The recent death of legendary manga artist Akira Toriyama has come as a major shock to the anime industry. The creator had a huge impact on the anime world’s global recognition because of his work- Dragon Ball. His anime and manga series were one of the first works to change the scenario of Japanese animation.
However, his work is not only limited to the anime and manga development of Dragon Ball. The creator has proven himself with many other mangas like Dr. Slump and he also wrote many one-shot mangas. Additionally, he had also worked on the art designs of many characters in the popular RPG gaming Dragon Quest.
Dragon Quest is one of the best games in the video gaming world. Numerous elements were brought to the genre by the series, and it greatly influenced the creation of subsequent role-playing games. So much so, that another big franchise, Pokémon, is accused of heavily copying characters and creatures from the game.
Akira Toriyama Helped Design Dragon Quest
Apart from creating vast fictitious worlds for the renowned Dragon Ball anime series, such as Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super, Toriyama excelled in character design, having designed numerous characters for the video game Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest is a series of role-playing video games.
A plethora of manga, anime, and books have also been released under the franchise, and there is a corresponding adaptation for almost every game in the main series. The original Dragon Quest video game needed artwork to set itself apart from other role-playing games of the era, so Toriyama was hired to depict the monsters and characters.
He worked on every installment of the series before his death. Because of Toriyama’s contributions to the art and character designs, Dragon Quest is now regarded as an influential title in the console role-playing game genre. The game heavily influenced other games, one of which is Pokémon that in itself is a giant.
Pokémon Was Accused of Heavily Copying From Dragon Quest
Recently, a video game called Palworld was accused of copying the Pokémon game, which became a piece of huge news. However, in the midst of all this, Pokémon itself was accused by many fans of copying its characters from the role-playing game Dragon Quest. It was stated that Pokémon was not the original creator of the style.
Pokémon is one of the most successful media properties ever, with anime series, films, and products all selling well. Its spin-off game, Pokémon GO, has been downloaded on mobile devices more than one billion times globally. According to Video Games Sales Wiki, as of March 2023, the Pokémon video game series had sold over 480 million copies worldwide.
Although the storylines of both Dragon Quest and Pokémon are entirely different, the creatures shown in both gaming series are unquestionably similar, which led many fans to believe that the Pokémon gaming franchise copied the character designs from Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Quest and used them in their own gaming world.
