Akira Toriyama would be 70 today. He created works such as Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball, worked on Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger. The second of these works is the 4th best selling manga in history.

How have his works influenced you?

Dragon Quest/Warrior is foundational for me, and I actually ran a short-lived Dragon Quest campaign (set about 300 years after II) in college, using Dragonlance: Fifth Age rules.

However, I have to admit that Katsuya Terada's DQ art had more impact on me than Toriyama's.

Quote from: FishMeisterSupreme on April 05, 2025, 05:00:38 PMAkira Toriyama would be 70 today. He created works such as Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball, worked on Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger. The second of these works is the 4th best selling manga in history.

How have his works influenced you?

He cured me of my pending weeb-dom.  Akira, Macross, and Ghost in the Shell tricked me into thinking that manga/anime might not be shit (and hey, Dominion Tank Police was fun!).  Then Dragon Ball, et al., opened my eyes, and I came to my senses.  Thanks for de-weebing me!

I watched Dragonball/DBZ as a youth and enjoyed it, though I grew out of it by the time I was a teenager. I played Dragon Quest (not sure which one) on the game boy, as well. Like many people, Toriyama's art was the first style I copied when I was started trying to learn to draw.

I hadn't touched an Akira Toriyama project for many years until about 8 months ago, when I was shopping for a family friendly fantasy game I could play with my four year-old, and settled on Dragon Quest XI. Can't say I regret the purchase. It's a simplistic and mostly very easy JRPG, and Toriyama's designs do not translate well to full 3D, but it has it's charms. I doubt I'd play it for myself, but it serves the purpose I bought it for.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on April 05, 2025, 09:00:19 PM

Quote from: FishMeisterSupreme on April 05, 2025, 05:00:38 PMAkira Toriyama would be 70 today. He created works such as Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball, worked on Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger. The second of these works is the 4th best selling manga in history.

How have his works influenced you?

He cured me of my pending weeb-dom.  Akira, Macross, and Ghost in the Shell tricked me into thinking that manga/anime might not be shit (and hey, Dominion Tank Police was fun!).  Then Dragon Ball, et al., opened my eyes, and I came to my senses.  Thanks for de-weebing me!

Haha, yeah. Akira Toriyama's works are not for everyone. I question your dismissal of Japanese media, though. I absolutely agree that the vast majority of modern animanga is garbage. However, in my foray into the world of Japanese media, I've found some gems. This is, of course, not the main purpose of the thread.

Anyway, Akira Toriyama, or rather the fanbase of Dragon Ball, specifically the 'Chads of /a/' subculture surrounding DBS influenced me to put in a deity called THE PRINCE OF JOBBERS, based around...the prince of jobbers JOBGETA.

I grew up with Dragon Ball, so my nostalgia for it weighs heavily on any judgement I make of Akira Toriyama or his works.

He certainly has been and still is a strong inspiration in my life, work hard, play harder, be the best version you can be, the messages and ideas conveyed in Dragon Ball are the kinds western society really do need, and there is a real reason Goku is considered a role-model of a character.

 Despite the humor and silliness and flashy attacks there is a certain depth to the story that can be conveyed when reading it, the fights themselves convey a story unto themselves, there is a fantastic youtube channel called Sensible Sayian who scores the fights like an MMA match would be, and he really picks apart and shows the mindset of the fighters in question and how consistently they are written.

I will say I am a bit disheartened at how lazy Akira Toriyama was in some of his writing, I know some of that can be attributed to his editors, and I haven't done too much research into it, but there is a reason the Buu saga and onward are viewed poorly.

Last thing of note is I only recently came to realize how much depth the dub added, compare the Majin Vegeta speech from Z to the Kai dub (Kai supposedly being closer to the manga) and there is a night and day difference, in general Japaense media  just sucks at dialogue, it's robotic or downright autistic when directly translated, hence I've been really unable to get into it as a whole, likewise having a problem of telling rather than showing. cutting away to characters spouting out what I just freaking saw on the panel or screen...

