Akira Toriyama

Akira Toriyama (鳥山 明) is a Japanese manga artist.

He debuted in 1978 with the Wonder Island story published in Weekly Shonen Jump, and gained fame for Dr. Slump serialized weekly in Shonen Jump from 1980 to 1984.

He is probably best known for the Dragon Ball series serialized from 1984 to 1995. This successful series was one of the linchpins for what is known as the Golden Age of Jump. Dragon Ball was made into an animated television series which was quite successful.

His clean line and design sense led to jobs designing characters for the phenomenally popular Dragon Quest series of video games (called Dragon Warrior in the United States). He has also served as the character designer for the Super Nintendo RPG Chrono Trigger and the popular Tobal No. 1[?] PlayStation fighting game, and continues to produce the occasional manga story. Recently, his Naruto manga was adapted into a TV anime.