Opinion and discussion thread on Akira Toriyama.

[Weejus]

About a year ago, I started to feel that Toriyama was lazy, ok at best, and vastly overrated (perhaps a side product of my desperate denial that I am, in fact, a weeb), but now I've realised that there are flashes of genius in his work. There's definitely high points and low points. My personal favourite point in his artistic career is somewhere in the mid-90s (see GT concept art, Chrono Trigger, and Tobal No. 1) up to around the kanzenban covers (early 00s).

One thing people overlook about him is his adeptness at mechanical design. He clearly gets a kick out of drawing funny looking cars or motorbikes and such. Still, the fact that at his age, he's still cranking out high quality illustrations is a point of inspiration. Still wish the old bastard would stop smoking, though!

In any case, I can't be too hard on him considering Dragon Ball was part of what got me drawing in the first place.

[Faustus]

I'm one who doesn't like Toriyama's newer work, I don't necessarily think that it's because he's necessarily less talented, but rather, he's a long time removed from the original story and/or he isn't putting much effort in (I personally think it's both). They lack the creative juice that old DB had.

My own two -- or three -- cents: Battle of Gods was great, Resurrection 'F' was a fun enough film with spot-on character-writing that's too often overlooked and whose few true foibles (nothing related to power levels) may perhaps be excused on the basis that it was Toriyama's first screenwriting venture. I've also seen enough flashes of his old brilliance peek through in Super despite the myriad production and script issues bogging down his vision and find myself enjoying Toyotaro's version consistently enough despite its merely accessory status as a promotional manga to convince me that Toriyama really hasn't lost his creative touch one bit in spite of appearances and the hasty and oversimple verdicts of certain parts of the fandom. Adapting BoG and 'F' to serialized format was a bad idea because of course the stories weren't written for it, but I have few doubts the stories after that could have been executed perfectly well in long form under a competent direction.

As far as I am concerned just about all of the blame for Super's substandard quality falls firmly with haphazard production and lackluster execution. I'm convinced that there's nothing too wrong with any of the man's core modern plots, at least in general outline, relative to those found in the original manga (besides, admittedly, the odd decision on a still more general level to confine the stories to the ten-year gap), and that if he were himself to take up plotting and illustrating serial manga afresh it'd be just or nearly as good as anything Toriyama. Though true, too, that many of the little swerves and flourishes we've come to cherish about the original manga owe themselves to Toriyama flying by the seat of his pants beneath an often stern editorial whip and naturally writing himself into then out of corners, it's a mistake to think he can't still produce inspired and stellar work now that he's beyond those conditions; look no further than Jaco for just the latest notable instance of it. Not that you yourself are necessarily making that mistake; I just wanted to put that out there.

Now obviously he's not putting as much effort in this series as when he was responsible for executing a weekly manga largely by himself (he's either unwilling, understandably, or no longer able), but it's also clear to me he does care about what's done with his stories and his characters, as his decision to return to the series after Dragon Ball Evolution, his insistence to re-write Battle of Gods and the shade he threw in Super's direction a while back all well attest, I think.

[Jinzoningen MULE]

As far as I am concerned just about all of the blame for Super's substandard quality falls firmly with haphazard production and lackluster execution. I'm convinced that there's nothing too wrong with any of the man's core modern plots, at least in general outline.

You shouldn't be so quick to shift blame away from Toriyama. Toei is certainly part of the problem, but if they were solely responsible, Toyotaro's manga wouldn't share many of the exact same problems. Not to mention that even the premise for RoF and the first tournament was flat.

[Faustus]

Resurrection 'F' was a quick little side-adventure film never meant to carry all that much import that had no business being adapted for television and was, again, fun enough for what it was.

I'm with you that U6's nothing utterly spectacular, but we've gotten short self-contained tournament plots before and this one does its work, on a thematic level, to further revivify Goku's most dangerous and most admirable traits and to put out the idea for later play and subversion that Goku and co. are little more than pawns in the game of impossibly powerful and temperamental gods.

I'd say it's tricky work, too, to gauge with any success the intrinsic "flatness" of a premise in concept, especially in a whimsical world like Toriyama's of which so much of the winning charm depends upon his natural storytelling ability and the force of personality exuded in the stories' execution on the page. Many of the same problems glare out at you from both Toei's and Toyotaro's versions because Toriyama's not there to win you over in spite of them, per his usual style. If scripts were consistent, replete with Toriyama's idiosyncratic brand of humor, if characters behaved as they should, and consistently so, if the action were more interesting -- all of which I imagine certainly would be the case were the author to have assumed a committedly hands-on approach -- and if production had been sufficiently stable as not to distract from any of it, I have little reason to doubt (and especially not in the light of his recent-enough Jaco performance) that far and away most of the perceived problems that plague this arc particularly and Super generally, which I've more often seen tied to poor scripts or production elements than otherwise, would instantly be alleviated if not entirely evaporated.

[Cipher]

I second Faustus. If there's a misgiving I have with Super on a conceptual level, which is about as much as we can pin on Toriyama, it's the stagnant characterization it's been forced into due to its midquel status. A bit of the old verve is gone with that move. The most recent arc finally seems to be pulling through on something character-based with Goku, but the execution is as iffy as ever with Super's schedule and scripts.

