Retronauts - 607: Farewell, Akira Toriyama

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Diamond Feit, Kevin Bunch, Bob Mackey, and special guest Matt Alt bid farewell to a legendary artist, cartoonist, and cultural force for good in a podcast dedicated to the memory of Akira Toriyama. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week in Retronauts, Saaba. Mattao-Hu-Hi-Made. Or Notts. Maybe a sad episode of Richer Notts. Maybe not so sad because we're all here to remember someone who meant a lot to us and hopefully meant a lot to a lot of you out there listening because we wanted to have a special episode to memorialize Akirotoyama who wrote and drew and just made so many little things, so many special little guys over the years. And And his recent passing, I think, took the entire world, like literally the entire world by surprise.

There are life forms deep inside the earth's crust who have read Kirchiyama's work and just said, wait, that guy? He's not here anymore? What the hell? Speaking of little, guys, I'm not too tall myself. My name's Diamond Fight. Let's introduce the other people here joining me for this somewhat solemn episode that I've already spoiled the mood of. We'll start with the North American East, let's say American branch.

That would be Kevin Bunch. Hello. Hello, Kevin. Let's go up to Canada. Hey, everybody. It's Bob Mackey. I'm currently holding the very non-ergonomics PS2 slime controller, courtesy of my wife.

I didn't buy this. Excellent. I also, it's hard to handle. I see that's a metal slime. They're quick to run away. Yeah. Analog sticks are very, very tiny on this. And also joining me here in Japan, not physically, but, you know, in the nation.

Yes. I'm Matt Alt, the author of Pure Invention, How Japan Made the Modern World. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us, Matt. I needed at least one professionally certified expert, even though, you know. Certified by who, I don't know. But, yeah, certifiable, maybe. The international podcasting board.

It's always a pleasure. Even if this is a sad occasion, you know, it's kind of hard to imagine any one person who had such an incredible impact on pop culture globally as Akira Toriyama. I mean, manga, of course, which is where you got to start, anime, games, you know, narrative entertainment, and also in some surprising places like the world of emoji where when I was, investigating that for a book I wrote on it years back. I learned from many emoji architects that his anthropomorphic poop from Dr. Slump is the inspiration for the poop emoji. So, I mean, he's really, he's really everywhere. It's pretty incredible. You have to wonder. Yeah. You have to wonder in his wildest dream of dreams, did he ever expect he would create a

character that would be voiced by Patrick Stewart one day? I was going to go there, Diamond. I was going to say, whenever you're watching the emoji movie, you see Patrick Stewart, you could say, thank you, Mr. Toriyama. I don't want that to be his legacy, though. I apologize. Hey, man, everybody poops. It's an okay legacy. It's fine.

Yes. Not when I wanted to see on screen, but it's all right. It's for the kids. It's for the kids. So, yeah, as far as how this episode is going to work, I mean, the four of us here, we're not biographers. We're not statisticians. we have, I think I can safely say that none of us have ever met Akira Toryama, right? Unfortunately.

No. But we're all fans of what he did, and we just wanted to come together and talk about, you know, who he was and what he made and perhaps what that meant to us. And so in that, in that spirit, I threw together some notes just about, you know, his life and, you know, the big hits, the big hits of his life. And just to go from there, I guess we can start by just saying that he was born in a small town outside Nagoya, which I would say is definitely one of Japan's, let's say, lesser song cities. It's a big city. That's like Detroit. Yeah, it's like, it's in the middle. It's in the middle. It's not near Tokyo. It's not really that near Osaka. But it's a major metropolis. And lots of people live there. It has great miso. Yeah.

It was great miso. I had a great time in Nagoya recently, and I told a Japanese citizen this, and they laughed at me. It's like in Detroit. I loved it. It's great this time of year. It's like the Pittsburgh of Japan, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or something like that. Not only is it the Pittsburgh of Japan, but Toriyama grew up quite impoverished. His family was, according to some comments that I was reading by his editor, Mr. Torishima, who I'm sure we're going to be getting into a little bit later, his family was so poor that they, often couldn't even afford food. And that was one of the big reasons that he sort of, you know, obsessed over drawing. You know, it's something you can do with just a pencil and a piece of paper.

But in spite of their poverty, according to Mr. Toroshima, it was still like a very bright, upbeat kind of. They were just like super laid back. And so it wasn't like a traumatic poor upbringing. You know, there wasn't any, you know, there was no abuse going on or anything like that. It just sounds like they were poor. and, but that fueled his, you know, escapes into fantasy and into, you know, burnishing his drawing abilities and things like that. You know, hearing that makes a lot of sense when we get to, you know, his education and what

he, what he does right after he graduates high school. That, that's, uh, right. That makes sense. Yeah, according to all sources, he was drawing basically his entire life. He was doing a lot of drawing as a kid. I saw a note that he won several concerts. I went to school. It was Japanese.

They said Shase, which I'm assuming is like a life drawing. So maybe like some models or animals or... He in his early interviews, there was like a of some kind of like, there was an old dude in the neighborhood who ran a, like, I'm not sure if it was a studio or a shop or something like that, but it was like a drawing classroom. Okay. And he would have kids come in and draw,

he would teach them drawing techniques. And apparently Toriyama, there was, at some point the guy had a contest to draw Dalmatians from the 101 Dalmatians. Right. And Toriyama was kind of obsessed with that cartoon as a kid, you know, age 5, 6, and he entered the contest. And I don't know that he won it, but the guy running the teacher,

if you want to call him that, selected his work to display, and that was like a huge, huge moment for him that he felt like his art could reach it. But it's interesting. It's another crossover of Disney and Japanese pop culture, famously Osamu Tezuka of Astro Boy and, you know, Kimba the White Lion and then, you know, so many other, you know, formative manga

was deeply, deeply, deeply influenced by Disney. So as much as we like to say, anime, anime, it's like a Japan thing. It's actually a crossing of many cultural streams, and Toriyama is another great example of that. Yeah, and right alongside 101 Dalmatians, of course, Toriyama cites Tezica's Adam, you know, Adam Boy as an astro boy, sorry. Oh, yeah, yeah. I suppose you work there, but, you know, he cites that as another influence, and that'll be also relevant later when one of, one of Toriama's biggest hits. But, yeah, so as a kid, he's drawing, as a teenager, he's drawing.

drawing, you know, he's always just drawing stuff around the house, and he goes to a design school. He's drawing in high school. And as soon as he graduates from high school, he gets a job right away, which I think follows very closely to what you were saying about his, you know, his upbringing. Like, he probably needed work. So like, okay, I'm, I'm out of high school. Let's, let's get to work. And he found work for an advertising company. He was doing a lot of designing, designing work. And he only sticks it with a couple of years because he doesn't really, I think take to the culture of the job. It sounds like he's late a lot.

Apparently, he shows up dressed too casually for work. That was a big deal back then. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure that, I mean, there are companies that are still today who are still like, hey, you're... Yeah, this is the 70s, just to give some context here. This must have been, like, 1975-ish. But yeah, he also, he also apparently does do a lot of lettering, which he's not a fan of. I think he likes drawing, I think he likes drawing super, you know, super little guys there,

but I think he's less fond of drawing, like, little letters over and over again, so... He quits. He quits in 77. So here he is. He's 22 years old and he's out of work. I found a good quote from him, which I would say in English. It's like, it wasn't a waste of time because I was able to learn a little bit about how the world works. Deep. But armed with that knowledge and very little money, he's just, he's doing odd jobs. And he sees a random flyer in a coffee shop for an amateur manga contest. and he's like, oh, I draw. Let's do this. And I love this point. I love this point. Apparently, he looked at the contest and he saw what the prize was. And he saw there were categories for like story manga, I guess like serious story and gag manga, which is like whatever the hell you want to draw. And according to the source that I saw, he picked the gag manga because the prize money was the same, but the gag manga required half as many pages submit. So I think this. Story manga, by the way, was a term coined in, like, the 60s, I think, to distinguish serious, like, basically graphic novels from comics and cartoons, which is what at that point, like Tezuka and people were seen as drawing. And so it's actually like a genre in Japanese story manga. Okay. Is that like Gekega or something else?

Yeah, it's kind of, actually, I shouldn't say to differentiate from Tezica, because Tezica's stuff was also seen as story manga too, but just, narrative-based, more mature storytelling. And yeah, definitely, Gekigga, a lot of Gekkega would have been in that, in Gekkega being dramatic pictures. This is like the kind of more rough-hewn manga that came out in the 60s. And actually, the manga that is consumed today is all descended from Geky-Ga. It's not really descended from what was known as manga in the 60s. But it's all come to be known as manga, even in Japan.

We're really in the weeds. But that is true. That is 100% true. You were mentioning Diamond. He entered the contest that required the fewer amount of pages. Some of the funniest stuff in Dr. Slumpter we'll talk about soon are the autobiographical sections where he's always talking about his bad work ethic. He talks about living with his parents. He talks about how he's always late delivering pages to the airport to be flown out to, I assume, Tokyo, to be, to Shonen Jump's offices. I love that he opted for the gag manga option because it was less work, and then he becomes famous for like these weekly comics that require just a massive amount of effort to get out the door constantly. Like, wow, you worked your way into it.

