Dragon Ball
The ‘hidden profession’ of Akira Toriyama, which very few know, and which was born out of his greatest hobby
The creator of ‘Dragon Ball’ was a big fan of model cars, which was also part of his professional career.
Akira Toriyama, the famous mangaka who died suddenly almost a year ago, is known around the world as the creator of such influential works as ‘Dragon Ball’ or ‘Dr. Slump,' in addition to his collaborations on video games such as Dragon Quest or Chrono Trigger. However, Toriyama continued to pursue other creative activities that were largely unknown to the general public, and one of them was born out of his main hobby: model cars. In fact, Toriyama even created several designs for a Japanese brand in the 80s and 90s.
Akira Toriyama and his work in the hobby industry
In 1984, Akira Toriyama met Kunihiro Suzuki, a scale model maker, through his assistant Takashi Matsuyama. It wasn’t until 1986 that Suzuki asked Toriyama to help him create a soldier named LISA. Toriyama got to work and created both the box design and assembly instructions, making it the first model on the market designed by an amateur artist in the hobby industry.
LISA was a sales success, so the following year they collaborated again to create a futuristic hovercraft called the Scout Mobile Tongpoo, which was also a great success. Thanks to these collaborations, in 1991 Suzuki started his own assembly kit company called Fine Molds, based in Nagoya, near Toriyama’s Bird Studio, with the mangaka creating the company’s logo; in 1999 he would make a redesign with the company’s dog as the main graphic attraction.
In 1992, both parties collaborated again to release a new collection called World Fighter Collection, consisting of up to seven models of soldiers - curiously, the number of Dragon Balls - with Toriyama doing both the packaging and the assembly instructions, a collection that appeared until 1994. It was not until 2008 that Toriyama collaborated with the company again for a contest, this time creating two covers for a collaborative media as well as the design of the main armored battle tank.
Let’s not forget that Toriyama, being a big fan of scale models and all kinds of vehicles, worked in his studio surrounded by scale models and even several real motorcycles.
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