Summary

• Toriyama's art style was unconventional yet refreshing, and it evolved to suit the needs of his stories.
• His Western influences shaped series like Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball, setting them apart from other manga of the time.
• Toriyama's emphasis on visual storytelling, ing, and character designs made his works easy to follow and globally popular.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the art of Dragon Ball, if not Akira Toriyama's collective style, is some of the best in the medium. However, pinpointing what exactly makes Toriyama's art so appealing or separates his works from those of his contemporaries helps solidify the legacy of the artist as one of the most influential in the history of the medium.

Toriyama's art was revolutionary in many ways. His art was distinct from other works being published at the time and his character designs and concepts were unlike anything Japanese readers had come across before. Not only were many of his stories and designs influenced by Western media and art, but Toriyama's ever-evolving style ensured his characters were able to keep up with the changing tone of his stories.

More importantly, Toriyama made careful use of ing and composition, and his clean art style ensured his works were always easy to follow, making his fight scenes some of the most popular in the medium. These factors, together with Toriyama's emphasis on visual storytelling, propelled him and his works into global popularity while also ensuring Toriyama would leave a lasting impact on the anime and manga industry as a whole.

Toriyama's Art Style Was Unconventional but Refreshing

Dr. Slump's success thrust Toriyama into the spotlight

As influential as Dragon Ball may be, Toriyama's journey began with Dr. Slump, which was his first real hit. What made Dr. Slump such a widespread success was Toriyama's distinct art style, unlike anything readers had seen before at the time. Manga and character design in the 70s and 80s were still highly influenced by Osamu Tezuka's works. Popular titles from the period generally retained realistic proportions and features, like Lone Wolf and Cub(1970), Samurai Executioner (1972), and Akira (1982), while a few (mostly shoujo titles) began exaggerating certain physical features like the eyes, which started to become more enlarged and detailed as seen in series like The Rose of Versailles (1972).

This realism stuck around until even the late 80s, as even series like Hajime no Ippo (1989) and Jojo's Bizzare Adventure (1987) which took some liberties with style and facial proportions maintained some semblance of realism. The only other exception to this rule was maybe Kinnikuman (1978) which experimented with an unconventional design but was still incomparable to the sheer creativity of Toriyama's works. As seen in this post on X by @sandman_AP, Dr. Slump was quite unique and took readers by storm not long after it was released.

It's evident that, while many series of the time pursued realism, the art of those published in Weekly Shonen Jump was often crude and unrefined, and it mostly followed the example set by the grandfather of manga, Osamu Tezuka. Toriyama's innovation was that he managed to step away from realism while maintaining a clean, detailed, and visually pleasing trait that made his drawings instantly stand out.

This is especially clear from the first cover page of Dr. Slump, which features an incredibly realistic and detailed portrayal of Senbei Norimaki, proving that Toriyama could draw in that style if he wanted. However, he decided to make the characters in the series look like the small Arale on the cover, because that suited his needs and vision.

In contrast to the other works that sought after realism, Dr. Slump was different and quirky with its stumpy characters who had cartoonishly large heads and short chubby arms. Despite their disfigured proportions, Dr. Slump's characters had a charm that was missing in Toriyama's earlier works, like Wonder Island and Tomato, Girl Detective, in spite of their very similar character designs. Perhaps Dr. Slump's thinner, more refined linework and more balanced proportions were to credit for the series' undeniable charm and success.

Toriyama certainly had the talent to draw anatomically accurate characters, as seen from his other one-shot Escape, meaning that Dr. Slump's design was entirely an artistic choice.

Toriyama's Western Influences and Inspirations Shaped Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball

Having said that, the art wasn't the only thing unique about Dr. Slump. As Toriyama himself revealed in this interview with Wired in 1996, Dr. Slump featured many unique elements, like talking animals, which although aren't anything out of the ordinary in the present, were quite unconventional back then.

• Wired: So [you do] things that can be interpreted within the setting of human society….
• Toriyama: That’s right. So back when I started Dr. Slump, it was a time when there were still higher-ups at Shueisha who would complain, “Why do the animals talk?” (laughs) I don’t think something like that would occur anymore, though.

