure any other work of fiction has every quite captured the amalgamation of those themes in quite the same way.

So many laughs, smiles, tears, and chills over the decades. Thank you Toriyama-san.

Son Goku, is one of the faces of the hero with thousand faces, IMO one of the greatest of all personification of the myth, from the perspective of someone from Latin America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces

> Son Goku, is one of the faces of the hero with thousand faces

Son Goku from Toriyama is probably one of the best adaptation of the legend of Sun Wukong [1], one of my other favorites is Jan Kugo from Starzinger [2] and of course The Monkey from no other than the master Osamu Tezuka [3]

EDIT: it definitely also fits the definition that Campbell gives of the hero

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_King

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starzinger

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gok%C5%AB_no_Daib%C5%8Dken

was "Goku" a transliteration of wukong ? wu -> go, kong -> ku ?

孫悟空 is how it's written in both Traditional Chinese and Japanese. That's Son Gokū, as read in Japanese. For some reason it became Sangoku in France. While we're on names, did you know all names fell in themes. Vegetables for the saiyans (saiya-jin, vegetable in Japanese is yasai). Goku is Kakarot (carot), Vegita (vegetable), Raditz (radish), etc. Underwear: Bulma (bloomers), Trunks. Chinese(ish) foods: Yamcha (yumcha), Tenshinhan (tenshindon), Chaozu (jiaozi), and many more themes.

To add to the list for the interested. Not exhaustive, but showing more themes!

Food: - Garlic Jr, his henchmen: Shu, Mai, Spice, Vinegar, Mustard, Salt - Captain Ginyu (牛乳 Milk), Recoome (pun for Cream), Guido/Gurudo (pun for Yogurt), Bonyu (母乳), Jeice/Jisu (Cheese), Burter (Butter) - Beerus (Beer) - Oolong and Puer (Teas) - Chichi (milk) - Pan (Bread)

Temperature: - Chilled, King Cold, Freiza, Cooler

Animals: - Namek (蛞蝓 Namekuji, slug), Dende: (Denden-mushi, snail) - Master Roshi/Kame Sen-nin (亀仙人 "Turtle Hermit) - Tsuru-Sen'nin (鶴仙人, "Crane Hermit")

Instruments: - Piccolo - King Piccolo's children: Banjo, Bell, Mandolin, Maraca, Marimba, Conga, Cymbal, Drum, Harp, Organ, Piano, Tambourine, Ukelele

Colors: - Red Ribbon Army: General Blue, Tao Pai Pai (桃白白 white), Colonel Brown, Colonel Silver, General White, Captain Dark, Captain Yellow, Colonel Viiolet, General Copper

Cinderella: - Bibidi, Babadi, Buu

Devil/Satan: - Mr. Satan - Videl (anagram of Devil)

The vegetable link yeah I knew, the clothing too (they were a bit more obvious), but not saiya per se, nor the other food named chars.

side note, imported mangas were my entry-point to non European languages, I went into a deep rabbit-hole to decipher the Japanese writing system. And the pair trunks/dragon was my first seed to solve that, except I didn't really know how they were spelled there torankusu / doragonu so it took a little while to associate consonants with vowels.

AFAIK "Goku is the Japanese way of saying Sun Wukong"

thanks

from my perspective of someone from Southeast Asia, Son Goku is definitely Sun Wukong the Monkey King from Journey To The West

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_King

I also didn't realise as a western kid that Dragon Ball is set in a Taoist / Buddhist universe. The way the gods, afterlife, etc work in Dragon Ball, the way you can get super powers through training is extremely related to buddhist / taoist mythology.

How?? The Monkey King is a trickster and quite frankly, mean to a lot of people. Goku is the exact opposite. The only thing they have in common is the extending rod that Goku would fight with as a child.

Watch the original episodes, he is very much like a trickster monkey. Then he matured into what people remember him as and became very different, but he didn't start that way.

He is inspired by Wukong for episode 1 and then pretty much stopped being that...

Literally never seen Goku tricking anyone, there are a few instances in which he plays with the enemies but they were the baddies.

> then pretty much stopped being that

not true

The original Wukong [1] flies on a "golden cloud" (does that rings a bell?) and uses as a weapon a growing stick (Ruyi Jingu Bang, transliterated in Japanese as Nyoi Bo, the name used in the Dragon ball anime and manga) that obeys to voice commands

In Dragon ball the golden headband (that can shrink as a form of punishment) is missing, replaced by a regular red headband that sometimes Goku wears

EDIT: of course I forgot the most important one: Goku can become a monkey. Wukong is a monkey, the monkey king.

[1] https://external-preview.redd.it/CZeTiWE13k8lyrdzQ5pGZqY6wI6...