Although, you know, his first couple of attempts at making serialized manga were epic failures, though, you know, the first stuff that he submitted to Shonen Jump, you know, they, he met an editor there, Torishima, who kind of took him under his wing, but, you know, everybody thinks of, we only think of, of Toriyama as being this kind of, like, insane success now, but he's actually kind of a Dragon Ball-esque, you know, this little, this little puny artist who just keeps getting knocked down over and over again and, and perfect his skills and perfect his storytelling and, like, finds friends who, you know, who he can, you know, fight alongside. and then finally, you know, powers up as a super cyan and becomes the Toriyama that we know today.

Starts off in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and it's funny, you know, we mentioned Torishima several times now, and of course, you know, Shonen Jump, which would end up being Toriyama's home for his work for many, many decades. But the irony of all this is, is that the flyer he sees for a contest is not for Shonen Jump. It's for weekly Shonen magazine. And in preparing his submission, he actually missed the, the deadline.

Oops. So he ends up hanging on to what he drew and sends it to Shonen Jump because they had another contest, like, I guess a few months later in 78. So talk about to quits. That's what ends up getting him to Shonen jump and eventually meeting Torishima, which he said later on in interviews years later, he said it was indeed very confusing the fact that he's Toriyama and his editor with Torishima and those names are, you know, even in Japanese, they're pretty similar.

Yeah. Birds. It's all birds. Actually, you know, it's funny that they're both named Bird and Toriyama is called Bird, studio because I really think manga is like the jazz of Japan and Toriyama to me is like bird like Charlie Parker he's like this just innovator this well I mean obviously minus the heroin addiction and all of that stuff that the jazz greats had but um just this just wild wild innovator like and and losing him is is really like the jazz world losing one of those grades yeah

Torashima makes a lot of appearances in his comics and he looks just like a regular button down uh you Japanese businessman now, but in those comics, he's got this big, bushy afro. So when you say Toroshima, I think of what he looked like, I don't know, circa 1981. He's Dr. Masharito, right? In Dr. Slump, you know, because Toriyama is constantly battling with him, not like in a hateful way, but just like they're constantly, constantly wrestling and arguing. And so he named the antagonist of Dr. Slump, Dr. Masharito, which is Tori Shima written backwards. And so in the pages of the book, you know, of course that guy always gets his ass kicked nonstop by like Ararajan and the rest of the characters.

And I'm sure that must have given Toriyama some kind of satisfaction, you know, because he has to do everything Tori, you know, Tori Shima says in the, you know, in the business world. But on the pages of the manga, it's, it's Toriyama who's king. And, you know, what's Tori Shima going to do? Because this story took off and was very popular. So, like, you can't. Oh, yeah. No, he loved it. He loved it.

He loved it. There's a lot. We should get into the whole Torishima Toriyama thing because, you know, Toriyama's rise to success is actually, I don't want to say, of course, it's due to his insane and amazing talent, but it's also due to this collaboration with this editor guy. Yeah, I would say, you know, based on the recent episodes I've done, you know, we're talking today about Toriyama, but a few months ago, I'd an episode about Fist the North Star, and I remember reading into that, it's like, Fist the North Star, when we talk about it, it's usually we mention, you know, Bronzon, the writer and Tetsuo Hara, the artist. But it's like the third collaborator, the less says out collaborator, was their editor, you know, who is constantly giving them ideas. And in the case of Fitz the Nostar, like, he was the one who said, hey, what if, what if you do like a guy who like uses acupuncture to make people explode?

Like, oh, that's a good idea. Why didn't I think of that? Yeah, I don't think Westerners get how much of a collaborative medium manga is. It's really like an editor's medium. You know, anime is a director's medium. manga is 100% an editor's medium, especially at the higher echelons like jump.

But yeah, his relationship with Torishima is definitely a part of what drives him forward. I just, I wanted to highlight. So what Toriyama eventually creates and submits is something he calls A Wawa World, which is just as goofy as it sounds. It's like, it's feudal Japan, but also there's UFOs,

there's bunny girls. There's a big muscle guy who looks like Superman, but he's called Nikuman, which of course is a pun, because Nikuman is what you call a meat bun here in Japan, and Nikku is also the kanji used in muscle, which is also funny to me because I looked it up, and apparently,

Awol World's Nikuman predates the manga hero Kin Nikkuman, who's now famous, by like a matter of months. So he just got under the line there. Wow. Of course, there's dinosaurs walking around because that's what Tori'am is going to do. Dinosaurs are walking everywhere. And, you know, the submission does not win any prizes.

No. And the note that Torishima sends back to him, which I have here, is like, you're not good. You're not good. But if you stick with this, you stick with this, it might turn into something. So keep drawing and send it to me. So like, Torishima's very clear, like, I don't like this, but I want more of this. You know, keep going. Don't stop.

He recognized a diamond in the rough. Yeah. Just like me. I'm sorry. Uncalled for, and called for. So, yeah, you know, it's actually most of the stuff that we, that we associate with Toriyama all came from Toriyama all came from Torishima, like Dr. the way that it played out was Tori Shima's idea. You know, Toriyama wanted to make Dr. Slump about, like, this mad scientist guy.

Yeah. And it was Tori Shima who's like, actually, no, it's about the girl, Rari-chan. And, you know, Toriyama is like, no, uh, and, you know, they got into this whole thing where it turned into a bet, where Tori Shima is basically like, okay, I'll tell you what. Let's just do a special episode where it's all about the little girl. and let's see how it does in the reader rankings. And if it's number one, I'm right. And if it's anything less than number one,

you're right and you can do whatever you want. And of course, it came back and it was number one. And so Toriyama had to shift because he lost that bet. He had to shift the entire focus of the manga to focus on Ararajan. But he refused to compromise. Tori Shima wanted him to change the title,

too, to make it Ararichan. And he refused, he was stubborn. He refused on that. and it stayed Dr. Slump, which was like a huge, like, you know, when you talk to Japanese people, everybody remembers Dr. Slump. They remember Ararajan and nobody can understand, nobody understands, well, why was it called Dr. Slump? Like, he really should have renamed it. It's, the anime is called Arari Chan.

It's like Aririchan in big letters and then underneath it, Dr. Slump. And it's really common to rename cartoon versions of manga, but it's just funny. It's like a bet. It's like this whole thing, like this massive, and it ended up selling 35 million copies. So, you know, good bet, Mr. Torrishima. It's a real Pop-I situation. You know, what if they didn't change the name away from Thimble Theater eventually? Is that what it was?

Is that what Popeye was? I didn't know that. Yeah, because Popeye didn't show up for like a decade. So it was Thimble Theater for a long time. Then he showed up. It was still Thimble Theater. And then finally they're like, well, Popeye's the character everybody loves. Let's just change the name of it to Popeye.

So this is sort of like the reverse of that. Totally. I would say in Japan, especially, I bet very few people here would know the name Peanuts. You know, what everyone in Japan knows Snoopy and a lot of them know Charlie Brown and that sort of thing. Like, yeah, the comic strip is called Peanuts, and I think very few Japanese people probably have heard of peanuts at all. Well, you know, it's funny. I don't think most Americans would know. Why is it called Peanuts?

I guess it's because it's like an old, you know, school way of calling little kids, little kids. Actually, I know this because I recently read the Charles Schultz biography that came out like a decade again. It was named after the peanut gallery in the Howdy Doody Show. That's where the little kids sat. And Charles Schultz hated that title, but his editors were not as great as Torishima's. But no, actually, I've heard a few stories about Torishima and his contributions to Dragon Ball. One of the more famous stories is that Toriyama wanted the Red Ribbon saga in the adult Goku parts of the story to be Goku fighting one old man. thought, what if there were some cool teens, some cool teen androids? What about then? And then

he added the two different androids and it was a very successful story. Who knows what people would have thought of it? It was, you know, Goku beating up an old man. It's just like Santa Claus. Like Goku beats the crap out of Santa Claus. Take that. You invincible bringer of presence. Although I wouldn't put it past Toriyama to put something like that in one of his manga, you know? Yeah, I feel like he could make that work. He could totally make. He can make talking cool work. He could make anything. work to make anything work actually it's funny not to not to bring the keep bringing this back to poop but i actually think that you know when when he debuted that character it was this real power move in a sense

like i can make anything funny you know what i mean i can make any i can make a character out of anything like he's literally turning shit to gold so it's it's like you know this is toriama coming into his powers and showing them as only toriama can you know what i mean um i mean if we have to have characters based on excrement. I'd rather have the Toriyama version than like a Mr. Hanky, you know what I mean? Oh, totally. No. Yeah. I mean, it's, and it's just, just the, I, I don't think many Westerners are aware, especially if you're, you know, haven't spent time in Japan in the 80s, and I don't blame you, especially if you weren't alive, but if you spent time in Japan in the 80s, Toriyama's, like, art style, that super deformed, kawai, like, they call it, it's kind of, there's a, there's a style, there's a style, there's a style.

