Akira Toriyama in my humble opion is probably one the best manga artists who ever lived. I consider him a manga god. That's how much I like his work. I especially like the originality of his art work. There aren't other manga artists that create characters and stories as he does. Toriyama is "gag artist" for say. He enjoys playing with puns and satirizing human behavior. Anyway here's some background information on the manga god himself... Akira Toriyama was born on April 5th, 1955 in Aichi Prefecture. He graduated from the design department of the Prefectural industrial high school. He started work at a advertising firm. Toriyama grew tired of the job and decided to draw mangas instead. He debuted his work in 1978 in a weekly manga magazine called Shuukan Shonen Jump with a short comic called "Wonder Island". His first major success came the following year with a manga called Dr. Slump. This manga lasted until 1984, the year he started Dragonballs. The Dragonballs manga ran for ten years and wrapped in the spring 1995. A reason he ended the Dragonball series was because of the hectic weekly schedule he went through. Akira likes to draw manga at a more leisurely pace so that he can have time for himself and his family. Besides drawling mangas he also was character designer for several video games for Super Famicom(Super Nintendo) and Sony Playstation. Akira Toriyama is considered a shy person. He prefers the rural country setting to the city. He also prefers warm weather to cold. The country is where he gets his settings for Dragonball. Toriyama in his free time enjoys spending time with his family, building models, and playing video games. He also likes pets including cats, dogs, and birds. Recently as of 1997 he has taken up taking care of tropical fish. After quiting Dragonballs he currently works as a consultant for Dragonball GT, a series he had nothing to do with. The series was created by Bandai for younger audiance. The has worked on several short stories such as "Alien X" and "Cowa". Currently Toriyama is working on a manga series called "Kajika". It doesn't look like Akira will stop drawling anytime soon.