Akira Toriyama
Post-Dragon Ball years

In 1995, Toriyama was tired with his long-running Dragon Ball franchise and wanted to concentrate on smaller projects, preferably short stories that are less demanding. He did as he wanted and in the next years completed Cowa!, Kajika, Sand Land and Nekomajin, the last one stretching the longest, as it was finalized after 5 years since its 1999 debut.

Shueisha wasn't too happy about their new situation - as it turned out, many people had bought their V Jump and Weekly Shonen Jump magazines just to read Toriyama and with that incentive gone, they went away, leaving the two magazines in financial shambles.

Unfortunately, Akira became the hostage of his own success. All his new products were largely unsuccessful. Everyone, including publishers, expected another Dragon Ball and Toriyama couldn't even come close quality-wise with his output. Regurgitating old ideas didn't help, too. A new version of Cashman – Saving Soldier, which was first released in 1990, has barely lasted 6 months before it had to be cancelled.

What's more, a further regress in the creator's abilities was taking place. Once manga maestro was now chasing his own tale with not even a single hair to show for it. Kajika was largely a desperate copy of his earlier ideas and Cowa has proven that his fantastic sense of humor may be gone, too.

One attempt to stay in touch with mainstream was his Star Wars-inspired Shonen Jump story Star Wars Anakin Drawing (the second trilogy was then kicking off with The Phantom Menace). This time, everything was coordinated and patent worries were cleared out.

In 1999, Toriyama took a non-typical gig for him, as his old friend Kunihiro Suzuki needed a new logo for his company Fine Molds Corp., which to this day makes very realistic plastic models and even did few in cooperation with Akira. The manga creator designed him the new logo, taking inspiration from Suzuki's dog.

Come 2002, perhaps already past his gagging reaction to anything related to Dragon Ball, Toriyama began designing covers for the re-release of the series and made small changes to the last 4 pages that closed it.

As the reissues began hitting the shelves, Shueisha had a bigger fish to fry. Hooking American kids on manga seemed like an almost impossible job, as there completely different worlds were painted by Marvel and DC Comics. Dragon Ball's explosion of popularity helped slightly, but manga publishers still crashed hard when trying to enter the American market.

In 2002, Shueisha was part of a bigger umbrella-company Viz Media, which made another attempt at entering. This time, they succeeded and their new title, shortened to Shonen Jump, debuted on November 26, 2002. Promotional event was held to help kick-start the initiative and there Akira Toriyama made his only professional public appearance in the United States.

One year later, he drew a book for kids called Toccio the Angel, starring a Majin Buu-like creature, all sorts of animals and, of course, a dragon.

As Birds Studio's relevancy continued to irreversibly decline, Akira found another strange project to channel his creativity - he was to design his own electric car! On March 27, 2005, CQ Motors (known to design strange automobiles) started selling a functional model based on a concept provided by Toriyama (known to design none).

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It was branded QVOLT and got included into the Choro-Q line. It is a pricey collector's item as only 9 were produced. Its top speed of 30 km/h makes it every Nascar fan's wet dream. Toriyama confessed that designing it took him twelve months.

That same year, Akira conspired with his friend Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, to combine their two top creations into one. The result was branded Cross Epoch. Inside, the characters from both series attempt to reach a tea party and struggle with various adventures on their way, which put their reaching of final destination into question. Despite the combined potential, the reception to it was average.

Same year as Jiya, Avex Trax paid Akira to draw a portrait of a famous Japanese artist Ayumi Hamasaki, which was laser-printed directly onto the compact disk of Rule/Sparkle EP. In exchange, Rule was used as the main theme of a disastrous Dragon Ball big screen adaptation Dragonball Evolution debuting the same year.

Sporting a 2.7/10 score on IMDb (which currently puts it at the bottom #89 position in a database that must include hundreds of thousands of movies), Dragonball Evolution is definitely among the worst films ever made. Toriyama himself admitted that he was absolutely shocked when he saw it.

How else could it turn out though, since the director James Wong admitted that he hadn't seen a single anime episode nor read a single Dragon Ball manga page prior to making the movie! To make the story even more ridiculous, Dragonball Evolution was a huge commercial success - it doubled the investment, earning nearly $30 million! And absolutely everyone hated it.

In 2007, Toriyama came back to Dr. Slump and made a short sequel Dr. Mashirito and Abale-chan. In line with his late-career norm, fan response was moderate. Together with his great friend and creator of Zetman Masakazu Katsura, Toriyama began cooperating in 2008. The first fruit of this temporary fusion was named Sachi-chan Guu! and soon the two followed it with Jiya. They split their duties in an interesting way for both releases: Katsura drew what Toriyama came out with.

In Sachie-chan Guu!!, the title protagonist decides to go aid aliens and fight off the invading space pirates. Few years later, that work was also released in United States.

Sachie-chan Guu!! started a trilogy called Galactic Patrol series which was continued in the next year with Jiya - another collaboration, which reversed the previously exploited scheme - now Toriyama drew and Katsura took the responsibility of writing a story.

That same year saw Toriyama draw Delicious Island's Mr. U. It was a special environmental awareness project for children authored by Anjo's Rural Society Project. The non-profit organization contacted Akira asking him to draw a pamphlet, but he decided to create a whole story free of charge.

In 2010, he went back to writing solo with Kintoki, a one-shot story about the last man of his kind going on a journey to find a wife and make lots of kids so his race doesn't go extinct.

In 2013, the Dragon Ball series entered theaters again for the first time in 17 years in the form of Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods. The gamble has paid off - the film was fast-paced, refreshing, the humor high quality. Everything seemed a bit cramped together, but that wasn't an issue big enough to spoil the fun.

Toriyama was heavily engaged in the creation process, first developing the story, creating characters, and then drawing animations.

The same year, Toriyama traveled to France to receive a distinction for his career. The event was 40th Angouleme International Comics Festival - the largest annual comic book festival on the continent which attracts an audience in up to hundreds of thousands. With the most votes, he almost received grand prize as well, but the committee has chosen to ignore it.

In 2013, Shueisha's Jump series was 45 years old. In celebratory mood, the company initiated Toriyama's new comic Jaco the Galactic Patrolman. It debuted in the July 29 issue of Weekly Shonen Jump and lasted 11 episodes. It was revealed that its events precede those in Dragon Ball.

The manga completes the earlier mentioned Galactic Patrol series.

The year 2015 saw the return of the Dragon Ball franchise in the form of Dragon Ball Super.

Fans expectations were sky-high, but Shueisha disappointed. Compared to the likes of One-Punch Man (which heavily draws inspiration from Dragon Ball, particularly in its second half, or so), the quality is second best at most.

As the anime matures and computer animation continues to assist in ways that look and feel less and less intrusive every year, fans expected much better visuals than they got from the latest installment from this major brand.

Story-wise, there's nothing to brag about either. It's not that the beginning episodes are particularly bad, but they borrow way too much from the latest OVA (at the moment of writing) Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods which made the show look like its extended version.

Toriyama was well-aware of this and even publicly criticized it on numerous occasions. Fortunately for the series, he decided to do something about it and personally engaged in further development. Since then, the quality has visibly risen, although Dragon Ball Super still has nothing to brag about.