Today's Most Popular People
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Akitoshi Kawazu
Akitoshi Kawazu is a longtime employee and game designer at Square Enix. He originally joined Squaresoft in 1985, serving as a game designer on Final Fantasy and as the lead designer of Final Fantasy II. However, he is most well known as the creator of the SaGa series; games that are known for their non-linear game design. He has also served as a producer on more recent entries in the Final Fantasy series, including Final Fantasy XII, as well as the Crystal Chronicles franchise. -
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Akira Toriyama
Early WorkToriyama's first manga was 'Wonder Island' published in the Shonen Jump weekly magazine. Following, he published several other one-shot manga stories for Shonen including 'Today's Highlight Island', 'Tomato' and 'Hetappi'. He soon gained popularity due to a weekly manga and accompanying anime, Dr. Slump which ran for 4 years. In 1982, 2 years into Dr. Slump Toriyama won the Shogakukan Manga Award for best manga. Whilst Dr. Slump was running Toriyama wrote a number of single issue manga's on the side including 'Escape', 'Pola and Roid', 'Pink', 'Mad Matic' and 'Chobit'.Dragon BallThe same year that Dr. Slump ended, Toriyama started a new series entitled 'Dragon Ball'. It was initially meant to be a parody of a Chinese folk tale 'A Journey to the West' in which a monkey-boy travels the world to find the Dragon pearls so that the eternal dragon will grant his wish. After the first story ark, or saga, this theme was dropped from the manga, instead moving towards a more martial arts focus. The series them continued on for 11 years, from 1984-1995, garnering Toriyama much fame, selling over 35 million copies in Japan and 120 million worldwide. It was also turned into a sucessful anime titled 'Dragon Ball' and later 'Dragon Ball Z' along with numerous movies and a spin off series 'Dragon Ball GT' in which Toriyama had little involvement.Other MangaAkira Toriyama has continued making many short one-issue manga's published in Shonen Jump incluing his self parody 'Neko Majin'. A full list of his manga following Dragon Ball is:Mr HoLady RedKennosuke-SamaSonchohMamejiroAkira Toriyama's Manga Theater Vol.1Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater Vol.2KaramaruWolfCashman Saving SoldierDub & Peter 1Go! Go! AckmanChotto Kaettekita Dr. SlumpTokimechaAlien X-PekeBubulAkira Toriyama's Manga Theater Vol.3Cowa!Cashman Saving Soldier/New Cashman Saving SoldierTahi MahiKajkijaSand LandBitch's LifeKochikameCross EpochUntitled Masakazu Katsura CollaborationGamesDue to his success as a manga artist, Toriyama has been able to work as character designer on many high profile Japanese RPGs. His first and most well-known video game work was the contribution of his character and monster designs for the Dragon Quest series, which sell incredibly high numbers in Japan with each new release. He also provided the character designs for the classic SNES RPG Chrono Trigger, as well as lesser known titles such as Tobal No. 1 and Tobal 2. His most recent video game work outside of his continued commitment to the Dragon Quest series was for the Xbox 360 RPG Blue Dragon and its sequel Blue Dragon Plus.
