Summary SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT It is a truth universally acknowledged that the art of Dragon Ball, if not Akira Toriyama's collective style, is some of the best in the medium. However, pinpointing what exactly makes Toriyama's art so appealing or separates his works from those of his contemporaries helps solidify the legacy of the artist as one of the most influential in the history of the medium.
Close This realism stuck around until even the late 80s, as even series like Hajime no Ippo and Jojo's Bizzare Adventure which took some liberties with style and facial proportions maintained some semblance of realism. The only other exception to this rule was maybe Kinnikuman which experimented with an unconventional design but was still incomparable to the sheer creativity of Toriyama's works. As seen in this post on X by @sandman_AP, Dr.
Toriyama certainly had the talent to draw anatomically accurate characters, as seen from his other one-shot Escape , meaning that Dr. Slump 's design was entirely an artistic choice. At the time, I loved Jackie Chan, and I’d watch videos of kung-fu movies while I did my inking and such. Then Torishima- san came and said, “In that case, draw a kung-fu thing next,” and I refused, “the things I like and the things I want to draw are different, so I don’t want to,” but in the end, got his way. So to test things out, I drew a kung-fu one-shot called Dragon Boy , and it was relatively popular, so , well, it looks like I’ve just got to do it.
Journey to the West is a 16th-century Chinese novel that tells the tale of a Buddhist monk named Xuanzang who travels west looking for Buddhist sacred scriptures along with four of his disciples, one of them being a monkey named Sun Wukong who served as the inspiration for Son Goku . More importantly, while Dragon Ball initially retained some of the roundness from Dr. Slump, as the story progressed, Toriyama gradually moved away from Slump's comical style and his designs started to get sharper and blockier. This was to accommodate Dragon Ball's action sequences as well as the tonal shift in the story as it progressed from a lighthearted adventure to a serious story with a heavy focus on fighting in the second half.
That’s when it started to change from what it had been before. When it started serialization, the story was comical, so the lines were round. Then, with the Tenka’ichi Budōkai, it switched to a fighting theme, so after that the fighting had to escalate. But when it comes to that, round lines don’t convey a sense of speed or intensity. So once he realized this, midway through the manga the round lines started to become square and sharp.
This clarity ties in with Toriyama's superior use of composition, which discreetly yet smoothly guides a reader's eye from one panel to the next. Although early chapters of Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball did include arrows indicating the reading direction, Toriyama's works are incredibly easy to follow, which likely stems from his previous experience working in advertising. Toriyama himself mentions in the interview with Wired how this experience may have come in handy.