Akira Toriyama
Akira began his career as a graphic designer and started working on Magna at the age of 23. At age 30, he has become a full time Mangaka and extremely busy. Although he doesn't particularly enjoy being busy, he doesn't feel focused while he is not working and only to find himself asleep in his free time. Akira expresses his inner desires and frustrations into his own work. From a very young age, whenever Akira desired something that he was unable to obtain, he would incessantly draw the object until he became tired with it. He had wanted a horse as a child, so he kept drawing horses until he no longer desired it. Even today, this habit still lives in him. He had regarded himself as someone who gets bored quickly, someone who is in constant need of new and exciting things to stimulate his mind. After devoting to Dragon Ball for more than ten years, he had to rethink this aspect of himself.
Akira works "college" hours. His typical day goes as follows: He gets up at 12 noon, works with his assistant Matsuyama until 7pm, eat dinner, take the dog for a walk, exercise until 9. Then he watches TV and work at the same time until 11, takes a shower and then work until 4 am before going to sleep.
He enjoys working besides a television in the office as well as at home. Akira will often get quite distracted by certain programs, yet he feels desolate without it. Therefore, he had trained himself to only periodically glance briefly at the TV screen.
Akira considers himself the "weaker" of the Mangakas, because he cannot handle cold weather at all. On one hand, he hates the cold, yet when the heaters are turned on his mind becomes unclear and groggy. But there is not much of a choice for him, however. Because of his strong dislike of the cold and winter, he wished that he could hibernate like the bear during winter. Fortunately, he can always immerse himself in the warm summer through setting nearly 100% of the story either in the tropics or in the summer.
Like many of the Mangakas, Akira was no exception to the mystique of Walt Disney. He liked the characters so much that he went to Disneyland more than than 6 times. He was deeply inspired by the magnificent portrayal of nature and wildlife in many of the Disney animation. Akira's love of nature is reflected through Android #16.
His constant work for the Shonen Jump in the past years have almost totally exhausted him. Besides rushing out work for the Jump, he also has obligations for Nintendo as well as V Jump. With all that work, he felt like he was going to go insane without some free time. The energy he used to have has weakened quite a bit. He wanted to allocate more time for himself and his family. He is now a father of a son and a daughter.
Dragon Ball's setting has a shade of Chinese influence to it even though it isn't dominant. The setting of Dragon Ball was the "Journey to the West" (Legend of the Monkey King), which was considered one of the greatest Chinese work for all time. Comparatively, Dragon Ball is relatively simple. Son Goku is the name of the Monkey King (if you read the Kanji). Besides Goku, many of the other characters and places were inspired by the Legend as well. GyuMao, the Demon Cow Lord was one of the villains the Monkey King fought against in the Legend. The Heaven and Hell in the Dragon Ball universe also shared many similarities. In the world of the Legend, heaven has the North, East, South and West gates. Similarly, the Dragon Ball Heaven is divided into four sections, each controlled by a Kaiou-sama. Dragon Ball is mainly a two part series Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. But the Drawing team behind Akira wanted to continue the series, but Akira didn't wanted to go on drawing, so he just helped to create new characters, and change the older characters, but that's everything he did for DBGT.
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