now called Chibi, that's a sort of offshoot of it, but it was just ubiquitous. He literally and profoundly transformed Japanese pop aesthetics, almost single-handedly. You know, you'd had Hello Kitty, you'd had Doraemon, suddenly you have this entire, but those are like kind of like standalone characters. Now you have this fully fleshed out, like incredibly detailed world where everything is kawai, you know, whether it's like, you know, the characters, whether it's like a tank, whether it's like you know whatever with the mountains like you know this it's this kind of animistic you know the sun has a smiling face everything does kind of reminds me of would metal slug exist without toriama you know what i mean because metal slug to me has that doesn't it have a doesn't it have a doctor slump it's like doctor it's like a heavily armed doctor slump world to me in a lot of ways yeah i can i could see that you know the details on all the machines is very like toriama totally because toriama is kind of like a weaponized san rio to me in a lot of ways, like, you have Sanrio, you have Hello Kitty, and she stands for

everything that's like, you know, innocent and pure. And like, Toriyama is like, he's that, but also like adolescent, puer, vulgar, violent in a kind of fun way. He manages to work like the entire world into this really silly squashed format. And I think that's probably his biggest legacy in the long run, even bigger than Dragon Ball. Well, before we even get to Dragon Ball, we should, we should talk about probably Dr. Slump is not, we should also stress stress, Slump is not his first manga to get in the magazine. He has a bunch of,

you know, shorter things that pop up. And as Matt mentioned earlier, there were reader feedback surveys, and usually whatever he, whatever Toriama created, would end up in dead last place, you know. Was it Wonder, Wonder Island, Wonder Island, too? Yeah, you don't even remember these things anymore, right?

Yeah, it's just, a lot of these stuff would get published later on when he's already a success. I re-published, sort of like almost like the Stephen King, like Bachman books kind of thing. But like at the time in the late 70s, like they appear and they go away and no, like, no, this isn't going to work. But eventually he does settle on Dr. Slump after talking with his editor negotiating things out. I would say if you look at Dr. Slump, it's very clear to me that the, you know, the mad scientist character whose name, we should also say, the name of the character, as so many characters, they're all puns. Sende Norimaki, those are like two different kinds of rice cracker. that character to me

if you look at him it very clearly reads his Toriyama to me like a self-insert kind of thing the fact that he's you know he works a lot of stuff like the whole

the whole name Dr. Slump The idea is like he's an inventor and none of his stuff works so he's always like in a slump that's the idea

even Oranichan like he's his greatest creation a literal robot child like she's super strong she can do all this great stuff but she's near-sighted so she has to wear glasses like right away

it's like yeah he got it right and they also got it wrong at the same time. Those glasses, by the way, even today, 45 years later, you look up like Arrata Chan glasses in Japanese, and you'll see them. That's how they're known today. They're still known. Her glasses are still famous. Yeah, I've read about half of Dr. Slump. And what surprised me is that it's kind of like Mad Magazine that it's mostly parodies, at least the portion I read, where they do a story but with the characters of Dr. Slump playing all of the rules.

And one thing that blew my mind is we are all making the same jokes about a curatorial. Um, when he hit it big in the West, uh, all of the popular jokes about his art style and, uh, his storylines and so on. He was making those jokes about himself in the early 80s. There, there's one gag in Dr. Slump where one female character has to disguise themselves as another. And the joke is the artist can only draw one face. So she's perfectly fine passing as the other character. So yeah, he knew that about himself, uh, long before we were making the one face jokes about Akira Toriyama's female characters. He was very self-aware, that's for sure. And I think we should probably inject here. Dr. Slump has been available in English for quite some time through Viz. And those were translated by a good buddy of mine, Alexander O. Smith, who also did the Final Fantasy games, Giaceton Saibon, Phoenix Wright games, a lot of other stuff. So, God, it killed me. I don't know how it got to him.

Because Hiroko and I really wanted to translate Dr. Slump. In the end, we ended up getting Doraemon, so that was. like a big thing that we did. But yeah, Alex did it. He did a great job on it, too. So that's when you are reading Dr. Slump in English, you were reading the translations of the same gent who did Final Fantasy. What do you? 10, 10, 2, the even numbered Final Fantasy. The even numbered double-digit finals, or many of them in the lower, in the lower digit counts. That's Alex. Yeah, that's right. He did the Arigato I Love You, right? That was him. Yes, yes.

That was the groundbreaking translation of Arrigato's I Love You, which actually is a really deft translation. Hiroko and I use it when we're giving localization seminars and stuff like that sometimes. Yeah, but for all its silliness and for all it's just, like, off-the-wall humor, Dr. Slump is a huge, huge hit. You know, it's published for four years. It wins the Shogak Khan Manga Award. It was, at the time, they didn't do Shodun and Shoggi like separately.

They just had one category for both. Dr. Shult wins the award in 1981, which I think interestingly, the same year, Doriamon wins the kids award, like, just to give you a context. Like, that's what's blowing up in Japan at the time. But the success makes Toriyama an instant celebrity, you know. Apparently, at the same time as he's getting married, news comes out that he's one of the most, like, wealthiest entertainers in Japan, which is kind of a wild break. So, you know, in his recent passing, FujitD went ahead into their archives.

Fujit TV has footage of his wedding ceremony, like, because he's already famous. Like, the media is there showing up, filming him, you know, cutting his wedding cake. Like, he's already a star, which is kind of- So, Japan. Can you imagine, like, a comic, like, even, like, Frank Miller's wedding? Like, you know what I mean? It's like, you know, we do have celebrity, you know, artists in the West, you know, America, England, places like that.

But, you know, they don't, they don't, they're only celebrity. in their in their fields do you know what i mean whereas toriama was like a literal society-wide you know celeb yeah i don't want to see frank miller's wedding i'm just throwing that out there maybe it's for the best i think you filmed that for the police just so they know what what what she looks like so they can find her later oh jeez dark joke dark darkness darkness get back to the fun which is fun in me because i also found this anecdote because you know Akira Toyama, that is his name. That's his actual name. And apparently early on, like, he had a chance. He could have, he could have picked a pen name. A lot of people picked name. You know, Bronson is obviously a pen name. Uh, Fujia, Fujiko is a pen name. Uh, apparently he decided to go with a pet. He didn't choose a pen name because he thought it wouldn't matter. Like, this isn't going to sell. This is just something out. This is like, you know, this is something to make a living. I'll sell it. And then I'll make some money and then I'll do something else. And once he got it, once he hit it big and people started like calling him up and like making, like, making. jokes because apparently there weren't that many

Akira Toryama's in the Nagoya area, so they found it, so they found his house. Right. And I found a quote. He said, my biggest regret is drawing comics using my real name. Like, he didn't, he didn't want that, you know? You know, manga artists are super reclusive in Japan, most of them.

Like, you know, a demon slayer, it's drawn by a manga called, a manga called Gotoge Yoshiharu. Very androgynous sounding. To this day, there's no, it's not even clear what they're gender is. It's believed the person's a woman. But, I mean, nobody knows what their face look like. And that's, that's really common. But Toriyama was really out there in, in the 80s.

Like, there's a lot of photographs of him with posing with other famous people, like Jackie Chan. There's a Jackie Chan photo with him. And there's also, there's one that I just dug up recently of him and Senna, the F1 driver, which I was just like, wow, what is, what is this crossover? The, you know, the guy who died in 1994 in a race, he's just doing all sorts of, you know, kind of appearances. So under his real name, which is just super uncommon. Like, I don't know whether it's that manga artists in Japan tend to be really introverted or whether it's, you know, just some kind of game that they're playing with the readers or some combination of the two.

But Toriyama sort of, like you said, is not part of that mold. I have heard that he was fairly shy as a person. Oh, yeah. I saw some anecdotes about how his co-workers on KronoTrigger couldn't even get an autograph from him for their kids because he just didn't want to interact with anybody. You know, lots of people were posting that picture. It's Akira Toryama, Yuji Hori, and Sakaguchi together in front of the KronoTrigger TV. They have like the coolest group of math teachers you've ever seen in your life. They are so adorably dorky.

also a little cool, a little cool. I don't, I don't think Toriyama, you know, when you say he was working together with the Krono Trigger team, I would bet you anything that he wasn't ever there. Like, I don't agree. Yeah, like, you know, I remember reading when he wasn't involved with the anime productions of his works at all, like he didn't, other than like providing, you know, some rough sketches and things like that, he just, he was, he's a mangaka. And which is really interesting because I think most people know whether it's Dr. Slump and Japanese people, whether it's people all over the world in Dragon Ball or Dragon Quest even or Chrono Trigger, most people know his work from non-monga sources, games, cartoons, or even like, you know, products, you know, merchandise and stuff like that.

