Akira Toriyama is going to celebrate his 64th birthday today. Akira Toriyama is a Japanese manga artist. He is hailed by many as the most influential manga artist of all time. He is best known for creating the super hit manga and anime Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball held the record for most copies of manga sold before being surpassed by One Piece. Born and raised in Japan, he developed a liking for drawing manga during his school days.
He started his career in an advertising company in Nagoya, worked there for three years, but the lack of interest and the bad relationship with his bosses led him to the decision to retire and to devote himself to Manga. Toriyama became immensely popular in Japan and abroad thanks to his work Dragon Ball, which has been seen by more than three generations on a global scale. In Japan, he remains a public figure and still lives in Aichi with his wife and children. Every time there are rumors that it will make an appearance in Tokyo, the office of government worries because sometimes multitudes of fans crowd close to their house. Despite his fame, in general, Toriyama does not like to expose himself in the mass media. It is very rare the occasions in which some journalist has managed to interview him or take a photograph for a foreign newspaper. Toriyama’s manga series ‘Dragon Ball’ was first published in 1984 in the ‘Weekly Shōnen Jump’ and it immediately gained popularity and eminence. ’Dragon Ball’ was started as an adventure manga and then later it developed into a martial arts series. ’Dragon Ball’ became popular not only in Japan, but also in Europe and North America. 240 million copies of the manga were sold all over the world. Toriyama designed a one-person (QVOLT) electric car, which was marketed by ‘CQ Motors’ in March 2005. It took him one year to design this car. Toriyama draws inspiration from cartoonist Osamu Tezuka, Walt Disney’s ‘101 Dalmatians,’ and says that Jackie Chan’s movie ‘Drunken Master’ was the inspiration behind his manga ‘Dragon Ball.’