I get that but I was talking about the behavior.

In Journey to the west Sun Wukong learns to behave and start following a path of spiritual growth and wisdom that, at the end of his journey, leads him to become enlightened and a Buddha himself.

Much like Goku in Dragon ball, where trough the training and by following his master's teachings, he becomes a warrior with a noble heart that values friendship over everything else.

After that, I agree, it's simply about becoming stronger and stronger.

It was crazy reading Journey to the West and being like, "WTF, THAT part of Dragonball comes from this?"

I didn't watch the episodes, I read the 16th century book Monkey, translated into English by Arthur Waley. Supposed to be a pretty faithful translation, which is why I was surprised by your comparison of Sun Wukong and Son Goku.

China pumps out a Monkey King movie every year. They are all totally different interpretations other than he is a monkey and has a stick.

> and quite frankly, mean to a lot of people > Goku is the exact opposite.

How? How abandons his family to train or fight enemies. He puts everything at risk just for a good duel. He helps the enemy recover or throws his son out there just to see a good fight. Just because he's the MC and portrayed in a positive light...

He might be a popular character but definitely not nice.

Especially when you get into DragonBall super when he goes against what everyone is telling him to do and challenges super God to a fight, starting something that could have led to the death of multiple universes. And when he allows frieza to do whatever as long as it doesn't effect earth. He's very selfish in a lot of ways.

That was his original inspiration but he has matured far beyond that.

You know, when you put down Goku’s qualities like that, I think I understand why Tanjiro from Demon Slayer appeals to me. On some level the character calls out to the 10 year old me that was obsessed with Dragon Ball Z.

Guy might be most reponsible for holding up Japanese soft power during the 90s

so glad someone remembers Kentaro Miura on a post like this. they went back to the source and i hope can return asap to this wonderful planet we live.

Hero of my childhood. RIP.

Also, if you've never read the Dragon Ball series, I URGE you to buy the first two books to get an idea of how amazing, cute, charming, funny, creative, the story was:

https://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Ball-Vol-Akira-Toriyama/dp/156...

You can also read the first chapters for free here, I mean just look at this drawing, they don't draw mangas like this anymore:

https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/dragon-ball-chapter-1/chapter...

Thank you! I was aware of the phenomenon, but never actually read any Dragon Ball. Here is a more direct link to the first three chapters (reached from your link):

https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/titles/100011

You really have to read is as a piece of its time. I guess Bulmas casual exposition wouldn't result in a succesful youth book today.

I think the more sexual parts of the manga are just not really compatible with American prude christian culture, not yesterday, not today

Where could I read the original 42 Dragon Ball mangas online in English? It seems like Manga Plus is just available on the mobile apps, and I'd like to read it on my computer, but not finding anything that looks legitimate.

I was very captivated by it a long time ago (read all 42 books as they were being released where I live). I vividly remember how hard it was to wait for the next one, even though I had seen the anime already :) I never got hooked to other manga like to this one

Same here, for some reason. When I was a young boy, my newly retired grandma gave me the first three books, she used to work in a bookshop and I think she had read they were popular worldwide or something.

After acquiring and reading all 42 books relatively quickly, I tried other manga but also couldn't get into it like Dragon Ball. I still try from time to time to watch anime and read new mangas, but still nothing seems to captivate me the same as Dragon Ball. I still don't exactly know why, I might just be sentimental.

I guess this comment is a bit of a call to action for recommendations of manga/anime that might captivate me after all :)

Trigun scratches a similar itch for me, but that might just be my taste.

I would recommend Akira if you’re looking to read some classics that haven’t really been toped

> You can also read the first chapters for free here, I mean just look at this drawing, they don't draw mangas like this anymore:

What does this even mean? You want them to copy his style or something? Mangas haven't deteriorated.

There’s a rush to write mangas as fast as possible, especially if you’re publishing for a magazine, so quality of the drawing has gotten bad compared to older mangas like dragon ball and Akira.

The man help inspire a whole generation of children to become artists, some of which have gone to become even more famous than him (Eiichiro Oda and so many more...), who then went to inspire yet more children who are breaking out now. This same man was inspired by Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy, to express his talent to the world.

The man was a legend, from Dragon Ball, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, Dr. Slump and so much more.

He help popularize and normalize anime outside of Japan for so many of us.

RIP

Speaking of which, he made a statement about Toriyama's passing: https://www.cbr.com/one-piece-eiichiro-oda-dragon-ball-akira...

Dragon Ball transcends cultures, languages, and generations like few creative works I can think of do.

In that story he managed to capture the simple, profound truths of the human experience. Courage, friendship, resilience, the pursuit of one's dreams. A sense of a deeper purpose and meaning to life. A world full of new things to discover.