Akira Toriyama is a very visual storyteller thankfully and manages to overcome this issue by having the characters in their actions speak even louder than their stilted words, that plus some adjustments from certain translations or dubs does improve things.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on April 05, 2025, 09:00:19 PM

Quote from: FishMeisterSupreme on April 05, 2025, 05:00:38 PMAkira Toriyama would be 70 today. He created works such as Dr. Slump, Dragon Ball, worked on Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger. The second of these works is the 4th best selling manga in history.

How have his works influenced you?

He cured me of my pending weeb-dom.  Akira, Macross, and Ghost in the Shell tricked me into thinking that manga/anime might not be shit (and hey, Dominion Tank Police was fun!).  Then Dragon Ball, et al., opened my eyes, and I came to my senses.  Thanks for de-weebing me!

This is about as logical as saying that all television is shit because you don't like watching Friends or The Office. Manga and anime are entertainment mediums after all, and not individual shows.

While I don't think it was exactly the first to go in this direction, I think that Dragonball epitomized the greatest virtue of Shonen manga: the tendency towards extreme and provocative premises to make it compare well when going head to head against other series in a manga periodical.

In a lot of ways, this has made Shonen the spiritual successor genre to classic speculative fiction from Jules Verne to Heinlein and Aurthur C. Clarke, which also tended to feature their premises heavily. Western media has a grudge with premise-based fiction which I do not understand.

To give you an idea how much the modern publishing industry DESPISES premise, you remember this novel turned movie called The Martian about an astronaut who got stranded on Mars and had to grow potatoes in his own poo Yeah, that was originally a self-publish title. And it isn't like Weir is a particularly unknown author, either. He wrote "The Egg." But I digress.

Dragonball was kind of the moment that pushed modern Shonen down the path that it is currently on, which is basically, "ridiculous and over the top," which led to series like Naruto and Bleach. If you can't tell why other authors would go this direction...it's because being over the top helps you hold readers in a hyper-competitive periodical like Shonen Jump. Unfortunately, Dragonball also became a portent for the greatest weakness of more modern Shonen; the ending (or lack thereof). Most successful Shonen mangaka focus on skills on keeping the story going, and as a result they can't write a good ending. They just sort of meander off into oblivion.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on April 06, 2025, 01:20:50 PMLast thing of note is I only recently came to realize how much depth the dub added, compare the Majin Vegeta speech from Z to the Kai dub (Kai supposedly being closer to the manga) and there is a night and day difference, in general Japaense media  just sucks at dialogue, it's robotic or downright autistic when directly translated, hence I've been really unable to get into it as a whole, likewise having a problem of telling rather than showing. cutting away to characters spouting out what I just freaking saw on the panel or screen...

That strikes me as an odd thing to say. I might be pushing my luck with your one-post-to-blacklist shtick, but may ask if you are a sub or a dub person? Because that strikes me as something a dub person would say.

IMO, anime works better in subtitles because the language barrier tends to remind me that the fact it is massively overbaked is just part of the cultural difference between East and West. Also, fan-made subtitles are a thing, so you tend to have more options.

All I remember from those times is coming home from school and the only thing on was the Japanese cartoons. I couldn't wait for them to finish to get to good stuff. So, yeah, not a fan.

Quote from: Fheredin on April 06, 2025, 05:09:33 PM

Quote from: Socratic-DM on April 06, 2025, 01:20:50 PMLast thing of note is I only recently came to realize how much depth the dub added, compare the Majin Vegeta speech from Z to the Kai dub (Kai supposedly being closer to the manga) and there is a night and day difference, in general Japaense media  just sucks at dialogue, it's robotic or downright autistic when directly translated, hence I've been really unable to get into it as a whole, likewise having a problem of telling rather than showing. cutting away to characters spouting out what I just freaking saw on the panel or screen...

That strikes me as an odd thing to say. I might be pushing my luck with your one-post-to-blacklist shtick, but may ask if you are a sub or a dub person? Because that strikes me as something a dub person would say.

