Akira Toriyama
Early years

In his youth, Toriyama loved Astro Boy and Walt Disney cartoons (his one favorite was 101 Dalmatians). Inspired by it, he began drawing a lot. Social pressure was pushing him towards it, too. All the kids in his class were drawing (or rather attempting to draw), so he jumped on the bandwagon.

Quickly becoming the best one at it, it was an early sign that this is something perhaps worth following in the future. As is often the case, when young Akira entered his teenage years, cartoons made room for more adult entertainment. Now, westerns were his favorite leisure.

The year 1974 saw Toriyama enter high school, where he began studying design. After finishing it, he was pressed hard by his parents to continue education, but went against them and at the age of 20 began working. Duty called.

Wanting to get to it as soon as possible, Akira started working as graphic designer for the advertising company. Despite the fact that he was perfecting his craft, that specific line of work he hated and to his parents disapprobation, he quit.

In 1977, looking for an income source but also a place where he could finally put his talents to good use, Toriyama stumbled upon Monthly Young Jump Award, hosted by the now defunct magazine which got replaced with Bimonthly Miracle Jump (as opposed to its sister publication Weekly Young Jump which remains popular to this day).

Shueisha, the company behind the magazine and the contest is a near-century-old powerhouse which still remains one of the most popular publishers on the Japanese market, so winning a contest there could certainly kick-start a career.

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He entered the competition twice. First time was in 1977, with a story named Awawa World. It was an interesting mixture of modern and historical times (in one scene, a policeman gives peasant a ticket for parking his horse in the wrong zone). Unfortunately, it has never been published.

It's fair to conclude that this work has laid ground for the artist's later ventures. Graphically, it was far from even being decent, but the concept and the imagination behind it was very appealing. Shueisha themselves offered him a job.

One year after submitting Awawa World, another manga came from under his pen. Titled Mysterious Rain Jack, it was a short parody of the first Star Wars movie, which debuted a year earlier and was a big hit throughout the world (and perhaps nowhere else bigger than in Japan, where to this day the whole series enjoys a cult status, to put things mildly).

This work was submitted to the same Shueisha competition one year after Awawa World, but the fact alone that this was a parody was a breach of terms (a rule probably made to avoid potential lawsuits). The manga got disqualified and, just like in case of his first comic, was ultimately never published.

His consolation prize was that Mysterious Rain Jack became the finalist of that competition and some of the character concepts he created he used later in Dr. Slump.

What's more, he soon got a call from Weekly Shonen Jump's editor Kazuhiko Torishima, who was impressed by his mangas so far and urged him to continue trying. One specific compliment Toriyama got from the editor was that he does great with black and white. Another was that his use of normal alphabet to convey sound effects (as opposed to katakana, the industry standard) was a breath of fresh air.

Encouraged by the conversation, Toriyama rolled up his sleeves and few months later finished his third manga. This one finally got published! It was titled Wonder Island and told a story of Hiso Furusuni, a bird soldier who came to the Island of Miracles, inhabited by the King Ghidra. In this particular work, all the characteristics of Akira Toriyama's signature style could be found.

Published in the issue #52 of Weekly Shonen Jump (1978), it went largely unnoticed despite being solid. The artist didn't give up and continued working hard. Reception was humble, but the writer went straight ahead anyway and few next months later Wonder Island 2 was finished.

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The year 1979 was a very testing one for him, as almost everything he did then got rejected by Shueisha. It could be a career-breaking year, but the publishing success of Tomato, Girl Detective was light at the end of a tunnel. There, for the first time readers could see a character very similar to Arale-chan in Dr. Slump and Senbei Norimaki's prototype.

The manga told a story of Akai Tomato, 18-year old who gets work at the police station in Yoikorasho. Pretty and naive, the girl treats her job as if it is a joke and to make things more complicated (and funnier, too), she has a knack for getting into trouble.

This work was the result of Torishima suggesting him to try and write something with female as the leading role.

For the first time, public reception was very positive. He was thrilled. Tomato, Girl Detective marked the beginning of one of Toriyama's element that would sit at the core of his later works: a confused protagonist getting into trouble without realizing it and getting out as well, as if the blissful ignorance would serve as a shield.

The real success came next year though. His follow-up Dr. Slump was an instant hit with the audience.

It told a Pinocchio-inspired story about a robot-girl, made of metal instead of wood, that possessed many human qualities. But since she wasn't one, it was hard for her to understand people's behavior. As a result, the girl got very interested about what makes us tick (no pun intended).

The story wasn't Dr. Slump's spine though - jokes were. People familiar with Dragon Ball (and especially with the second part) could be surprised to find out that it is a very light-hearted affair where any epicness is practically non-existent and instead minor interactions are where the fun is at.

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As diminishing as it sounds Akira did a fantastic job at entertaining his readers and it is a fun lecture. The humor is fantastic and if you laughed reading early Dragon Ball mangas and like the overall set-and-setting, you'll most certainly like Dr. Slump. Another interesting thing about it is the high number of references to popular culture.

One best thing about it would probably be the colorful characters and the interactions between them. Toriyama didn't get all those character design gigs without a reason - this really was his strongest asset. Dr. Slump made the whole Japan familiar with it and it was the key to the manga's amazing success.

In 1982, Dr. Slump received Shogakukan Manga Award in the shonen orshojo category. Suddenly, Toriyama became a pricey commodity in the manga world and joined the likes of Masakazu Katsura (who would soon become his lifelong friend) on lists of fresh faces destined to become big stars of tomorrow.

To this day, in Japan alone 35 million copies of the manga were sold. Just one year later, animated TV version started (243 episodes in total aired for 5 years on Fuji TV) and later a remake was made (74 episodes). Eleven full-length animated movies were released too, and on top of that multiple video games got written - not surprising, given how popular consoles were in Japan at the time.

Dr. Slump quickly became an enormous, recognizable brand for Shueisha that brought them a lot of money.