I am very sad to hear of his passing, but take solice in knowing that his works will outlive him.

DB/DBZ was my introduction to anime. What an introduction. As somebody coming out of russian/soviet oppression anime was absolutely unknown behind iron curtain. The whole concept that cartoons are not for small children only was quite a reveal.

I watched it with french voice over, which were then voiced over by a single polish male dubber with maybe 1-2s delay, so you could hear both languages. Needless to say I didn't speak neither of those, but understood a slight bit polish, and had an absolute blast.

DBZ has special place in my heart. Not so much stuff afterwards, DB itself a bit less, but DBZ hit a proverbial nail on the head (in my head) I didn't even know existed, and it hit it perfectly.

DB Super has a "pretend that DBGT did not exist" reset trope and goes back to a more DBZ inspiration and even has some DB pre-Z vibes.

Give it a shot (if you didn't already), worst case you wasted your time with a few EPs.

thank you for this, will check

He also captured so true the process and meaning behind training to get stronger.

Respect.

Akira Toriyama is responsible for two things that were formative for me as a teenager - Dragon Ball Z, and Chrono Trigger.

Dragon Ball Z formally introduced me to anime, something that would push me towards going to art school, finding my (first) wife, and encouraging me to learn Japanese.

Chrono Trigger was the first video game I truly loved. The art style was no small part of that. This, in part, made me enter the games industry as a level designer.

Rest in peace, Mr. Toriyama. Your life was well-lived.

In a more HN esque theme. Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west.

But since there wasn't many anime shows aired on TV, one had to reach for the internet to get to download other shows. I remember begging my mom for broadband internet rather than dialup, just to be able to download more shows that I would then share with my friends.

Being able to download anime/share translations was definitely a part of the early nerd/internet culture. And DragonBall was the gateway for many to that. RIP Toriyama-san

In Poland Dragon Ball with a reader voice over French dubbing was broadcasted by a German TV (RTL). We had to have two TV antennas, one for RTL and one for normal Polish TV. In my wall there's still a wall socket with places for 2 coaxial cables. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCJaryccMCc

Was "live overdubbing" a common thing in Poland? I spent some time in the Middle East as a child, and we'd periodically pick up satellite broadcasts of American TV (e.g. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) that was then being translated in real-time into Polish.

I remember thinking it was incredibly bizarre at the time, because the delay between the original audio finishing and the reader voice-over made it really hard to hear either audio stream.

> the delay between the original audio finishing and the reader voice-over made it really hard to hear either audio stream

growing up in a household that spoke both, it wasn't too hard to pick out both 'streams', and this definitely helped me learn the languages 2x as fast, but it felt like there was more 'processing' going on in my head, and I don't think I enjoyed watching things that way (when later given the choice for one language or the other)

I dont think it was frequent, but it wasn't unusual.

It was also on cable tv

> Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west.

Highly debateable. Saint Seiya was huge in other parts of the world, for example. Also, Sailor Moon and Pokemon - both were arguably larger than DB. For me, it was Robotech/Macross.

But yeah, DB (DBZ in particular) was hugely popular in the 90s, with Cartoon Network showing it basically over and over. And remains one of the best of its genre.

No, you are wrong. DBZ in the late 80's and 90's was huge in Europe, megahuge, more than Pokémon. It just happens the US got DB very late. By the age they were whatching DBZ we already finished GT, and DBZ ended for us more than half a decade ago.

That's not exactly true, The Cell and Buu sagas were aired on US TV after only a small delay from the Japanese release and local television was airing the Frieza saga on from the mid 90s.

We got the Frieza saga in early 90's. Very early.

I think it's not such a useful debate. All of the early anime that was popular early on outside of Japan was undoubtedly influential and important part of the popularity of anime outside of the US, but Dragonball Z really had a special spot in that it had pretty large mainstream appeal and aired during normal afternoon blocks on American TV -- while Sailor Moon was known when I was growing up, I remember it being on early morning (06:00) cartoon blocks, so it was kind of out of the way. That isn't to diminish the influence of Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya, etc, but at least in the United States DBZ was a cartoon you talked about at school because "everyone" watched it and was waiting for the rest to be translated and dubbed.

I think that's mostly what the GP meant, and I would agree it was quite significant in this regard.

Funny, it was the other way for me. Dragonball was on in the early mornings and Sailor Moon was in the afternoon.

I don't recall Sailor Moon ever approaching the popularity of DBZ (in the United States at least). It seemed like every kid in America was glued to the TV in the 90s watching DBZ on Toonami. Pokemon was probably more popular than DBZ, but much of that was due to the influence of the Pokemon Game Boy games, and obviously the trading card game.

