Akira Toriyama gave us gaming’s most perfect character design
polygon.comAkira Toriyama’s impact on the media of manga and anime, thanks to Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball, was gargantuan. In addition to his expansive fictional worlds and trademark illustrative style, Toriyama was a brilliant character designer — right down to the lowly Dragon Quest Slime, video gaming’s most perfect character design.
With the humble Slime, Toriyama transformed a simple idea into a powerful visual icon that has prospered for nearly four decades. The design for the common monster (and occasional hero) has inspired fashion, furniture, food, home electronics, and hundreds of other products.
The Slime made its debut in the original Dragon Quest, released on Nintendo’s Famicom in 1986. The glob of blue (or orange) goo is one of the first, if not the first, enemies players encounter in a Dragon Quest game. They’re adorable, but they were originally envisioned to be terrifying.
Yuji Horii, the creator of the Dragon Quest series, says the Slime was inspired by Sir-Tech’s Wizardry, the classic role-playing game that featured its own slimy monsters. “I was really hooked on Wizardry, the PC game, and that’s kind of where I got the inspiration for the Slime,” Horii told MTV in 2010. “I was doodling the slime-looking character and I took it to Mr. Toriyama, who did the character design, and he made it the Slime we see today.”
It wasn’t until more recently that many Dragon Quest fans got a peek at what Horii had originally envisioned. His loose sketch of what a Slime might look like, drawn in the mid-’80s, was more widely disseminated in 2017. Here’s a good look at Horii’s original idea, on the left, with Toriyama’s interpretation on the right.
There has never been a more important glow up in history then the sketch Yuji Horii gave Akira Toriyama for slimes in Dragon Quest vs what Toriyama sent back. pic.twitter.com/aSivcJ4nbl
Horii’s description says it’s amorphous and jelly-like. It would attach itself to people’s faces and suffocate them to death, according to his notes
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