The late Dragon Ball creator, Akira Toriyama, was one of Japan’s most revered and famous mangakas on the planet. Most creators in the new generation either looked up to him or straight-up got inspired to draw manga themselves.
Some fans might think Toriyama smoothly sailed through his career, but he had a lot of hurdles along the way and one of them is his editor, Kazuhiko Torishima.
Toriyama’s editor made him do a task that sent shivers through Oda’s spine
During an interview between Toriyama and Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, Oda was asked to choose what he thinks to be Toriyama’s best illustration ever. And he pulled up the cover of Dragon Ball Volume 2. Oda described the art’s color palette as pretty cool with a nice “Earthly” feeling.
Funnily enough, volume 2’s cover is one of Toriyama’s rare cases where he’d draw animals, while most of his covers had Goku sitting on some vehicle, making it “less earthly.” But what shocked Oda and fans alike is the fact that this cover is merely 1 amongst 5 colored art pieces Toriyama had to do for 5 consecutive weeks!
5 back-to-back colored illustrations! Even Oda cannot do more than 2 at a time! And it’s all thanks to Torishima-san peeking behind Toriyama’s back and constantly monitoring him, which Toriyama later admitted brought the best out of him.
I was forced to do it! By Torishima san. He makes you do completely unbelievable things!!
Kazuhiko Torishima was Toriyama’s first editor at Shueisha. In one interview in 2016, he basically claimed that he was the one who discovered Toriyama, while the lad was struggling to get his one-shots published.
Toriyama had a healthy but toxic relationship with his editor Torishima
Despite getting rejected constantly, Torishima told him to send more manga and not lose hope. His biggest break came in 1979 when Torishima told him to draw a female main character for his next story, and that turned out to be “Tomato, Girl Detective.”
This gave Toriyama the confidence to draw more manga with female leads, which ultimately led to the first of his 2 biggest breaks—Dr. Slump. Toriyama had a pretty tight schedule during its serialization, courtesy of Torishima, and he began to despise him quite a bit. This led to Toriyama turning into a villain in Dr. Slump called Dr. Mashirito, which is just Torishima’s name in reverse.
When the chapter that introduced Mashirito was being written, Torishima was too busy to check the drafts. So, Toriyama used the opportunity to send directly to his other editor, who would basically accept whatever Toriyama sent. By the time Torishima realized what was happening, it was too late.
He merely hoped that if the character was unpopular, it would be a one-off, but unfortunately, everyone loved it. Torishima was always hard on Toriyama. But just like a father being tough on his son, Toriyama realized that it was for his own good and he later admitted that he wouldn’t be where he was if it wasn’t for Torishima.
Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball Super are available to watch on Crunchyroll.