I think DBZ was the first massively popular anime in the western world that leaned heavily into the shonen tropes. Pokemon appealed more to a younger audience, and Sailor Moon was more of a shojo anime.

Japanese animation became popular in Europe in the late 70s and early 80s with the robot animes, Lupin III, Future Boy Conan, Heidi, Lady Oscar, etc. I was in primary school. Dragon Ball started much later and I watched it when I was at university or maybe later. Everybody of my age already has been an anime fan for at least 15 years by then.

It was a different phase. At least in scale. It seems you a few years older than I so maybe you can tell me, but did the late 70s felt like japanese animation or just "animation", I was too young to really sense how captain harlock and such were perceived ? To me that was a big change, dragon ball made people crazy about mangas per se (it was around the time Glenat started to produce a lot of french translations too IIRC), imports, merch, japanese language and culture .. all like one big tsunami

There were no mangas in Europe in the 70s AFAIK or they were extremely niche. Every kid was watching anime by then (and there were way more kids then than now) and we explicitly called them Japanese anime. We knew the difference between them and anime from the USA (Popeye, Bugs Bunny, etc) and the ones from our country and other European countries.

Then we grow up, manga translations and scanlations became available and we started reading too. That was about around 1990, when Dragon Ball was aired for the first times.

> That was about around 1990, when Dragon Ball was aired for the first times.

In France, Dragon ball first aired in 1988.

Kids in the 80's didn't say they were watching anime, they said they were watching japanese cartoons. They knew it was different from Disney and Tom&Jerry and other productions but it didn't mean yet what anime meant in the mid 90's with Ghost in the shell, Lodoss and other anime that weren't aired on TVs (and that weren't long running serie).

And then there was someone at FR3 who somehow slipped 3 or 4 hours a harlock captain movies on christma and new year's eve in the beginning of the 90's. That was dope.

And 93 with canal+ channel bringing Akira to television, that was pivotal into bringing japanime per se into people's minds.

Agree, I watched all robot animes but dragonball gave me the first kick to explore Japanese animation and mangas. I guess because I was older and looking for answers regarding the next transformation.

That depends strongly on the country and shows. Some countries had original anime, some had Westernized anime like Heidi and other WMT-series. Some had localized original anime, and people didn't know they came from Japan. France for example had a very original experience of Anime from the beginning, while others started decades later with the late 90s boom of Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball.

I can at least confirm that in my home european country japanese animated series did not start appearing until late 80s, early 90s, and by all means they were outliers and not _popular_ at very least til some heavy hitters came around the 90s.

I also don't know how applicable is making broad statements to europe as a whole in this specific regard. I feel cultural barriers have traditionally been pretty tall and what might be applicable to a country might not be applicable in the same timeframe to a neighboring one.

> Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west

In Italy, Dragon Ball was first aired in 1989.

I watched it because it was from the "Dr. Slump guy" that had been aired in 1983, and I had fallen madly in love with it.

I've bought and read both manga later on, in the 90s.

Over the years Dragon Ball has become immensely more popular than Dr. Slump, but I'm fond of the first two chapters (Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z), I didn't actually enjoy much anything past Cell.

YouTube commenters insists that Akira wanted to end Goku’s arc at Cell, but fanserviced beyond that. If true, explains a lot. I also felt that there was a lot of maturity and build up to the climax of the cell saga and everything afterwards felt like it undid that growth and just went on and on.

If I recall correctly, he originally wanted to end after Freezer, with the legendary super saiyan finale. Then again after Cell.

DItto in Spain, the regional TV's got DB in Basque/Galician/Catalan as early as 1989/1990.

I was watching DBZ and Dr Slump, switching between Catalan and Japanese in the 90s on TV3! (yes, they had multilingual broadcast)

Maybe my memory fails but I seem to remember watching Dr Slump in the mid 80s on TV3.

Before getting access to the internet the game was to find importers and sub culture groups that got access to these series. If it wasn't for the anime it was for the books, for the games, for the figures etc.

It looks different at first, but I see the same effort to get out of one's sphere and reach for another culture, and start to learn things that aren't in school books, see the world in a different way.

We quickly learned the difference between SECAM and NTSC, how audio was coded on the tapes, why colors were different, the import taxes depending on the price and category, the IP licensing deals, the yen fluctuation etc...while in middle school.

I'd never want to go back, but it sure was a formative journey.

RIP Toriyama

Japanese animation was already popular decades before.

But I think it's fair to say that Dragon Ball was the most ubiquitous piece of anime on the globe across the 90s/2010s and the one with the longest lasting impact

Depends on where you were. I was an American fan of anime before it was really socially acceptable and I've been of the mind that its popularity was probably inevitable once enough old guard culturally sneering at it died. Same as happened with video games.

