In the ongoing battle to have comics and cartoons taken seriously by general society, few creators stand taller than Yoshihiro Akira Toriyama. He is best known as the creator of Dragon Ball, an adventure-based series of manga and anime projects. While the stories are exciting, Toriyama has filled the characters and plots with surprising emotional resonance and depth previously unseen. For raising the bar of what Japanese cartoons could be, Yoshihiro Akira Toriyama gets the honor of being inducted into the Pop Culture Hall of Fame as an Artist for 2025.
To call him an “artist” might sell his talents a bit short, as the stories are what really set his work apart. It didn’t take long to transform from an exciting light-hearted adventure series to a decades-long saga of personal growth, sacrifice, and adversity. Dragon Ball also includes a tremendous amount of humor in the writing and dialogue. Despite not aging on screen, the characters do actually grow and change.
Then again, despite drawing within a familiar genre, he lends a unique charm to his character designs and tension and excitement to his action sequences. As such, Toriyama has been influential in designing similar elements for other video game properties.
Dragon Ball was probably the first Japanese cartoon with accurate translations to resonate with a wide Western audience. (Sure, Speed Racer was popular before it, but the translated dialogue was comically inaccurate.) Great care has been taken to populate the characters with some seriously talented voice actors in the English dubs, resulting in a lively, entertaining show. As a result, English-speaking fans are getting a pretty close representation of the original series.
Toriyama’s storytelling pioneered “shonen anime,” a genre of cartoon based not on style but on intended target. The plots and storylines aim for a young teen and up demographic. That may rule them not suitable for younger audiences, not so much because of objectionable content, but rather because of more sophisticated storytelling.
For expanding what anime and manga could be, Yoshihiro Akira Toriyama has earned his spot in the Pop Culture Hall of Fame for 2025.
