Who is Akira Toriyama beyond Dragon Ball?

Dr. Slump (1980 to 1984) made him famous first: Arale, the robot girl of Penguin Village, was a national phenomenon whose anime ran five years, and its cast's crossover into Dragon Ball, the General Blue stretch, is explained in the Library's Dr. Slump connection page. Slump's success is why Toriyama could negotiate the working conditions, a home studio in Aichi, a famously small staff, that let Dragon Ball run eleven years without destroying him.

The design career rivals the manga one. From 1986 Toriyama supplied every mainline Dragon Quest's character and monster designs, the slime above all, making him the visual author of Japan's other defining RPG. He co-designed Chrono Trigger (1995) in the so-called Dream Team with Hironobu Sakaguchi and Yuji Horii, contributed to Blue Dragon, and designed vehicles, robots, and creatures across games and toys, work documented in his own design collections.

The short works are where collectors find the range: the Toriyama Akira Marusaku Gekijo (Theatre) volumes collecting his one-shots from 1978 onward, Sand Land (2000), a single-volume desert adventure whose 2023 film and 2024 series arrived as a late-career celebration, Kajika, Cowa, and Jaco. Viz has published several in English, and the Japanese one-shot volumes are among the most affordable original Toriyama books on the market.

Toriyama died on March 1, 2024, of an acute subdural hematoma, and the announcements from Bird Studio and Shueisha, with tributes from heads of government in France and El Salvador among others, measured a reach few manga artists have had. A beyond-Dragon Ball shelf, Slump highlights, one Marusaku Gekijo set, Sand Land, and a Dragon Quest art book, is the Library's recommended shape for honoring the whole career rather than its loudest decade.