It is here that Toriyama's Western influences become evident. When asked about what kind of comics he read as a child in an interview with Men's Non-No in 2014, Toriyama revealed he was particularly a fan of Disney as a child and came to imitate Disney's caricatures in his own art. This may perhaps explain why Toriyama was quick to ditch the general trend of realism in manga at the time and developed his famous lighthearted yet distinctive style.

Also, it’s not comics, but even as a kid, I thought the art design in Disney animation was incredible, and I practically devoured it. In One Hundred and One Dalmatians in particular, things like the way the humans were drawn and the animals were caricatured was awesome, and I often imitated it.

- Akira Toriyama in Men's Non-No, January 2014 issue.

These Western influences did not stop at Disney and Dr. Slump alone. As Toriyama reveals in the same interview with Mens Non-No, Dragon Ball originally started as a one-shot called Dragon Boy inspired by the Jackie Chan movies that Toriyama watched endlessly while working on his illustrations. As the story was a hit, Kazuhiko Torishima, the editor working with Toriyama at the time, suggested incorporating elements from Journey to the West to turn Dragon Boy into a long-running series, and after much tweaking, Dragon Ball was eventually born.

At the time, I loved Jackie Chan, and I’d watch videos of kung-fu movies while I did my inking and such. Then Torishima-san came and said, “In that case, draw a kung-fu thing next,” and I refused, [saying,] “the things I like and the things I want to draw are different, so I don’t want to,” but in the end, [Torishima] got his way. So to test things out, I drew a kung-fu one-shot called Dragon Boy, and it was relatively popular, so [I thought], well, it looks like I’ve just got to do it. At first, I intended on using the setting of Journey to the West as-is, so I made the main character a monkey, but [Torishima] told me that a monkey was no good, so I drew Goku next. Except, maybe because he was a little plain, there was the opinion that I should give him a bit of a defining characteristic, so I added a tail.

- Toriyama, Men's Non-No, January 2014 issue.

As for why Journey to the West was chosen in particular, as Torishima explains in this interview with Forbes from 2016, Journey to the West was not only free intellectual property but would also help incorporate Toriyama's love for Jackie Chan and kung-fu while giving him enough elements to help expand Dragon Boy into a larger story, unlike Dr. Slump, which was largely episodic. Dragon Ball was meant to be a completely different story from Dr. Slump from the very start and this also translated to Toriyama's art slowly changing to fit Dragon Ball's narrative as it progressed.

“One of the other big reasons I liked Journey to the West as an influence was because with Dr. Slump the story mainly happened on something like the West Coast of the U.S., as in the environment and overall setting. However, as we were trying to start something new I thought we needed an almost opposite setting. In those days, China was not a popular topic in manga and I thought that would make us stand out, by being unique and fresh. So we wanted to have the story operate in a very different world from that of Dr. Slump, so the opposite of California for me was something like China.

“I wanted to make the whole thing completely different in fact. The opposite of Dr. Slump. The protagonist wouldn't be a girl but a boy. Move the setting from California to China. Change the focus from comedy to story.”

- Kazuhiko Torishima to Forbes on Shaping the Success of Dragon Ball and the Origins of Dragon Quest, 2016.

Journey to the West is a 16th-century Chinese novel that tells the tale of a Buddhist monk named Xuanzang who travels west looking for Buddhist sacred scriptures along with four of his disciples, one of them being a monkey named Sun Wukong who served as the inspiration for Son Goku.

Toriyama's Style Has Evolved Greatly Over The Course of His Career

Toriyama mostly favored two kinds of eye shapes in Dragon Ball — a rounded or circular shape for lighthearted situations and the signature sharp angular shape for more tense situations. Many of his characters also had smaller pupils in stark contrast to their large eyes, which oddly allowed them to be much more expressive. His characters also featured thick blocked eyebrows with line-hatching at the ends that were quite popular at the time and were also found in many of Tezuka's works.

Toriyama also emphasized the cheekbones with similar hatching and his facial features were mostly concentrated with small pointy noses and larger eyes and mouths. As for female characters, Toriyama generally gave them semi-circular eyes with spiky eyelashes which evolved into more of an almond shape later. Toriyama's characters also have one of two hair types — the fluffy, rounded curls usually seen on female characters or the signature pointy hair with curved ends.

Despite seemingly falling into archetypes, Toriyama's characters have an overall charming design and have greatly influenced other artists over the years. An excellent example is theallowed Toriyama to keep up with deadlines for decades.

More importantly, while Dragon Ball initially retained some of the roundness from Dr. Slump, as the story progressed, Toriyama gradually moved away from Slump's comical style and his designs started to get sharper and blockier. This was to accommodate Dragon Ball's action sequences as well as the tonal shift in the story as it progressed from a lighthearted adventure to a serious story with a heavy focus on fighting in the second half. Toriyama explains as much in Dragon Ball Daizenshuu #1 when asked whether he had made any deliberate changes in his illustration between Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump.

Yeah, I don’t really like to go for the same sort of pattern, so I change the pictures to suit the story. Because of this, even now if you tell me to draw with a Dr. Slump-esque touch, sure enough I can draw like that. I just use round lines. When I got into the second half of Dragon Ball, I had already become more interested in thinking up the story then in drawing the pictures. Then I started to not place much emphasis on the pictures. The battles became intense, and I gradually came to switch to more simple lines.

At any rate, I despise doing the same thing. I’m fundamentally perverse that way. I got postcards from readers saying “Compared to the old days, it’s really square now. It was better the way it used to be.”, so I thought I’d go make it even more square. (laughs)

However, at the start I didn’t really have much confidence in my battle scenes. I hadn’t really drawn what you might call motion pictures before. That’s because I started out in illustrations. It was really hard to do that first Tenka’ichi Budōkai.

- Toriyama, Dragon Ball Daizenshuu #1.

In Shenlong Times #1, editor Yuu Kondo further confirms that Toriyama's illustrations began to change around the Frieza Arc and that this change was made because rounded lines could not convey speed or intensity.

That’s when it started to change from what it had been before. When it started serialization, the story was comical, so the lines were round. Then, with the Tenka’ichi Budōkai, it switched to a fighting theme, so after that the fighting had to escalate. But when it comes to that, round lines don’t convey a sense of speed or intensity. So once he realized this, midway through the manga the round lines started to become square and sharp. When that happened, I said to Toriyama-san, “Aren’t the lines a little harsh now?”, and he said, “No, if I don’t do it like this then there’s no sense of speed.

- Yuu Kondo, Shenlong Times #1.

Thus, the change to sharper, harsher lines was made to better convey battles and to suit the story that Dragon Ball had grown into. Similarly, the focus on muscle definition and anatomy also increased to better suit Dragon Ball's increasingly serious battles and Goku's increasingly strong opponents. Toriyama simply felt that Goku needed to be taller and more muscular for his attacks to hold any weight and for his battle to feel serious.

Toriyama has also changed his style of shading many times switching between softer and hard edges throughout the years. This change is best observed in Dragon Ball's manga covers over the years. He was even influenced by adaptations of his own works. As a result, his style of coloring and shading has changed more times than one can count over the course of his prolific career.

Yeah. For example, in the old days I shaded off the light portions on hair, but shading it off took a lot of time. When I made an anime called Kosuke-same Rikimaru-sama (screened at the ’89 Jump Anime Carnival, and later became a Jump Video), I looked at the pictures of the animator Toyo’o Ashida-san, and I thought that the anime-style way of applying light and shadow wasn’t bad. I made my pictures like that from then on.

- Toriyama, Daizenshuu #1.

Toriyama's Visual Storytelling is What Makes His Works Stand Out

While the image above is from Dragon Ball Super, which is drawn by Toyotarou, he is perhaps the biggest irer of Toriyama and shaped his art entirely on his sensei's example.

Despite his constantly evolving art style, Toriyama's works have continued to stand out in the saturated manga industry all thanks to a certain set of indispensable qualities to be found in all of his creations. First and foremost is the clarity of his art. In any given , every character has a distinct silhouette that conveys not only who the character is, but also what exactly the character is doing, and in some cases, even what the character is feeling. Toriyama's illustrations have clarity of form and the identities and actions of every character are easy to infer at a glance.

