Akira Toriyama was born in Aichi (about 200 km southwest of Tokyo) in April 5, 1955 and, when he was 21, after he obtained his high school degree from the design department of the Prefectural Industrial High School, he becomes mechanical designer for a company of industrial field. But soon, after just two years he was working, it also arrives for him what we can call "the great opportunity"; he wins, in fact, the Monthly Young Jump award, a contest hold by Shueisha publisher, and begins to draw comic-strips for the weekly magazine "Weekly Shonen Jump". After a year of short stories, he starts to draw the serial of his first famous adventure, the saga of the most queer and incredible cyborg girl in history, Arale. The success of "Dr. Slump and Arale-chan" is enormous and, in April 1981, "Dr. Slump" TV series begins airing on the Fuji TV Network. Just after three years of the serial and 16 deluxe volumes, it arrives for Akira Toriyama the moment to decide if throwing himself into a great project that he had in his mind for more than a year: the modern remake of the famous legend of the stone little monkey written by Sanzo Hoshi. Dragon Ball was born, from the fool mind of Akira Toriyama, as a comic serial in the far-off year of 1984 (November) in Weekly Shonen Jump #51and Dragon Ball manga volume 1 was published in September 1985. Dragon Ball is an action manga that the video-games fans would describe as "beat'em up" style, a fighting game like Street Fighter II; a manga where together with a cool and "marvelously told" story, there are characters who do nothing but fight... a fighting-game, besides, of big numbers: in the 42 volumes of which the saga is composed there are 148 fights, more than 8000 drawn plates, more than 150 main and second lead characters and the most involving comicality that the world of manga ever gave us. In February 1986 "Dr. Slump" TV series ends its run and " Dragon Ball TV series begins airing on Fuji TV Network. In April 1989 Dragon Ball TV series ends its run and Dragon Ball Z TV series starts. Dragon Ball comic-strip ends its serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump #25 in May 1995 and Dragon Ball Z TV series starts ends in January 1996. Dragon Ball GT TV series (Akira Toriyama is the designer of some image-boards while the others are made by Toei's designers) soon starts in February 1996 and ends, with last Goku's adventures, in November 1997. In the meanwhile, a TV special named Goku's Supplement! Proof of Courage is the Four-Star Dragon Ball (Gokuu Gaiden) is on air in March 1997.
And now? Now Akira Toriyama is one of the most famous mangakas (or manga artist) in Japan and many parts of the world. Along the way, he has also been hired to be the character designer of several home video games, including the Dragon Warrior series, Chrono Trigger (released in March 1995) and Tobal No.1, a 3D fighting game for the Sony PlayStation.