Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball mangaka, Chrono Trigger designer and creator of Dragon Quest’s Slime, has died
Akira Toriyama, the mangaka whose work in video games included designing the characters for two of the most influential RPGs ever made, Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest, on top of creating one of the most influential series across all of pop-culture in Dragon Ball, has passed away.
Toriyama, of course, was best known for writing and illustrating Dragon Ball, his massively influential eighties manga that spawned a hit anime, sequels including the even more popular Dragon Ball Z and countless video game adaptations over the years, including (at least in more recent years) Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot - a playable retelling of the Z sagas as an open-world RPG - and flashy fighting game Dragon Ball FighterZ. (Karakot developers CyberConnect2 closed their offices for the day in mourning.) Toriyama contributed directly to many of the series’ video game spin-offs and the appearance of his characters in other titles, such as Goku’s starring role in anime ensemble Jump Force.
Away from Dragon Ball, Toriyama was just as influential, serving as the lead character designer for the first Dragon Quest game in 1986. Said to have created dozens of the game’s character and monster designs in a matter of mere months, Toriyama’s designs went on to help the seminal JRPG become acclaimed as one of the greatest RPGs of all time and spawn the long-running series that continues to today. Toriyama continued to contribute designs to the series throughout the decades, alongside the enduring reappearances and popularity of his original monsters - including the iconic teardrop-shaped Slime.
A decade later, Toriyama reunited with Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, the pair newly joined by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi - who credited Dragon Quest’s success as inspiring Square Enix with greenlighting the development of the original Final Fantasy - to design the characters for yet another RPG often considered as among the genre’s greatest, Chrono Trigger. (Toriyama hid a message for his children
Read more on rockpapershotgun.com
