A Tribute to Akira Toriyama

Dragon Ball's Impact on the 20th and 21st Century

Today is a heavy day. An artist and global cultural icon has passed. The media announced that Akira Toriyama died on March 1st from acute subdural hematoma, which is when blood collects between the brain and skull.¹ Many of us grew up on Toriyama’s manga and anime - his most prominent titles being Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, which is still going with Dragon Ball Super. Toriyama began Dragon Ball in 1984. Let that sink in. Since 1984 people from around the world have been and are still actively engaging with the Dragon Ball Multiverse. Literally generations share in the love for this world and its creator. Additionally, the creators of popular manga and anime One Piece and Naruto have written tributes to Toriyama, expressing his influence on their personal media tastes and artistic trajectories.² As I said on one of my recent posts on X, I will reemphasize that there are not enough words to convey the loss of a giant and his impact on the world. 

I first encountered Toriyama’s work through Cartoon Network’s Toonami, which was the network’s late night show that delivered English dubbed anime to the United States. I cannot pinpoint exactly when I initially watched Dragon Ball, but I do know that I was around five years old because Adult Swim used to air immediately following Toonami and I remember getting in trouble for watching Sealab 2021, which was a parody of Hanna-Barbera’s Sealab 2020. The DB Multiverse has had a constant presence in my life. As a child, I did not have the awareness to analyze Toriyama’s work in the context of the history of storytelling. Reflecting in retrospect, the huge world he created is part of what drew me in. The vast cast of characters, planets, and dimensions absolutely blew me away. Placing Earth in the middle of this secondary world made it that much more real to me and contributed to my perception of its depth. In a recent dissertation entitled “Dragon Ball: An In-Depth Examination of Modern Mythology,” Shane Kyle Surrey says, “The Dragon Ball franchise’s popularity places it alongside franchises such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Tolkien’s Legendarium, Terminator, Harry Potter, Alien, and Marvel as one of the most prominent and relevant science-fiction and fantasy franchises of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”³ I agree with Surrey and I’m sure many of you do as well.

Where action tended to attract my attention more than world building are carefully crafted character development, IPs such as Dragon Ball Z and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings felt like they were specifically made for me. These pieces of art had an implicit impact on me, however. Seeing virtuous and strong characters such as Goku and Arwen sacrifice their wellbeing for the sake of others instilled an admiration for those who embodied these characteristics. I wanted to “go beyond” for my own sake so that I could make a positive impact on the world. Even characters like Vegeta and Boromir, who start their journeys rather roughly - obviously Vegeta more than Boromir - redeem themselves through sacrifice and giving their lives for those they have hurt. You can’t tell me that seeing Goku and Vegeta train together throughout the Dragon Ball Multiverse isn’t damn inspiring. These characters felt real and relatable even with their superhuman abilities. 

Tolkien believed that to create a more real-feeling secondary world, one needed to bring the elements and logic from our primary world to construct a world with its own internal logic that could be experienced as true in the fictional world. Arda is our world and the legendarium is framed as a sort of prehistory. Similarly, the Dragon Ball Multiverse feels like a future Earth. One could pick at some of the science fiction elements as far fetched or some of the fantastical elements as disjointed, but DBZ has always felt real to me. Tell me you haven’t tried to go super saiyan in your youth (or in your adulthood). 

My love for Middle-earth and Dragon Ball Z go hand-in-hand. I don’t know if I would be writing this Substack or pursuing writing in fantasy and pop culture if I had not encountered Toriyama’s work. This is a shorter post, but I wanted to honor a man whose work has quite literally formed part of my identity. Take some time and reminisce by perhaps watching an episode or so of Dragon Ball, play Chrono Trigger, or just bask in the memories you have of sharing his stories with your friends and family. Rest in peace, Arika Toriyama. May the cola, cigarettes, and nori senbei crackers be abundant in your next life.

1. “‘Dragon Ball’ Creator Akira Toriyama Dead at 68.” TMZ, 8 March, 2024. https://www.tmz.com/2024/03/08/dragon-ball-creator-akira-toriyama-dead-dies/

2. Dinsdale, Ryan. “One Piece, Naruto, Dragon Quest Creators and More Mourn Death of Dragon Ball’s Akira Toriyama.” IGN, 8 March, 2024. https://www.ign.com/articles/one-piece-naruto-dragon-quest-creators-and-more-mourn-death-of-dragon-balls-akira-toriyama

3.  Surrey, Shane Kyle. “Dragon Ball: An In-Depth Examination of Modern Mythology.” Dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2021. 2. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2563840505?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses