Akira Toriyama passed away earlier this mont🔯h at the age of 68. He was responsible for the creation of Dragon Ball and the iconic character designs of Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, Blue Dragon, and countless other classics. Toriyama had an influence on the world of not just anime, manga, and video games, but pꦯop culture on a global scale that few others can lay claim to. His sudden death is heartbreaking.
Like many children 🌊of my generation, I grew up watching Dragon Ball Z on television, often in the form of scattered episodes on Toonami where I had little grasp on the unfolding story, but that didn’t matter when the characters and world they inhabited were so co🅠mpelling. Humans on the surface, but secretly aliens who held ancient powers within them that could awaken a laundry list of ancient beings and destroy planets with a snap of their fingers, all projected on a protagonist who was dorky, relatable, and never afraid to be flawed or reflect the viewer.
Tributes to the late Dragon Ball creator are flooding onto social media, whether it be through beautifully unique pi🐎eces of art or footage of favourite clips💖 or moments from the things he created. The outpouring of grief is overwhelming.
It wasn’t until my teenage years that I watched the original series in order and read the manga from the questionable comfort of a PS3 web browser. Nevertheless, it’s still a formative part of my upbringing, and a piece of media I refer to alongside the greats like Sailor Moon, Cowboy Bebo﷽p, Berserk, Fullmetal Alchemist, and so many Japanese titans I found solace in as a kid. These were fantastical worlds where anything was possible, but within them, I still founꦇd relatable characters and heartfelt stories that felt human.
Even as someone who was still growing up and figuring out my place in the world, Dragon Ball presented moral lessons from a place I could understand, albeit with power levels and multiple planets destroyed over several episode arcs. Its heroes, villains, and locations are instantly iconic, to the point that millions can recall them from small hallmarks alone. There are few people in the creative world like Toriyama, who himself has said in the past that his work allowed him to feel seen and respected despite a personality he believed painted him as an outsider. On the contrary, he just needed the right outle🔜t to be properly understood.
Whi💜le certain franchises would eventually become footnotes in the medium’s history, Dragon Ball never did. It stayed alive, through new films, ꦕshows, games, manga, and other media in which the original story was retold again and again, or Toriyama took it to places once seen as impossible. There was no limit to how much Dragon Ball could grow because its origins were so immaculate and beloved, and despite a few weak points along the way, it endured until Toriyama’s own passing. It will live on for decades and centuries to come, even if new stewards pick up the mantle and continue building out his universe into something bigger.
Outside of Dragon Ball, his character designs and creative influence are unmistakable. I still remember begging my parents to pick up a copy of Blue Dragon because not only was it t♛he sort of RPG I adored, it had Toriyama’s touch all over it. ಌYears prior, Chrono Trigger set the role-playing world on fire with an instant classic that wowed players before greats like Final Fantasy 7 burst onto the scene, and even now, it’s spoken of in the same breath.
There are few people in modern history I can name with a stronger cultural cache than Toriyama, and his passing hits so hard because he still had so much more to give, stories he’d begun which will now forever be left unfinished, or projects on the horizon that already have his blessing, but he’ll never see through to the end. The fact we will still celebrate him when they emerge, perhaps even more so than ever before, sh🌺ows how much he meant to us.
It feels ridiculous to be stopped in my tracks by the death of someone like Toriyama. I never met him, nor would I likely have the chance to, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t stumble across his work on a daily basis, as I fondly remembered how much it still mattered to me. There are countless memories, both professional and personal, I can attach to things that wouldn’t have happened without Toriyama, and that's a debt I’ll never be able to repay.
But as I keep making more memories in the wake of his death, I know I will always think of Akira Toriyama with a beaming smile on my face. It’s what he would have wanted, and from the outpouring of love over the 𓂃past few hours alone, it’s what he will keep on delivering.
Rest in peace, Toriyama-san.
- Release Date
- February 26, 1986
- Franchise(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Ball
Goku is a young boy searching for the fabled Dragon Balls alongside the enigmati🌊c Bulma. It ran for 153 episodes over three years.
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