He's sold insane amounts of his manga, but generally speaking, I think most people interact with him indirectly. So it kind of makes sense that even the creative teams of like Dragon Quest, you know, when we were working on the Dragon Quest games, you know, my company localized seven and eight, we never, you know, we met Yuji Hoori once. And then, you know, we never had any interaction, of course, with Toriyama. It's like, you know, those people are off in Valhalla where everybody else is down in the, you know, slogging through the mud in the trenches. So, you know. Yeah, I get the impression that he, he became a celebrity not by any choice. I think he probably. probably made the most of it. You know, I think, I think if Jackie Chan says, hey, I want to meet you, you say yes, no matter the, no matter the circumstances. But, you know, I dug up an old interview. He was on Texco's, Texcon, O'Hia, you know, the very, very long-running interview series here in Japan. And it looks like it's from like 83 or so. I found it on YouTube, and it's been subtitled English. And, you know, he's on TV. He knows the

cameras are there, but he seems very uncomfortable with the whole thing. I, I don't know how she talked him into this, but he's there and, like, he answers her questions, but he's sort of like, yeah, yeah, thank you, uh, yeah, like, he's very, he's very soft-spoken, so I have no doubt that in any other circumstances, he would much rather, you know, if he, maybe he thought, maybe he, maybe she duped him, maybe she said, hey, why don't you come up to Tetsco's room and, like, he assumed that he would just

be in a room with Tetsco, like, no, no, no, this is actually, this is actually a giant studio, and we're just going to sit here and talking for the cameras. He's like, ah, you got me. She's lucky he didn't chew his leg off to get out of the trap or something like that. You know what? You're shocked that like a manga artist is a total nerd. I'm just, wow, you know, it's like what a, what a mind-blowing revelation, huh? But yeah, he's, he's such a gentle soul. Do you know what I mean? It's, it's not that he's socially awkward so much as he's just normal, you know? It's like, you throw anybody in a room with like 50 cameras pointing at them in lights and they're going to freeze up. Yeah, I guess we should point out that manga authors, they have assistance, they have help, but they are required to put out. much more work than a Western artist. And that could lead to why they are so reclusive and introverted because they don't see people that much. Right. Or sleep or food. Yeah.

You know, it's the irony in Japan is that actually becoming a, a hit mangaka. It seems like that would be the dream. I'm a hit. I'm rich. I can retire. But in fact, it's, it's like a white elephant. When you hit it big, suddenly you're, you're, the volume of work you need to increase, you needed to turn in increases dramatically to the point where no single human can do it. You basically have to become a manager of a team, you know, and it's just, you know, weekly deadlines in America, you know, it's like, what is it, a manga, excuse me, a comic book is maybe a couple dozen pages once a month. These guys have to turn that in week after week after week. And it can be pretty brutal. Yeah, I think by some standards, Tonya was saying he was,

he was drawing 500 pages a year, which is just, I mean, that's, that's how do these guys not get like carpal tunnel syndrome, like slip discs? I mean, maybe they probably do. That's what I was just thinking. Yeah. La La La La La But as we implied, I mean, the manga itself is a hit, but I think what catapults him to superstardom is the fact that Dr. Shlump becomes an anime, you know, on Fuji television in 1981. As Matt mentioned, the anime is renamed Dr. Soparada-chan.

They put her name in the title. She's very front and center in all the advertisements and the artwork. This stat blew my mind, though. I looked this up. So Dr. Soparadarajan premieres in 1981. 7 p.m. on Wednesday on Fuji Television. And for the next 18 years, that time slot is reserved for Toriyama-themed animations. Like, as soon as, as soon as Adan ends, Dragon Ball takes over. And when that ends, Dragon Ball Z takes over. And when that ends, Dragon Ball G.T. takes over. And when that ends, a revival of Dr. Slump takes over. Like, so from 81 to 99, 7 p.m. Wednesday night, you are, you know, almost 20. years of human beings are watching television and his Toriyama's artwork looking back at them. And just for reference sake, what takes it over?

God damn one piece. So, you know, although it's kind of the, he feels like the successor in a lot of ways, though, right? Honestly, there's a lot of crows over there. Yeah, he really looked up to Toriyama. There's an interview between them in one of the first One Piece art books. It's a rare interview with Toriyama. And I was thinking upon the death of Toriyama.

this is not a popularity contest One Piece has ran a lot longer than Dragon Ball It seems much more popular In terms of present popularity But he was kind of siloed In the One Piece factory From the age of 22 onwards

So he could not touch as many things He could not create multiple series Work on video games It's just him in One Piece For the past 27 years I think at this point Coming up on 27 years So might be more popular

But not the same cultural legacy yet. Right. Yeah. And like Matt said, I mean, once something becomes the hit, it becomes the hit. And like, that's what you're known for. And I think there are plenty of anecdotes along the way with Dr. Slump and later with Dragon Ball where it's like, Toriyama's like, okay, so this story's wrapping up, right? And its editors are like, no, this isn't that wrapping up. What do you mean? You're never stopping. You're never, never. Never. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's jump,

though. I mean, you know, these, these people are, you know, rightly. I don't, I don't, I don't mean to you know minimize anyone's connection to these properties there but they're not like artistic explorations for art sick they are products and when they sell well they're designed to continue and continue and continue which is why we have like you know is one thousand how many episodes of one piece are there how many episodes of dragon ball are there and they've been continuing for like dragon ball's been going on for like 40 years now it's it's wild i don't know if there's any other entertainment project besides perhaps like the James Bond series or something that's been going on for as long as this, as successfully as this, and is like evolving to get

new groups of demographics of watchers and users like Dragon Ball has. It's pretty wild. I mean, if you look at things with long legacies, you know, they're out there, but they're inevitably handed off to different people over the decades. Right. Where in the case of Dragon Ball, like From its inception, it was Toriyama. And even when they brought it back, you know, for Dragon Ball Super, you know, they went back to Toriyama. Like, he, you know, at that point, he was always successful, it's like, I'm not drawing this for you. But he was still, he was still the writer. He designed a lot of characters for it.

And by all accounts, he was writing new material right up until his passing, you know, for Super, which is an ongoing, an ongoing revival. Was he actually doing scripts? Was he, he must have just been doing, like, overviews and then people would flesh it out. I mean, because that's, presumably, I'm not sure. I'm just, just from here, I mean, if I got to that level, you know, and I will, in just a couple of years, I'm sure I'm going to be at Toriamas level. You know, if you get, once you get to that level, you want to outsource as much as you possibly can. And so, like, you know, he's, he's like the big picture. And I'm sure the actual dialogue writing and stuff, which is kind of the grunt work of script writing was was done by other people.

You know, and, you know, his characters. That's why, you know, people, that's why, you know, Enix hired him to do the characters for, Dragon Quest. It's why Square did for Chrono Trigger, you know, so it makes sense that he would do those aspects of it. And then his most recent, I guess, is Sandland, right? That was just only recently became, it's been around for a while, but it only recently became an anime, correct? Yeah, Sandland is one of the weirdest stories here. It's like after all the, after all the hits we've already rattled off here, in 2000, he basically puts out a 14 chapter story called Sandlan in Shonen Jump. And, you know, it's a manga. It does well. It's got his name on it. It looks good.

And then it sort of sits idly for about 20 years. And then all of a sudden, like about two years ago, they said, okay, it's coming out now. And they made an animated movie last year, which I think is coming to Western Territories later in 2024. There's a weekly streaming series, which is coming out very soon as it's recording, but it's not out yet. So he didn't get to see it in action. But I know he wrote more material for that. And they said he created more characters for that. And there's an open world video game, which is also coming very soon.

Not out as it's recording, but, yeah, Sandlin was existed for about two decades, and all of a sudden in the last two years, it has become a multimedia project when before that it was, it was just a manga sitting around. And so I haven't read it yet, but I played, I played the demo at TGS. You can read my, you can read my preview for it at last year's TGS, you know. It's very thoughtful and new ones. Yeah, now that you mentioned it, Diamond, they recently, within the past couple of years, they did a remake of the popular, the more popular Dragon Quest anime, and that was recently a game, too. So they've been really reviving these dormant Toriyama things in recent memory. Digging in the crates as hip-hop artists would say. Yeah, I get the sense that once they did that Dragon Ball Battle of the Gods movie, everyone remembered like, oh, yeah, Toriyama's great.

What if we just like dig into that library some more? You're right. You're right, Kevin. That's probably the flashpoint. You know, when they made more Dragon Ball for the first time in decades, like, oh, wait, we can just do this. he's still here and obviously he wouldn't be here forever as we as we sadly know but like I'm happy that it happened and I'm happy that he got a chance to see more people connect with the stuff he made even if even if his decades old at this point people are still out there

reconnecting with all his old material and it holds up wonderfully because it's it's you know I think it has a lot of his timeless quality because of you know how he puts his energy to the stuff you know all the stuff we mentioned even though the themes are very different the character for different, like, how many things are the same? Like, you've got this world, and it's kind of a near-future world where it's like cities are kind of like bubbles, but you still have cars and motorcycles, but you have like, you know, the capsule corporation where people throw things in the ground and they spring into full houses. You've got animals and humans living side by side, like, you know, the animals could talk to people,

the people talk to animals, but there's dinosaurs running around and there's entire stretches of the earth that are just giant, you know, like plateaus of like, you know, random rock rags. Like, that's just where, that's just Earth. You've got aliens, you've got UFOs, you've got monsters, you've got like little characters of Ultraman clinging to trees and buzzing like cicadas. Like, all this stuff coexists and no one questions any of it. I think he, Toriyama, Toriyama's legacy is really that he, he kind of absorbed all of this sort of widely spread disparate Japanese pop culture.