But DBZ (and Sailor Moon) definitely solidified it as a respectable commercial force for the mainstream USA, and gave a unified culture experience that's now pop culture, thanks to millenials getting old.

At least in Spain there were already plenty of Japanese animation shows before DB.

Captain Harlock, Robotech, Mazinger Z, etc.

For your generation, perhaps. But there were many other shows before.

There were computers before von Neumann architecture too.

Yes. Abacus and slide rule.

>Dragon ball was definitely the show that popularized Japanese animation in the west.

I like Dragon Ball, but come on, let's be real. You said "the west," but at least in America Dragon Ball (I think only Z aired in America) was extremely niche whereas Pokemon was a widespread cultural phenomenon. Even Digimon was more popular/commercially successful than DBZ in the US.

Shouldn’t this be the link instead of X? https://en.dragon-ball-official.com/news/01_2499.html

Rest in Power. I always said DBZ has single-handedly saved thousands of nerds from early-onset diabetes/arthritis, obesity, an unhealthy lifestyle in general. I count myself among them. That's not to mention the other benefits that just go with working out and staying healthy.

We'll raise our hands for the Spirit Ball, Toriyama-sensei.

ENG translation: https://www-shonenjump-com.translate.goog/j/2024/03/08/24030...

RIP to another legend gone too soon.

Thank you forever for designing the Dragon Quest Slime. Just a blue Hershey's kiss with a face, but it brings so much joy.

There was a distinct style to Toriyama's art that was instantly recognizable.

My memory of manga history is a bit fuzzy... Astroboy (1955) was a big influence and has many of the key elements of Toriyama's distinct style, yet is also strikingly not Toriyama, while Dr Slump (1980) already has all that makes the Toriyama style so unique.

To this day, a huge portion of manga and anime retains this clear, simple, and approachable style. In terms of impact I would equate it to the contemporary Hergé's "Ligne Claire" (1977).

Both are a huge reason as to why I was into drawing in my youngster days.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_claire

70+ upvotes in 20 minutes, and it's rapidly slipping off the front page.

Dang: Are the mods nuking this story? If so, is this not a big deal for much of the HN readership?

Akira Toriyama was an icon for me during my adolescent years. I'm guessing most millennials here were similarly exposed to his work, and that it meant a lot to many amongst the readership here. Toonami, Adult Swim, early Internet culture...

The early web was highly topical place (personal webpages, forums), and one of those common topics was Dragonball. It was everywhere, and by percentage at a volume that can't be matched today by anything.

Edit: The ISS story at #1 is an hour old and has half the upvotes this article does. This story briefly topped, then rapidly started sinking (currently #13). What gives?

If I had to guess, a lot of mundanes don't understand how much anime was a part of early hacker / net culture and are probably flagging it for being offtopic.

"mundanes"? Really?

One of the most infamous Linux User Group in Spain was called "BulmaLUG", because of the obvious geekery. The impact of Dragon Ball working as a gateway to different hobbies it's inmense: manga, scifi, computers...

Well, some of the commentary are low quality and more akin to Reddit, but that’s a trend of HN in general.

When we have RIP threads for people in Computer Scientists, atleast that’s within industry and people are 1-2 degrees of separation with personal anecdotes. Most of the commentary Akira Toriyama are merely as fans.

This said, there’s been other examples of people who aren’t actually related to Computer Science, but was still trended, such as Ted Kaczynski. This could be the academia / academic bias of HN. On the hand, HN is a forum for entrepreneurship and business. The Dragon Ball franchise is one of the greatest economic exports of Japan.

> On the hand, HN is a forum for entrepreneurship and business.

If HN had been around in the late 80s I think there would have been a lot of people defending the real estate developers who inspired a particular DBZ villain.

It could be the flamewar detector - stories that gather too many comments too quickly are sometimes buried for that reason, I believe.

Related: how about an HN black bar?

it's not a conspiracy. It's the later in the evening in the US. Not on a major news url. Which also got changed from a foreign language one. Give it some time. Also your weight on the impact as far as the web is maybe too much. Define "early". It's nothing more than some ascii art and maybe some gifs to me. And I'm talking the actual early web, 90s. I do respect the cultural significance tho. That's easy to see. The title could be "...creator of Dragon Ball" to get more recognition/attention.

seeing dragon ball z on toonami in the early 2000's changed my life. it was so much cooler than anything i had ever seen up to that point. my life revolved around coming home to watch a new episode. my brother would tape episodes on vhs so we could pause it and i could try to draw the scene. i almost ended up with an art degree in college after it sparked my artistic side. i don't think i would have ever been so interested in japanese culture had dragon ball not been that gateway

Damn... Dragon Ball and Dr Slump were huge in France back in the days. There will be a lot of deeply saddened people tomorrow when it lands on front pages.