This clarity ties in with Toriyama's superior use of composition, which discreetly yet smoothly guides a reader's eye from one to the next. Although early chapters of Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball did include arrows indicating the reading direction, Toriyama's works are incredibly easy to follow, which likely stems from his previous experience working in advertising. Toriyama himself mentions in the interview with Wired how this experience may have come in handy.

• Wired: Toriyama-san, whether it be Dragon Ball or Dr. Slump, I think your works have a large number of really “stand-out” characters that are able to coexist.
• Toriyama: That might be something that was fostered in me through doing advertising design. I think that the very fact that I had to draw all these different things for supermarkets and big retailers, looking back on it now, came in handy.

Even Torishima comments on Toriyama's skill at composition in Dragon Ball Daizenshuu #1, pointing out how Toriyama's design background had developed his design sensibility to a point where he could compose a simple, yet well-balanced scene even without complex backgrounds.

He came from doing design drawings, so he excels at using a design sensibility. He’s extraordinarily skillful at achieving a balance of dark and light. He said that since he lives out in the country, he didn’t have the money to buy screen tone. Since he didn’t use tone, his basis became black and white. That’s why he’s so skillful at how to use blacked-in areas and blank areas. Although you could say that drawing a lot of background is difficult, you could conversely say that he has the composition and design ability to create a scene without drawing them.

- Kazehiko Torishima in Shenlong Times #1.

Another thing Toriyama does exceptionally well is how he uses s and sizing to manipulate the flow and tension in his stories. Longer s usually mean readers linger on the longer than usual as their eyes trail across, thus manipulating the age of time within the story itself. Toriyama also expertly uses a device known as a moment-to-moment transition in which multiple s focus on one particular action or reaction by a character, which intensifies the tension during a scene. Toriyama's beautiful ing, coupled with his simple, clean, and easy art and well-choreographed fights make his action sequences some of the easiest to follow and keep up with.

Lastly, even though Toriyama may have written most of the Dragon Ball franchise without a clear direction in mind, the story has never felt stiff or unnatural, thanks in part to Toriyama's sparing use of text. His story has always been conveyed naturally through his characters and their actions. Simply put, Toriyama conveys as much information as he can visually, as opposed to using blatant exposition, making it feel as though the story has simply taken its natural course. Not needing chunks of explanatory text in itself speaks volumes about his storytelling skills, and he explains how much this was drilled into him from the very start in his interview with Wired.

• Wired: In drawing comics, what is your ratio of visual information to textual information?
• Toriyama: Really, as far as information is concerned, the visual side is bigger.
• Wired: With what stance do you view words?
• Toriyama: At any rate, I don’t waste much time blathering on eless things. As a rule, you can understand the content to a certain extent with just the pictures, and words are nothing more than a supplement to them. I had that drilled into me by my first editor, I guess you could say…. If you’re going to come out and say something, then make it something that will strengthen the characterization even further, is what I mean.

Overall, though apparently "simple", Akira Toriyama's art has certainly made his series more approachable and easily recognizable. Even decades after their release, his earlier titles like Dr. Slump have an undeniable charm that makes them nearly impossible to put down. It is easy to see how Toriyama managed to leave such a lasting impact on many of today's well-known mangaka like Eiichiro Oda and Kishimoto.

While Akira Toriyama's notoriety to the masses comes mostly from the exciting story and memorable characters in Dragon Ball, the truth is that his strongest quality was his incredible artistic prowess. His art simply speaks for itself and while Toriyama may no longer be around, his legacy will live on through the decades of work that he has left behind, inspiring more artists for years to come.

Dragon Ball is available from MANGA Plus and Viz Media.

Read on Manga Plus

Sources:

Akira Toriyama Interview WIRED Japan 1997 Issue 3.01/Kazenshuu

Akira Toriyama Super Interview Dragon Ball Daizenshuu #1/Kazenshuu

Shenlong Times Dragon Ball Daizenshuu #1/Kazenshuu

@sandman_AP/X

Kazuhiko Torishima On Shaping The Success Of 'Dragon Ball' And The Origins Of 'Dragon Quest'/Forbes

Men's Non-No, January 2014/Kazenshuu