You know, you see aspects of Toksatsu, you know, which is. live-action sci-fi like Ultraman and things like that. You see aspects of like Doraemon, you know, who has that pocket where he can pull any gadget out of. That's the capsule stuff in the capsule corporation stuff. You see the kind of squashed character designs, which he wasn't the first to invent them, but I think you can you can argue that he perfected them. And, you know, his draftsmanship is just really impeccable. I would actually put him up there with somebody like Otomo. I think he could draw like Akira's Otomo if he chose to, but instead he chose this more rounded silly kind of format. But yet he's often telling these kind of wild tales with it.

So he laid the groundwork for a lot of the stuff. He synthesized this kind of new synthetic like, you know, one piece to use a term, excuse me, like singular Japanese pop culture from a lot of different sources. And I'm speaking of one piece, Oda in his kind of tribute, obituary, whatever you want to call to Toriyama, said something like, he took the baton from an era when manga was seen as trash culture, junk culture. It would make you, it was believed that reading manga would make you stupid. That's what people thought about manga in the 60s and 70s. And, you know, even when I hear about this for my wife, her parents wouldn't let her read manga in the house. You had to do it kind of illicitly. You had to do it, you know, secretly. You get yelled at

that by your teachers and your parents and stuff. Toriyama made it something that everybody could enjoy. He raised the level of it. Even though he's drawing talking poop and stuff, he was so good at what he did. He just elevated the entire medium into what it became. And now it's seen as this global Japanese culture. It's like the biggest, Japan's biggest export. If you asked Japanese people in the 80s, like when they're riding high, like exporting

like watching machines and computers and cars, where are we going to be 40 years from now? We're going to be supporting the entire country by exporting anime and manga. They would have called you crazy. But that's the kind of reality that we live in. And I think it's due in huge, huge part to Toriyama. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of hard to talk about any one work that he did because so much, so much of it has such far-reaching potential. But it's like, on top of all the, you know, decades of manga we've already talked about,

it's like, yeah, in between there, he's go ahead and he's called upon to make characters for some of the best best received video games ever made, you know? Like, the Dragon Quest thing comes about because I think it's Torishima at Shonen Jump who's putting his dream together, you know? Yeah. He's like, hey, you know, Hori, you're writing over here.

Toriyama, you're drawing things over here. You work with you and let's get together. And like, that's what, that's the Genesis that starts it off and that becomes, you know, a hit and then a bigger hit. And then, you know, I promise you, in the hours after Toriyama's passing was announced here in Japan, I saw the February 1988 footage of long lines for buying Drag Quest 3 all over Japanese TV for days. That's all they were showing.

Like that's, you know, this is what we remember him for is, oh yeah, he drew all these characters. And that's what took over Japan for decades now. And really, it makes you wonder, would Dragon Quest have even taken off without the packaging and the character designs of Toriyama? I think it's, I think it's very questionable. I mean, there were other role-playing games like wizardry and stuff on the market in Japan. I don't, I, like, you know, Dragon Quest. I worked on it.

I love Dragon Quest, but it's not, it's evolutionary. It's absolutely not revolutionary. To someone who had grown up playing Ultima, it was like, oh, okay, well, this is like Ultima, you can play with a joystick instead of a keyboard. But those characters just took it to another level altogether. And I don't know, they're like the secret sauce of so much of Japanese pop culture is that kind of design work,

and Toriyama's in particular. Yeah, I was thinking about that earlier because I had seen someone had posted the original draft of what Tori had for the slime and what Toriyama sent back. And I thought myself, like, you know, first, you know, obviously Toriyama slime is adorable and very, like, charming. But also, this was very sensible because this is a... going to be the first monster you're going to encounter in this game, and it has to set the tone

for the entire thing. And you just have this goofy, smiling teardrop. And I remember the first time I saw that as a kid, I'm like, okay, this is amazing. I want to play more of this game. And, you know, I don't think that would have happened if you didn't have Toriyama working on the designs for this.

Was that your first exposure to Kauai'i culture? It's either that or Grimm's fairy tales, the anime that used to show on Nickelodeon. Oh, wow. Was that Japanese? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Interesting. Yeah, I was thinking of the games that Toriyama made art for that

aren't Dragon Quest, and I think none of them would have gotten sequels, if not for Toriyama. Things like Tobal, Go-Go-Ackman, which is based on like a very short manga he made. What else? Oh, Blue Dragon, that got an anime and that got a DS sequel. All of these things

that were just capitalizing on his style that would not have been popular. And of course, Chrono Trigger. I'm still waiting for that sequel. A good sequel with his art, by the way. Take that, Chrono Cross fans. They're getting

the pitchforks. They knew who they are. Aren't they Jeremy? It could just be Jeremy and two other guys at this point. Where is Jeremy, by the way? Where is he? He couldn't make it. He couldn't make it today. I'm sorry. The timing didn't work

out. Oh, well. But, yeah, so the Dragon Quest thing happens because he's involved. Obviously, that builds in the Trigger thing. And, yeah, Bob, you mentioned Blue Dragon? I mean, that's from an era where Microsoft is pouring millions and millions of dollars in this console.

And they're like, how do we get Japan to buy our gosh darn video games? They're not buying these Xboxes. And one of the someone's like, hey, what if we get the Dragon Ball guy to do something? And they get Blue, you know, and that's how you get Blue Dragon. Like, that's the main image is there, right? And it is Sakaguchi. It is Mistwalker, I believe, working with Toriyama. And I will say that is a solid B-minus RPG.

All of you people bugging Sony to make a blood-borne PC port, bug Microsoft to make a Blue Dragon PC port. I think they'll do it if they find out anyone is interested. It's an all-right game that has a lot of charm, mostly thanks to Weimatsu's soundtrack and Toriyama's artwork. You know, now's the time. Strike while the iron's hot? It's a little warm.

Well, you know, I think, you know, this is actually part of part and parcel of the way that, you know, are commodified here. You know, there's so many people working in Toriyama's style now for him. He's so many assistants, so many people who have done this, so many people. And his style is so, I'd say it's inimitable, which it is in a kind of conceptual sense, but it's incredibly imitable if you are told to draw something in Toriyama style. And I think we will be, we will be seeing, I wouldn't be shocked at all if they find like old storylines that weren't used, old, you know, famously, Torishima, like, shot down something like 500 to 1,000 pages of ideas that Toriyama had submitted to Shonen Jump in the early 80s.

And so I could totally see some of that stuff being unearth and resurrected. And people are cool with that here. I mean, it's understood that when you become as big as Toriyama, you become an industry. It's like Toriyama, Inc. Bird Studios. Yeah, Bird Studios, yeah. You know, definitely. I was actually really, really, when we were working on Dragon Quest 8, we had, you know,

and we had to rename all of the, a lot of the monsters in there. We were given stacks of the old strategy guides. And I was really, really shocked to learn that one of my friends had illustrated the strategy guide for Dragon Quest 2. It looks just like Toriyama. And it was actually, I can't remember it was 2 or 3, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's Utaka Kondo, my manga artist friend who illustrated Hiroko in my Ninja Attack series book. And he had been hired because Toriyama, Toriyama doesn't want to, by that point, he doesn't want to draw like all of the page illustrations for these books.

But so the point being here is that, yeah, I think we are going to see other artists picking up the torch and being asked to kind of draw in his style and do things in his style. Yeah, it's kind of like every few years we get into the Beatles song, you know. Right. Somehow, there's always. Where are those coming from? There's always one more recording. There's always one more, you know, there's always one more tape found in a, in a shoebox in Sheffield or Liverpool or something. This is totally off topic, but you guys, I'm sure, know the story of what Koji Kondo, the Nintendo's composer, you know, Super Mario, Zelda, everything.

And he goes to a Beatles concert and, like, Paul McCartney's like, oh, my God, you know, like, the Super Mario theme guy. And, like, and Paul McCartney is flipping out at meeting Koji Kondo. I actually think that, you know, Japanese people tend to think of themselves and Japanese creators is these kind of, you know, oh, we're these, you know, nobody cares about us. We're in this tiny island the way off in the Pacific, you know, who would care? That's why I'm not even going to tell you what my name is or draw my face. But Toriyama is a beetle to a lot of people. You know what I mean? Koji Kondo is too, you know, so is Yuji Hori.

So is, you know, Miyamoto Shigeru. They had a planet-sized, you know, impact, starting to sound like a Dragon Ball. metaphor here on on global pop culture and it's just it's why this is such a shock you know I'm still in shock about this I really really really really wanted at some point to meet you know to get hired to do a piece on him or on one of his new you know creations and get to meet him because honestly Dr. Slump is the is the manga that made me fall in love with manga as a kid I found it through Japanese friends who had untranslated copies and like in my group of American friends these comic books started to

the Tonko Bon started to circulate and we're like, what the, what is this? Like, what is going? You didn't even really need Japanese to understand it. You know, like Mad Magazine came up as a metaphor a few minutes ago, and it totally is Mad Magazine, you know? Yeah, I don't think I found about, I don't think I found out about Dr. Shlump until, like, the 2000s or so.

Like, well after Dragon Ball have become popular, I think I started looking on the internet and, you know, looking up who made it and finding out, oh, there was another thing before that, And, yeah, long before, you know, anyone actually officially licensed it, I think I just found, like, fan subs online and just like, what is, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's the reaction, like, yeah, what's going on here? That's, that's a little girl, okay, and she's super strong, but also, like, yeah, there's talking poop and there's animals everywhere, and, again, another theme, you know, just like his very first creation had the Nikuman's Superman character, Dr. Sulp has his own Superman character, which is Supaman, and there's the joke there. Yeah, the joke there being that the supai in Japanese is like very sour. So he eats something very sour and he becomes a superhero, but he can actually fly.

So he just lays down on a skateboard and zips around town. Like that's the kind of stuff we're working with here. And it's hilarious. Brilliant. But it's also like what's happening. When my brother-in-law and got married, the MC at the wedding was the voice actor who played Superman and he kept doing Superman life. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. And he's like the wedding singer now.

But, like, literally, he'd say, hi, I'm Superman. And, like, the whole crowd would be like, whoa, Superman. He's bigger than Christopher Reeves. Before the manga came to the West, the Dr. Slop manga, the anime has never been officially translated or anything. It really was a footnote for Dragon Ball fans because RLA makes a canonical appearance in Dragon Ball. She is the one who defeats General Blue.

Like, Goku runs to Penguin Village as part of the story. It's a big crossover in the manga and the, anime and then the footnote was like oh i guess you did this other thing before dragon ball who cares and then people eventually find out how good it is when it's brought over to us in the early odds it was as big as dragon ball in the in the 80s i mean as somebody who kind of experienced that a little bit indirectly in real time i mean it was just giant giant giant giant so if you talk to people in japan in their 60s their 50s who who grew up in japan at that time that they'll you know they'll tell you just what he could have retired after the

that a wealthy wealthy man he could have just been like you know what i'm done i'm 25 years old uh i've done this i've sold 35 million copies of something you know job well done akira you know but he didn't he kept going you know he just kept going and going and going he said to himself i have to take over the entire world of pop culture thanks to cheap anime exports you know he was smart though i was looking at his biography and i noticed that he kind of got out of the grind at around 40. I mean, he was still working. He was still doing a smaller series, but Dragon Ball ended in 95. I assume, was he born in 55? Is that his birthday? Yeah, I think, yeah, he's 68 this year. So, yeah. So he was 40. And like so many creators work far longer

than that on the same grind. So he was smart in that respect. Yeah. Well, boys, I hate to do this, but I have somewhere I need to be very shortly. So I'm going to have to bail out. But please continue, continue discussing in my absence if you want. Matt, before you go, do you just want to tell people about the things you work to the people of the audience? Oh, sure, sure. So, yeah, Matt Alt again. You know, as always, you can find me on, you know, I'm on Twitter, Matt underscore Alt. I'm on Instagram, Alt Matt Alt.

I have a newsletter that I've been doing, which is blog. Dot Pure Inventionbook.com. And that is a kind of expansion of my book, Pure Invention, How Japan Made the Modern World. Thank you for showing that there. you can find it at your local bookstore or wherever books are sold or listen to it. I narrated it over three very long, long days that maybe realize I never want to be a voice actor. So please, but thanks for having me on. It's always a pleasure.

I think this is my third time on the podcast, maybe fourth. I don't know. I've lost count, but we call you when we need a heavy hitter about the giants of Japan, such as Godzilla or Google 13. So, we did the Galgo 13 thing. I remember that. Yes. That was a top secret episode, I believe. So anyway, yes, sorry to bail out halfway through, but please continue.

And let's do this again sometime soon. Yes, thank you for joining us, Matt. Thank you. Tragombe Tragonball Tragon ball the world in a thrill-shrin'n't Let's let's

Tragon-Bowl Tragon-Bowl a world-in-i-tall-you-goy-a-ki-a-cest this world is a great Well, now that Matt's gone. Now that Matt's gone, now we have some air for the rest of us. I know, right? No. I'm kidding. Let's talk a little bit about Dragon Ball, a little more in death, just because we can't, we can't not touch on what makes Dragon Ball great, even though I honestly believe Dragon Ball deserves its own episode, which hopefully is coming soon, because, you know, we're recording this in 2024, which is the 40th anniversary. of Dragon Ball. And to me, what I think is so funny about Dragon Ball is the fact that it starts off as basically a take on Journey to the West, which is this, you know, very famous Chinese story that lots of people have adapted over the years, both in Japan and China and, like, lots of people, I mean, we talked with Tesika early. Like, Tezika did his own version of Journey to the West.

Like, lots of people done, you know, Stephen Chow has done Journey to the West, you know? One piece is also kind of Journey to the West. the main character's name is monkey. It's no coincidence. Yeah. There's like a million games that are journeyed the West that aren't Dragon Ball. It's everywhere. Right.

And in this case, Toriyama took the literal character, you know, who in Chinese is Sun Wukong and just the same kanji and just reads them in the Japanese way, which is Song Goku. And I think the last, the Sun name doesn't really get a lot of play overseas, but here in Japan, it very much is Songoku. And I, to this day, to this day, I remain disappointed. My wife wouldn't let me name our son Goku because that would be the perfect joke. Like, here's my son Goku. But I'm sorry. Either way. Toriyama would appreciate a pun of that level, I think.

I hope so. Because even, yeah, even though Dragon Ball is a more serious story, like, as far as, like, there's combat, there's life, there's death, you know, there's war, there's still lots of goofballs. There's still lots of, you know, quasi-perverted. characters. I would say this time around, his insert character is the old man who just wants to read pornography and be left alone. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, this was one that I actually did catch the original dub airing of it back in, what, 94 or so, 95. Oh, me too, yeah. I really liked it. I thought it was hilarious at the time. And like, yeah, they did censor and, like, re-edit a lot of the hornier jokes, which, you know, Dragon Ball had a ton of horny jokes, especially early on.

I honestly don't know what they thought they were doing trying to tub it for kids in the U.S. in the 90s, given how it progresses. But, yeah, I really liked it. And I remember being extremely disappointed when they announced a new season and it just jumped straight to Dragon Ball Z. And I'm like, I don't, this isn't funny anymore. What the heck? Yeah, yeah, like Kevin, I got in on the ground floor. just because I happened to be up, I don't know, 6 a.m. on a Saturday, which was the weird

ass time my local Fox affiliate would air it. And then I jumped to Cartoon Network when Tunei started airing the reruns. But a funny thing happened. When they got through the 52 episodes of Dragon Ball Z, there was maybe like an 18 month or two year wait before they dubbed more. And in that time, I became a huge snob and I moved on from Dragon Ball. I was like, oh, I enjoy more the cowboy bebops of the world and the studio Jibli films, if you want. I'm swirling a brand, glass as I talk. And then only much, like in my 30s, I came back and I thought, well, I was stupid. This is great. And last year, actually, is the time when I watched through the original Dragon Ball series in its entirety for the first time. And it's just, it's just a good time, right?

I mean, I haven't seen it all for myself. But yeah, it's like, so much of it is just, it's just fun and entertaining. But it's also like, there's still plenty of people like throwing, you know, laser beams at each other. But it's also like funny. And it has great pacing even in the anime form. That's back when their, the episode counts weren't as bloated as they are today. Like we're talking with Matt, One Piece has 1100 episodes.

And when you watch some of those episodes, they're just adapting one chapter over the course of 22 minutes. And it's kind of excruciating at times. Yeah, whereas the original Dragon Ball, it's very breezy. You know, everyone makes the joke about Dragon Ball Z just like dragging things out because of how much they

drug out the freezer fight. Yeah. We're like Dragon Ball, right? Right, yeah. Just to let Toria, I'm a catch up and, like, get ahead of them enough to keep it going. But, yeah, the early stuff, it's, it has a great flow to it. I have not gotten to see the entirety of the original Dragon Ball, but everything I have seen, it's, the gags are just really, really good. They're really clever, even when they're dumb. Just the, like, Krillin beating people in their big tournaments by using, what was it, his, like, smelly

shoes. And it didn't work on him himself because he doesn't have a nose. Just because Toriyama never drew one on him. And like, that's really, that's great. That is really dumb, but it's really great. And there's an arc where they basically have to fight all of the universal movie monsters,

which I really enjoyed. And the Terminator. Terminator's there too. Yes, Goku does fight the Terminator. And that's not to be missed. Yeah. When I think about Dragon Ball, I also think about how, and I think a lot of people have highlighted this in recent weeks with his passing, you know, a lot of, Tonyaum got a lot of attention for his little guys and his muscle men and his babes.

But also, he had a sort of oddball fashion sense to the characters he created, you know, like, Aronajan, I know, like, wears a lot of weird little outfits because I think he said he just got tired of drawing the same one every time. So, like, he would ever just wear different costumes for fun. and even though Goku tends to wear the same outfits all the time like certainly Boma Boma has an array of outfits that she puts on different different scenarios

she gets different haircuts over the over the series you know as she grows up and you know matures as a woman and just you know Dragon Ball and later Dragon Ball is also full of like lots of weird outfits and costumes like I'm thinking of the guy

the name escapes me but the guy who's hired to kill Goku like he just has a shirt that's just killer on it like it's like killer on the back and it's got the kanji for kill on the front. Like, I love, you know, I just think that's such a strong look. And, of course, people, people today still talk about Vegeta's bad man pink shirt. Like, that's just, that's legendary, the bad man shirt.

That's a fit. Yeah. And, of course, you know, viewers at home are, or listeners aren't going to see this, but I'm, I'm podcasting as I have done for many years now, wearing this, uh, authentic, you know, officially licensed Goku bathrobe. It's bright orange. It's got the I should say that yeah, the go. The go of Goku is on the front and I think it's on the back too. I can't see my back here. But if you haven't heard this story for this, people ask me

all the time, where'd you get the robe? I bought this robe at Disney World. Okay? So, Akira Turyama, little kid inspired by Disney cartoons and Tezuka, creates a character to become so goddamn world famous they sell his merch at Disney World. Dramatic pause. Like, that's seriously. that's the magnitude we're talking about that's the level that's the Toriyama

power level I mean I you know after his passing I started noticing all of the slimes that were around my condo and it was like I started a recording with someone via Zencastor we have the video windows here that the listeners can't see there's a slime hanging behind me and the person said oh did you hang that up because of Toriyama's passing

I thought oh it's always been there and they started looking around and they're just slimes are surrounding me a little Toriyama creatures are surrounding me throughout my condo it helped that we just went to Japan and bought a little Dragon Quest Monsters left and right. That'll do it. I did make a joke earlier about how

this got imported around the world, and it really did. This is like one of those things that I feel Dragon Ball Z in particular is very globally recognized because a lot of, you know, TV stations would air anime because it was cheap to put

on the air. You didn't have to make it yourself. And I know like it was huge in Latin America, and I remember watching a video when Dragon Ball Super had its finale episode, and I think it's probably still on YouTube, of just like this big crowd outdoors in Mexico watching

the final, like, fight sequence, and just like, cheering and, like, chanting for like, Frisa, Freeza! I'm like, holy crap. This is so much bigger overseas, or I guess, same continent, but, you know, in other countries than, like, I even consider in the U.S.

where it is also quite big. And that's just cool. Like, yeah, someone made a joke about how there's that statue in, I think, Florida of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse. Like, someone should erect that in Mexico City with Toriyama and Goku. I'm like, they should. That's honestly real. He is an unofficial Mexican citizen. I do hope that in the coming years, we see a lot of Toriyama statues erected around the world because it's where he belongs.

like his creations have touched everyone. I know I think it's House of Decline. The online cartoonist did a cartoon that he re-it actually predates his past, predates Torama's passing, but he shared it again to like 16,000 retweets.

And it's just these two guys overseas and like, yeah, are you going to be looking at this trip? Like, you don't speak any Arabic. It's all right. I speak the universal language. And he just walks in a market, opens his shirt, and it's Goku on his shirt. And you see a guy's like, oh, Goku. It's like, yeah. that's the level of fame we're talking about here.

Like, those characters are globally known. I mean, whatever Dr. Stump did for Toriyama here in Japan, like, it made him as a celebrity, but, like, Dragon Ball made him world famous. That made him a global celebrity, you know, on par with, I don't see on par with. I think he's one of the most famous Japanese people, like, ever. I really do. I think a lot of other people, like, made famous things. Like, Shigura Miyamoto made a lot of famous things, but I don't think Shigura Miyamoto was

famous unless you play a lot of video games and you also, like, read about them. Like, my mother, my mother wouldn't know it either one, but I'm just saying, okay. Yeah, I mean, we were talking- Toriyama's got a lot bigger reach. We were talking about international appeal. Since the passing of Toriyama, I've been reading a lot on Twitter, just how much Dragon Ball has meant to both black and Latin American audiences and, you know, people outside of America.

But I guess up until a certain point, the stereotype, a non-Japanese anime nerd was a white guy, perhaps with a ponytail, who knows. But I think Dragon Ball changed what the typical anime fan looked like to a more international kind of person. It wasn't just the nerdy white guy

ordering tapes out of Ann America. It was people of all races. Everyone loves Piccolo. Yes. That's right. We talked for over an hour. We didn't even mention the name Piccolo. Yeah, Piccolo's a legend unto himself, I think, because he's this sort of

this sort of strange character who was initially a villain, and then he dies and comes out of an egg again, but then he just, you know, when the series transitions to a larger threats that come from outer space, all of a sudden, Piccolo transitions into sort of an angry, an angry but understanding sort of tutor and mentor for Goku's suddenly orphan son. And again, one of the tweets that went around in Torio was passing, someone's like, yeah, Torium never went to America, but somehow he nailed the, the archetype of, you know, guy who goes to prison, converses to Islam, and suddenly becomes a big brother for, you know, street kids.

Like, that's Piccolo. Piccolo is this mean villain who, you know, sort of overcomes his gruffness. And it's, you know, over time falls in love with this kid. He's sort of been training to become a martial artist. And then, you know, eventually gives up his own life to save Gohan's life. And then, you know, years later, he's just one of the guys. He's just a pal. But still, he's Gohan's real dad.

Yeah. I feel bad for him because Piccolo's dad, you never got to meet him because as his dad was dying, he barfed out an egg and that's where Piccolo was born. Does he still know to celebrate King Piccolo Day, though? Because it is coming up very quickly. Oh, you're right about that. I need to plan my party. Yeah, we have noticed the episode's going up. But yeah, I know April, I think April 5th is Toriyama's birthday.

And I don't know, when is King Piccolo Day? I don't know off top of my head. Is it like May 15th or something weird like that? Let's look that up. Listeners, look that up. Look that up. Make sure check your local time zone to, you don't miss any of these holidays this year. It is May 9th, two days after my birthday. So, hail King Piccolo. Well, under the surface, this is Bob? I think we understand the listeners, if they issue giving you gifts and just celebrate King Piccolo Day this year. Is that all right? I understand. Yeah, I will understand that. It's going to be a very dark King Piccolo Day. Um, yeah, I feel like we could sort of start wrapping this up because I, I believe Dragon Ball, the magnitude of Dragon Ball itself probably deserves its own episode in the near future, but I, I, just the hype what's happened.

I really feel like if we haven't said it enough, I honestly believe Akura Toyama is one of the most influential artists of the last 40 years. And I say that, knowing that he spent the last 20 years just enjoying his success. You know what I mean? Like, as you mentioned, Bob, he got out of the grind of manga when he turned 40. And even though he never stopped working, like he didn't retire, but like he stopped doing the weeklies. He would just do like, he'd do little things. He'd do collaborations. He would create characters for this.

He'd create new characters for this. I believe it was Dragon Ball Fighters with a Z. You know, he made a new Android for that, and the internet lost its mind. Like, oh, my God, new Toriyama Android, I love her. Like, that was, that was an, you know, that was like a Bouset level, you know, reaction. I think to, you know, total coincidence here, because, you know, Akira is a common name. But, like, we credit Akira, the 88 animated film as sort of, like, breaking through anime fandom in the West.

But I think it's Akira Toriyama's work is what really. made it all stick. It really made it popular. His characters took over, you know, they were airing on cable every day. Then all of a sudden, they're, you know, they're on every t-shirt in the mall. Like, Hot Topic shit. I don't know how much money Hot Topic Sentitory I'm over the years, but it's not enough. It's not enough. Go to the flea market, get all your, you know, bootleg, airbrushed Dragon Ball Z club shirts. There were a lot of those in the late 90s and early 2000s. Um, yeah, uh, I think Akira is a good comparison point because, yeah, Akira, it got some people to notice anime was a thing outside of a very, like, specific nerd circles. But I don't think it was really mainstreamed until you had Dragon Ball Z. And I guess Sailor Moon, because they were sort of airing at about the same time. It doesn't help that there's only two hours of Akira. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of hours of Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon to have fun with. Yeah.

Once you watch Akira, you're done. It's like, well, what else? I guess you can read the manga. It's very different. It's very different. Not digitally, though. Boo. I have a quote here from Nadia Uxford.

Nadia Oxford, excuse me, writing for one-up many, many years ago. Nadia wrote, Akira Toyama is the definitive shown in mangaka. He can design heroes whose strength and cunning transcend generations, but he's also famous for his, for his compellingly silly monsters. Well said. Yeah. And another comment that went around a lot of, after his, after Toriyama's passing, was from Hirohika Araki, the Jojo guy, who we've also talked about a lot in this podcast. Araki said, back in the day, people would always be reading manga on the train. It didn't matter if you were 10 meters away. All it took was a quick glance at

the corner of the page, and you could instantly tell, oh, that's Dragon Ball. That manga has its own unique aura. You know a manga is good. when even children can sense that. And if I can do one more quote here, just from SSJ SpeedRacer on Twitter, but I really think this nails it. It's like, imagine being the guy who designed the Dragon Quest slime,

and that's not even the main thing you're known for. Like, yeah, that's what happened. You know, like, we've made our jokes about glow-ups and how important his characters are, but it's like, yeah, one of the biggest characters he's ever made is not even the biggest character he made and that's the reality of his popularity.

I mean, Diamond, you live in Japan. I was just there for like two and a half weeks and you can't get Dragon Ball stuff in every store but within a 50 meter radius of wherever you're standing there is a slime for sale that you can buy either via a claw machine

a UFO catcher, a gift shop, there's just there has to be some kind of slime available or it's a national emergency. Yeah, and it's all going to up again, I mean, even with that as untimely passing, the media train had already started for the Sandland stuff that's coming soon, because the series, again, I don't know when this is going up, but as it's recording, the series is going to start streaming very soon. I believe it's

streaming in March, 24, so probably within a week of our recording. And the game is coming out, I think, April 2024. So, like, they've already started the hype machine for these things, and it's only going to increase because of what happened. And it's just, you know, I believe the quote, I think it was Oda, I think was Oda from one piece who said, like, I hope, I hope Toriyama finds heaven to be exactly as, as happy a place as he expected it to be, because, you know, so much of Dragon Bowl involves the afterlife. I forget the term for it, not Randian, but like, there's a term for it where you, you have fiction that involves characters going to and from the afterlife, and like, there's afterlife characters and

like, that's a big part of Dragon Ball. In Dragon Ball, the characters die is not the end. They just go to the place where dead people go and they hang out there. And sometimes they visit us because they know the people who are in charge. And I think Oda's like, yeah, like, I hope if that's how it works, like, I hope Toriyama goes up there and he's like, oh, that's great. Everyone already knows who I am here. You know what I mean? People are drawn comics of him meeting like King Emma. I was like, yeah, yeah, great.

It's good to see you. You're the best. We're happy to meet you. And I can't imagine, like, what other compliment is there. It's like, this guy who created all these characters created an entire universe to sort of occupy, we can only hope that he got it right and that he's enjoying it, you know, even wherever he is now. Yeah, yeah, I think you really nailed something with that. Maybe the universal appeal of Dragon Ball comes from the fact that as self-aware creatures, we're all terrified of death and what awaits us. But in this manga series, death is just like a vacation you can come back from.

And that's very reassuring, you know, as we're all marching towards the grave. Yeah. I feel like there were two major creator passings that really, like, hit me. And one was Terry Pratchett, and the other has been Akira Toriyama. And, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to say, really. I mean, there's similarities there, Kevin, right? I mean, because Terry Pratchett wrote a lot about a version of death.

who was, you know, distinct. And he also wrote about some very universal topics as well. Not quite the same degree as Toriyama, but, yeah, just, it's very weird seeing the legends of your time passing and knowing that, I think that's that. Like, yeah, there's a lot of old materials of Toriyama's that they will inevitably trudge out. but I don't know. I don't think it'll have quite the same spark to it without him putting together these gags and these character designs and everything. Yeah, I mean, Square Inix has already announced Dragon Quest 12, so presumably they're

already deep involved in production, but we have no idea how much Toriyama finished or didn't finish for that game. As it's recording, does not even have a release date. So going forward, obviously, that series is going to keep going, but they're going to have to figure out how to make do. without him. The Dragon Ball Super Manga is ongoing. That's obviously going to have to make do it. I think there's some new Dragon Ball product I think it was just recently announced that I haven't even seen yet that I think is going to have to figure out, well, Toriyama was involved and he's

not here anymore. So it's like so much of what Toriyama created is going to keep going. Like that's sort of, you know, I would say the beauty of art. You know, when he create art, it goes on, it outlives you in a way like your children. But, you know, it is sort of odd to think about this guy who was such a huge presence and consistent sort of source of joy. Like, he's, he's not here anymore, and we can only, we can only hope that he's, he's correct and that we will meet him again. That's sort of, um, my Japanese opening was taken from the last episode of Dragon Ball GT, which is the title of the show, like where Goku, Goku leaves at the end of that series,

but it's always like, yeah, we'll, we'll see him again when we die and we go wherever he is. And I hope that's true. I hope I really do. I think what made it shocking is the fact that, you know, Japanese creators love privacy, and I don't blame them. And whenever you hear about a death of a Japanese creator, regardless of what field they're in, it is often days after it's happened, if they're a lesser known person, perhaps weeks or months. Like, oh, yeah, that person died six months ago.

I went to their funeral, and that's a big shock. Whereas in the West, I feel like you know months or years in advance. Like, this person has X condition. Here's what they're dealing with. They're going to write about it. They're going to talk about it. They're going to, you know, let people know what's going on and what time they have left. But with Toriyama, we didn't know what happened.

We know what the cause was. But it was like, oh, did he fall? Was there cancer? I was reading like, oh, there was a brain tumor that he was scheduled to have operated on before this. So just the privacy, which I understand, makes it, like, totally shocking when it just suddenly announced. By the way, this person doesn't exist anymore. Anyway, let's move on. Hey, the state of the union's on.

Yeah. I did see that, like, a couple of months ago, he said in an interview that the Dragon Ball Super manga was like in its last arc and was going to wrap up soon. And I kind of wonder if his health had been a factor in that or if he was just ready to do something else. Dragon Ball related. So, I don't know. I think he... I don't know what to say on that. I think he issued a statement to a anime festival.

I don't know if in Japan or somewhere in the world earlier this year, and people immediately grappled onto it because it was like the last public statement he made. And he sort of hinted at his health because he grew up in a time where, you know, let's be honest, especially in Japan. Smoking was everywhere. We know he smoked. I know one of the illustrations that got a lot of play in his passing was, you know, his little self-insert character with the gas mask and the robot hands.

Like, the character is sitting at like a katatsu, and there's a can of Coke on the, on the table, and some Nomi, like, some Nomi Kisembe crackers, and he's, a model kit is on the table. And the character's reading a dirty magazine and saying, yes, yes, I see, yes. And he's got a cigarette in his little claw there. And I feel so like, I think Toriyama probably, yeah, he probably, you know, he was 68. He probably had health issues. And maybe he knew, maybe he knew things were coming. And he just, he probably didn't know what's happening so soon.

But he also kept to himself. And that's just how things are. I mean, his kids, you know, if you look at the timeline, his kids are probably 40-ish, you know, probably close to Bob's age. They're born in the 80s. So he's got, he might, he might very well have grandkids at this point, but if so, I don't think he talked about him. And that's just, that's just his lifestyle. Good for them. Yeah.

I guess we'll wrap things up. I think we've talked enough about this person, and we're going to keep talking about his work in the years to come, because it's going to keep going. Nothing here is going to end. I've been your host this time, Diamond Fight. If you want to find me on the internet, you can look me up at my website, Fightclub.me.

It's my new website. I made it myself. Which, honestly, I learned HTML around about the time. I discovered Dragon Ball Z, so it's thematically appropriate. F-E-I-T, my last name, C-L-U-B-D-Me. It's my website. And, Kevin, do you want to share your credentials? Sure.

I like that. That's how I should start referring to everything. Yes, you can find me on mostly blue sky these days under Ubersaurus. I do still have a Twitter presence under that name. It's fairly minimal. I do run the Atari Archive video series slash book slash website. So that's looking at the chronological history of the Atari 2,600 library. There is no Dr. Slump to be had there, unfortunately, but maybe some homebrew author can

throw me a bone at some point. Bob. Hey, it's me, Bob Mackey. You probably know this, but I do other podcasts for the Talking Simpsons Network, including Talking Simpsons, a chronological exploration. of The Simpsons. And what a cartoon where we look at a different cartoon from a different series every month. And that's all happening wherever you find podcasts. But if you go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, you can find all of our bonus stuff. Nearly seven years worth of

bonus podcast. We've covered things like Futurama, King of the Hill, Batman the Animate series, The Critic in Mission Hill. And again, that's patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Thank you. Bob, I'm sure you've done Dragon Ball at some point. What error of Dragon Ball did you talk about on the show. We actually covered an episode, I believe, in 2020 or 2021, of the original Dragon Ball series. It's one of the fighting tournament episodes. Okay.

Definitely, I would recommend maybe bumping Dr. Slump up in your rotation at some point, because I think that should be probably covered soon. I'd like to finally watch the anime. I've read a lot of the manga, and the anime looks like very fun 80s, colorful, bubbly anime. Yeah.

And, of course, this has been Retronauts. Thank you for much for listening. I don't know if this is going to be a patron episode. or not, so I'll just mention the fact that we do produce two exclusive episodes for our patrons every month. That's patreon.com slash restauronauts. Patrons also have access to our Discord

and a weekly column for me which I very much enjoy writing and reading to you. We're recording this in March of 2024 and this entire month has just been just stacked with legendary video games. I've already done Ninja Guide in 2004

and Metal Gear the Twin Snakes. And by the time this comes out, I've talked about bloodlines and Super Metroid all in March of 2024, and that's a fun thing I do, so please tune in for that if you haven't. And I guess we'll just go out today by raising our hands and sending our energy up to a Kirchayama wherever he is. And we hope you hear us, Sensei, we miss you. Good night. you

need to you call I'm never I'm all right

in any kind of any feel like I'm just I'm on the

sea to take out of my heart Thank you.