For those who don't know his name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Toriyama

I’ll save you the click.

He’s most famous for writing the Dragon Ball sagas, and drawing the characters for the Chrono Trigger game.

Slightly less known outside Japan is Dr.Slump, a funny manga/anime about a crazy scientist and his no-less-crazy robot-daughter Arale

Not to mention the Dragon Quest series!

I've never been an anime fan, but Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z will always hold a place in my heart. Last year, I decided to read the series manga—the first and probably only I will ever read. In the forward of each volume, Toriyama talks about random little details of his life, like talking about his pets, a painful dentist visit, etc. This is probably common practice in manga, but as a westerner who has never seen such things, it was absolutely charming, and I enjoyed those glimpses more than I ever would have expected.

Rest in peace.

And the character design not just for Dragon Quest, but Blue Dragon and more notably Chrono Trigger!

Chrono Trigger is one game I'd love to see remade.

Those who watched the original series or Super may recognise Arale, as she made appearances in both.

you know what to do bois? time to gather those dragonballs

but on a serious note, holy hell I did not except the guy to leave so soon. Nobody can ever fill that void now

Subdural hematoma. So, falling. Hmm, a common cause in aged people. I wonder how many more life years we could add by helping deal with falling.

Like many others, DBZ was the first anime I watched. What an experience trying to get the pirated copies and watch them on RealPlayer. And we'd share fan AMVs like they were secret religious texts at school.

Oh damn, sad day and sad surprise. In Italy, where it's very widespread, I grew up with Dragonball at lunch time, all the way into my twenties.

RIP

Dragonball and Simpson/Family Guy after lunch. Those were good times!

I will forever cherish memories of watching Dragon Ball and DBZ with siblings and friends.

A true legend in the field and someone who brought joy to millions.

If this post somehow manages to get 9000 upvotes, some of us will smile quite a bit.

Thank you for Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Super, and Dr Slump.

As a young child, your work made me laugh, gave me guidance on hard work and determination, and was just so damn charming.

It was always a mix of silly vs serious, slice of life vs a potentially hopeless battle. But it was always filled with hope.

May you rest in heaven, together with Hiromi Tsuru (the voice actress for Bulma). If I could wish you back, I would.

I have to pay my respects to such an amazing artist, responsible for some of the most inspiring and motivating stories during my childhood. One of the parts of the series that stands out to me is when Android 16's broken body (head) is on the ground, and with the last of his life he pleads with Gohan to:

"Please! Drop your restraints!"

The song unmei no hi in that scene is so amazing. It's so inspiring.

https://youtu.be/dCzlaI5zWmk

yes! still feeling it since when I first read it 20 years ago

Not the hero of my childhood, but the hero of my friends and chrono trigger and dragon quest designer.

I will share this Bandai/Namco spot that shows something you can see around the world:

https://youtu.be/QQKWSfupJZU?feature=shared

Truly a staple of my childhood, I think many people can remember trying to do a Kamehameha or cheering for Goku during the first tournament or going crazy when Krillin died and Goku turned Super Saiyan for the first time. Good times, thanks Akira

For a generation of western would-become-anime-fans Toriyama-san was the hand that guided us. Dragonball Z, especially in US, served to introduce an audience who otherwise would have never had an interest in animation to a form of entertainment we love. His sense of character design is iconic, to the point that video games and manga he was involved in are immediately recognized as his work. The worlds of Dragon Quest are every bit as culturally formative for rpg fans. His work will continue to be treasured and he will be missed. I will spend some time watching Dragonball Z with my kids this weekend and enjoy every minute of it.

I owe the man my career. I was only interested in HTML because I wanted to make my own version of dragonballz.com. I learnt how to use Limewire because we didn't get the rest of the episodes after the Goku vs Nappa episode, and I also went on to make great friends just because we had some of the episodes that the other didn't have. I learnt to use torrents, scrape links off websites and eventually got my career in programming, which allowed me to buy the entire collection of his works.

Toriyama-sensei, thank you for everything. I am sorry to see you go so soon. If Shenron existed, I'd have wished you back.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20240308_19/

Looks like it has been revised to add more details, updated link is

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20240308_20/

The whole world is mourning his death. Every child with a TV was familiar with his work. THE most influential mangaka, and definitely one of the most influential artists out there. RIP

It's truly a tragedy that lagging interest in Dragon Ball deprived us of twenty years of his output. I'm thankful we got to appreciate his stunning return for the last nine.

To be perfectly honest, I am not a big fan of his art style nor the Dragonball series.

But I don’t deny what a huge cultural icon he and his work are. RIP.

How coincidental I learn of this while watching Dragon Ball Super.

Without Akira Toriyama, Japan might not have had such an economic recovery after their half-collapse in the 1980s. He is what made Japan an accessible and marketable things to the western countries, and they ate it up like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet.

RIP Toriyama-san. I hope the nation honors you with a holiday.

Rip, is there a media franchise more globally popular among gen y bros? I feel like I've seen db memes from everywhere.

Watched DBZ everyday when I came home from school. Goku was the dad I wished I had.

Ill admit, I use this to get pumped for the gym: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv4vPDqoOmQ

Still inspires me after all these years and I don't like 99% of anime.

Alright, I really need to read Dr. Slump now.

Dragonball was my first experience watching an anime dubbed in a language other than English. Surprisingly not in Japanese. It aired on local TV Telemundo 22 (I think? in Spanish) for Southern California. Before that my only exposure in the 90's to Japanese animation was Pokemon.

Good times were had.

He was truly a master of panelling and composition, as this video about the Dragon Ball manga explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFFru4q_4H8

RIP at 68; too soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gttNFh4vEA4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDLpihQUI64

Maybe Super can actually break new ground now. We've been waiting for Goku and Vegeta to retire for 20 years. Reset the power scaling so the next generation can take over and we can get away from multi-multi-verse one punch breaks dimensions silliniess.

Thats highly inappropriate I think

That's exactly what happened in the latest movie, where Goku and Vegeta missed a phone call so Gohan had to take care of the bad guys.

Nevertheless they both now are supposedly at SSJ God tier or above which just continues the nonsense.

Somebody needs to find the dragon balls, stat, so we can wish him back to life with Shenron. This is pretty hard to take. I mean, Dragon Ball was a big part of anime and manga, and it was always there, always being updated because the creator loved making it.

An incredible and very identifiable art style. Doesn't matter what you're playing or watching, if Akira Toriyama was there, you'll see it. Chronic Trigger being my favorite example.

An industry legend. His influence will remain for a long, long time.

The Lessons from Dragon Ball and the pursuit of growth shall always be a part of me until the day I die. Thanks for giving me hope and strength as a child (and still as an adult). Thanks for everything really, Toriyama-sensei ご冥福をお祈りします

I read the series in real time.

Everyone around me subscribed to Weekly Jump every week just to read only DB.

If this were modern times, Jump would have been distributed weekly worldwide.

Perhaps it'll change the world of tech even more.

It must have also put a damper on pirated copies.

Absolutely loved everything Dragon Ball growing up. I still get excited hearing about new Dragon Ball movies and series. He'll be sorely missed and his influence on anime will last generations. Far too soon, RIP Akira.

There's a weird urban legend that the Aichi prefecture built a road for him between his house in Nagoya and the airport. Wrong, of course, but he was big enough that many people believed it was possible.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KZrVNlGuhRM

Still leaving a mark in my life, with Dragon Quest!

Rest in peace.

For anyone feeling like revisiting DBZ as an adult, I recommend watching "Dragon Ball Z: Abridged" on YouTube.

Starts slow / amateurish, but oh boy it gets brilliant eventually.

> For anyone feeling like revisiting DBZ as an adult

I watched DBZ as a child/teen, but now that I'm an adult I find that I'm much more entertained by DB than DBZ.

We use this term a lot in apps/services, but really DBZ is the perfect example of enshitification.

Perhaps, but it seems more like Toriyama changed the target demographic as his set of "original readers" aged; similar to what Rowling did with Harry Potter.

And as an adult I find media targeted at pre-teens and teenagers to often be cringey, but I sometimes find media targeted at children to be charming.

Born in 1980 I still think I was during the DB-->early DBZ in the target demographic.

I can't speak of the manga but on the anime I saw on TV it felt to me that they went from an original traditional storytelling manga to an industrial thing where a pattern of a generic story was repeated and dragging into tons of empty episodes[1] whose sole purpose was to sell child and preteens brain time for advertisers. Even I as a preteen I felt robed and insulted in my intelligence at the time and I don't consider myself a genius.

[1] most of them were just several minutes of generic blabla without any action nor story development

Dragon Ball Z was my favourite cartoon growing up. Rest in peace

Oh my, the Dragon Ball series of comics are wonderful memories from my childhood! I even want my kids to read these comics now! I hope Akira can rest in peace.

I watched some Dragon Ball on TV as a kid, wasn't a fan at first, until I randomly saw the first or second episode. The beginning is very charming and has such a sense of adventure! I didn't know about Manga at the time, and you couldn't just "binge" TV shows back then. So now I tried to catch every single episode. I think this was the first TV show I saw where time actually passes - unless you were following some soap opera for decades, that wasn't really a thing! At some point there's a gap in time where the characters all go their own ways and then meet again for a big tournament, and the main character actually got a major growth spurt. As far as I remember, that was basically unthinkable in an animated show in the 90s, and to be honest that's still very rare today.

