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 Akira
Toriyama was born in April 1955 in the outskirts of Nagoya. In 1974
he entered highschool to study art specializing in publicity. In
1977 he decided to abandon this to enroll in cartoon drawing. Some
time afterwards, he entered Shueisha, the biggest manga publisher in
Japan, as a mangaka or cartoonist, where he started drawing as a
professional. It was here he published his first work as a
professional.
In December 1978, he published his
first manga, Wonder Island in the popular Shonen Weekly Jump. It
wasn't a big success but made him understand that there were people
out there interested in his comics. All his cartoons have, however,
one thing in common: they all happen in the same world. All the
characters meet there. This is why Arale from Shonen Jump meets Goku
in one episode. Toriyama is a very productive artist and has even
created his own studio: the Bird Studio, where he works helped by
his assistants. He wrote lots of stories dedicated to a young public
and Dragon Ball Z is the only one he has created for an older
audience, mainly teenagers. What is most admirable of his work is
that every idea he develops allows him to develop the next one.
For example, in order to create
Dragon Ball he was inspired by the character Dragon Boy he had
invented a few years earlier. Apart from the process of adapting his
own manga into a successful TV series, Toriyama participated in the
production of a unique animation movie lasting 50 minutes,
Ikimarusama and Shinsukesama, in which he demonstrated how he was
equally good at producing TV animes or animated cartoons as he was
at drawing his own comics. It was a production where in the humor of
Dragon Ball and the great action of DBZ were cleverly combined.
However, it was by no means his best work in any respect.
It is this originality that has made Akira Toriyama one of today's
most demanded authors. Two years afterwards, he organized a show
which traveled throughout the Japanese islands in order to show off
all of his work. He has even participated in the design of a few
video games.
Naming the Kamehameha, but how did Akira Toriyama come up with it?
Truth is, he didn't. While thinking of a name for the move, he asked
his wife, who suggested Kamehameha. Kamehameha was actually the name
of a Hawaiian King. King Kamehameha was also known as "The
Great." He was king of Hawaii from the years 1782 to 1819.
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