IMO, anime works better in subtitles because the language barrier tends to remind me that the fact it is massively overbaked is just part of the cultural difference between East and West. Also, fan-made subtitles are a thing, so you tend to have more options.

It's a case by case basis with me, I don't watch enough anime to be a "sub: or "dub person." Take JoJos Bizarre Adventure's, I'd never watch that shit dubbed, it's a bunch of novice C list voice actors with no talent. the Japanese voices sound better to listen to with sub than subjecting my ears to that tortured nonsense.

He clearly inspired aspects of Nintendo's Mario Brothers franchise, Hudson Soft's Adventure Island, and who knows how many shonen mangas. I'm not big into DBZ, but I can appreciate what he did and how much that influence spread. Wonder Island and Tomato, Girl Detective are pretty unique and you can tell they were inspirational to various future works by Toriyama and others. Not a fan of Chobit as it feels like a strange fever dream, but most of his early works are honestly pretty fun.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on April 06, 2025, 06:34:22 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on April 06, 2025, 05:09:33 PM

Quote from: Socratic-DM on April 06, 2025, 01:20:50 PMLast thing of note is I only recently came to realize how much depth the dub added, compare the Majin Vegeta speech from Z to the Kai dub (Kai supposedly being closer to the manga) and there is a night and day difference, in general Japaense media  just sucks at dialogue, it's robotic or downright autistic when directly translated, hence I've been really unable to get into it as a whole, likewise having a problem of telling rather than showing. cutting away to characters spouting out what I just freaking saw on the panel or screen...

That strikes me as an odd thing to say. I might be pushing my luck with your one-post-to-blacklist shtick, but may ask if you are a sub or a dub person? Because that strikes me as something a dub person would say.

IMO, anime works better in subtitles because the language barrier tends to remind me that the fact it is massively overbaked is just part of the cultural difference between East and West. Also, fan-made subtitles are a thing, so you tend to have more options.

It's a case by case basis with me, I don't watch enough anime to be a "sub: or "dub person." Take JoJos Bizarre Adventure's, I'd never watch that shit dubbed, it's a bunch of novice C list voice actors with no talent. the Japanese voices sound better to listen to with sub than subjecting my ears to that tortured nonsense.

I've watched quite a bit of '80s to '00s anime and it really does depend on the quality of the dub itself. I think it's silly to only pick sub or dub and never try the other if you have access to it. Sometimes it's like watching a whole new film. You can never really go wrong with a well-written sub, but dubs vary in quality and that's just kinda that. Some are fantastic and some (in the '80s) were done without even a translation of the original Japanese and is total guesswork. You're taking a risk choosing the dub over the sub, but for something like Ghost Stories, the dub is way funnier.

As a side note, people complain about Manga Entertainment releases having too much swearing, but it's a genius way to translate the different Japanese conjugations into the way it would feel in English. I'm fairly certainly it's not just vulgar to be vulgar but rather follows the level of respect they're using in their native language, if that makes sense.

My first thought on the title was "who"?

My second, what does this have to do with RPGs.

Which I guess tells you what you need to know...

I remember watching and recording "tree of might" on my VCR, then I remember a website called... Toriyama's World,  and another one called "Planet Namek"  where I streamed in low quality other DBZ movies that were fan-subbed.   I also remember when Dragon Ball GT came out brand new, I had a friend in school who was dual citizen of Japan and him and his family usually headed back there for family vacations, he'd bring back VHS tapes of DBGT episodes, and a local used video store had some of these home-recorded VHS tapes as well kinda like a swap meet.

I've read the dragon quest/warrior manga that Toriyama did, it was fun.  I used to be more into anime/manga in general but I've grown out of most of it, mostly I'm only interested in Jojo these days.

I would say the impact/influence Toriyama had on me was a lot of fun memories and discussions with friends about the stuff we'd watch, and his fun character design that made its way into games, and compared to some other anime/manga, a sense that humor can still exist in serious things, or there's room for serious moments in humorous things.