And that's when it felt like I was growing along with the characters in the show. After the next fast-forward, the main character is grown up, has a wife and a kid who looks a bit like he did when we first saw him. From then on, the manga/anime sheds pretty much anything outside its core formula (they fight some monster, lose, train really hard, then crush it) and it's mostly superheroes and monsters flexing and yelling. But teenage me ate it up. "Dragon Ball Z" was quite delayed in my country, and it's difficult to explain why a kid like me got very excited about some anime characters changing their hair colors, and would then download RealPlayer clips of that over ISDN. If you were a teenager at that time, you definitely had a whole bunch of cryptically named DBZ characters in your MSN or ICQ friends list.

On a completely different note, Akira Toriyama just completely redefined action in manga. I know he was pushed to do more martial arts because of the success of things like "Fist of the North Star", but I doubt you got this sense of motion and intensity on a piece of paper before Dragon Ball. Some of that got through in the anime as well, and it was the other main reason I was fascinated by it as a kid.

RIP ;(

Thank your for Dragon Quest, forever changing our lives.

https://youtu.be/7Dn61KjXlao

RIP. Dragon Ball was a formative part of my childhood, and I still read the mangas and watch the animes every now and then.

You legend. I spent my childhood riveted to TF1, watching DragonBall in the late 80s.

Thank you for bringing so much joy to my life Akira.

If only he had been wise enough to stop the DragonBall franchise before DBZ and do something else.

Dr Slump was an enjoyable one.

Goku was my first hero. Thank you Toriyama

Dragon Ball Z wasn't the first anime I was exposed to but it was my first exposure to anime culture.

Nice to see the main Dutch evening TV news spend several minutes covering his death and legacy...

RIP. It was THE anime show in the 90's in the Europe. By 1999-2000 everyone finished DBGT.

Like many others, this guy was a *huge* part of my childhood. Rest in Peace Akira Toriyama.

Nice to see the main Dutch evening TV news spend several minutes covering his legacy...

I discovered the existence of manga, anime and Japan in general thanks to him. Thank you!

Time to gather the dragon balls.

I am sad to hear this. Good bye, master. I will show your drawings to my son.

Wow, this hit me. RIP

Here to say RIP. His influence cannot be overstated.

I'm having a partial headache reading that title.

I was internally hoping he would enjoy Japan longer lifespan.. not expecting this in the slightest.

Such confusion ...

As kids many did travel quite far just to get a glimpse of coming DBZ coming volumes.

We'd learn to program VCRs to be sure to tape episodes when we couldn't be there.

That series in itself was a deep deep source of wonder. And it was a pillar and gateway into Japanese culture, from drawing style to language...

Kinda dumbfounded right now.

Tiny personal mental black bar..

Tragically, a large proportion of manga artists die early. The lifestyle of spending 12 hours a day bent over a desk, frantically drawing, stressing about deadlines, all contributes to a variety of causes of early death.

Treasure your mangaka while they're alive, as theirs is an industry fuelled by passion - often far too much. (And greedy/demanding publishers, but we'll leave that discussion for another time.)

Yeah, and current generation is struggling to make even decent money it seems.

what, RIP for dragon ball creator

Rest in peace.

RIP

RIP.

RIP

AKIRA: IVE BEEN A SUPER SAIYAN FOR YEARS, NOW I TOO HAVE THE POWER OF A GOD.

Why is this being buried even though it’s being upvoted a lot?

I noticed the same. This is purposely being down-weighted. What gives?

117 votes, 30 minutes old, currently at #10.

There is some "flame war" downranking which works on the (points/h)/(comment/h) ratio I think. Too many "rip":s?

> It's a shame because he had a lot of work to do, and there were still things he wanted to accomplish.

Man, I hope that sounds less cold in the original Japanese than it comes across in English.

"It's such an inconvenience that our manga-ka died when he still had so much work left to turn in!"

It didn't come across as cold to me in English. I took it to mean that he loved his work, and kept at it right up until the end. i.e. a statement of admiration and praise for his passion.

Yeah, this is more of the nuance, my rough translation would be:

“He had many projects he was passionately working on and many more things he wanted to accomplish, it’s unfortunate (that he won’t be able to complete them)”.

The Japanese is more like "he probably had many more things he wanted to do", no nuance of "there were tasks for us that were left unhandled by his passing".

I believe it's meant to emphasize that despite being 68, he was still working hard for his fans. In Japan that's very much the way that these things are often portrayed, it's essentially eulogizing in a low-key way.

68 is definitely too young. Especially in Japan where advanced age is more common.

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