Manga
Never-before-seen sketches and manuscripts by 'Dragon Ball' creator Akira Toriyama unearthed
A friend of the late mangaka has shared photos of his special treasure: a series of sketches by the author of ‘Dragon Ball’ and ‘Dr. Slump’.
Akira Toriyama, the famous Mangaka creator of such influential works as ‘Dragon Ball’ or ‘Dr. Slump’, died unexpectedly at the beginning of this year 2024, leaving behind a huge legacy and becoming part of popular culture as few authors have achieved, with tons of illustrations, manga, stories, character designs, and much more. However, some of his art has remained hidden from the general public, with a few exceptions that have come to light after his disappearance. This is the case with new sketches and manuscripts that have appeared on the Internet.
This is what Akira Toriyama’s unpublished manuscripts look like
Toriyama not only worked on ‘Dragon Ball’ or ‘Dr. Slump,’ his best-known and most popular works, but also left his mark in other manga like ‘Sand Land’ or in video game sagas like ‘Dragon Quest’, for which he designed a huge number of characters. In his early years, he also suffered from rejection by various publishers to whom he submitted sketches or comics in his own handwriting. This is the case of new manuscripts never seen before by Toriyama, which a good friend of his wanted to share through the social network X.
Haruka Takachiho, a good friend of the mangaka, has published some photos of sketches and manuscripts that Akira Toriyama himself made and kept for decades: “He had them in his house, stacked up to about his height, and told me, ‘You can take as many as you want,’ but I hesitated to take just a few, and this is one of them,” explains the friend of Master Tori, unaware at the time that he was holding a true treasure.
Takachiho himself admits that he does not know why these sketches and manuscripts by Toriyama were rejected at the time, as they show a high level of drawing with a multitude of details, with the fantastic reproduction of a motorcycle - Toriyama’s trademark - and adds in a joking tone that perhaps it was because of the “demonic side of Torishima,” his editor.
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