But I've enjoyed more or less all of his recent writing, from Jaco, which is fantastic, to the scripts for both recent movies, which are full of great character beats. If anything, I find myself envisioning how well any of the new material could work under Toriyama's pen, despite its limp execution under both Toei (due to schedule for presentation and ... god only knows what with its writing) and Toyotaro (due unavoidably to the scope and schedule of a promotional manga).

This stuff could be working, if we had to have more Dragon Ball at all. Break the Trunks arc into bullet points and I enjoy it quite a bit. I enjoy where the series is going now too. Tell me I have to sit through Toei's execution though, and my excitement wavers. Most of my misgivings with Super's execution are actually informed by the gulfs between Toei's writing and Toriyama's, rather than anything I'd pin on his concepts, or wouldn't trust his writing and art to pull off.

The movie adaptation arcs are an unfair representation of everyone's talents, as those plots have no business being adapted into ten-plus episodes. But again, we have Toriyama's version of them, and they're ... pretty good. Excellent, in Battle of God's case.

[Jinzoningen MULE]

Many of the same problems glare out at you from both Toei's and Toyotaro's versions because Toriyama's not there to win you over in spite of them, per his usual style. If scripts were consistent, replete with Toriyama's idiosyncratic brand of humor, if characters behaved as they should, and consistently so, if the action were more interesting -- all of which I imagine certainly would be the case were the author to have assumed a committedly hands-on approach -- and if production had been sufficiently stable as not to distract from any of it, I have little reason to doubt (and especially not in the light of his recent-enough Jaco performance) that far and away most of the perceived problems that plague this arc particularly and Super generally, which I've more often seen tied to poor scripts or production elements than otherwise, would instantly be alleviated if not entirely evaporated.

I wouldn't count on that being the case, but it's certainly possible. It's yet another reason that Dragon Ball should have continued in the form of movies, since Toriyama was working so well in that format.

[Cipher]

I wouldn't count on that being the case, but it's certainly possible. It's yet another reason that Dragon Ball should have continued in the form of movies, since Toriyama was working so well in that format.

My takeaway from comparing the movies to Super is that Toriyama should be writing, period. He hasn't lost his knack for handling characters, plotting a serialized narrative, or drawing action.

But I don't think handing off the kind of idiosyncratic material he favors to a team of writers, or even another mangaka with Toyotaro's scheduling limitations (or, to take nothing away from him, simply without Toriyama's talent to spin even the most inane material into something exciting and sincere), is a good workflow for representing the best of anyone's abilities. And that's when things are going well, which with Super is definitely not the case.

I suppose I could take the argument that the way things work with modern Dragon Ball is a bit backward. Toriyama is such an execution-based creator -- who seems to be able to spin something compelling and heartfelt out of any absurd premise, and who writes largely by discovery -- that maybe he should be the one receiving outside input and then crafting the final delivered story, rather than providing the types of premises designed for his style to other talent to flesh out. That might be fair. But I don't think his contributions to the new material are any kind of mark against him, even with the unideal workflow we have.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Super should be forgiven or even needs to exist. I increasingly think it shouldn't. I'm simply arguing for it not providing an example of any kind of diminished creative intuition on the part of Toriyama.

[Israelite Wolfman]

Just lazy who got lucky. Not a genius. If it wasn't for his editors & Toei who supplied him ideas and tips for plots there was no more Dragon Ball after the battle with Frieza.

[Jinzoningen MULE]

Just lazy who got lucky. Not a genius. If it wasn't for his editors & Toei who supplied him ideas and tips for plots there was no more Dragon Ball after the battle with Frieza.

You do realize that pre-Freeza was most of Dragon Ball? Also, much better than post-Freeza by most (critical) peoples' measurements.

[ABED]

I'd say it's tricky work, too, to gauge with any success the intrinsic "flatness" of a premise in concept,

I don't think the ideas actually matter to any large degree. Everyone can come up with a good idea, but mess up the execution.

[Israelite Wolfman]

Just lazy who got lucky. Not a genius. If it wasn't for his editors & Toei who supplied him ideas and tips for plots there was no more Dragon Ball after the battle with Frieza.

You do realize that pre-Freeza was most of Dragon Ball? Also, much better than post-Freeza by most (critical) peoples' measurements.

Dragon Ball is 16 volumes long, then 12 of Frieza and another 14 volumes from Androids to End of Z before the beginning of DBS. I'm no mathematician but DB's 16 pre-Frieza volumes are less than DBZ's 26 which is Frieza (since Raditz was his minion) from the start to the post-Frieza stories.
The author is judged by his entire work, not just by his better parts of it. Once Super Saiyan was introduced Toriyama lost all interest in non-Saiyans, Piccolo was an exception as he was creator's favorite, now that he's not that anymore you can see how his character narrowed. ROF was a perfect example how Toriyama's stories aren't that great as expected by fans (Human Z-Fighters being neglected, REHASHING Frieza for the 8th time, ridiculous power scalings and shortening the H-U-G-E gap between Goku & Vegeta who with God Ki surpassed Majin Buu's power to the point he's almost a fodder to just 4 months of beating up a Zarbon-tier lackey "training", Gohan is weakened drastically - WHY?).

[ABED]

The Freeza arc and the Saiyan arc are two separate arcs.

[ekrolo2]

I suppose I could take the argument that the way things work with modern Dragon Ball is a bit backward. Toriyama is such an execution-based creator -- who seems to be able to spin something compelling and heartfelt out of any absurd premise, and who writes largely by discovery -- that maybe he should be the one receiving outside input and then crafting the final delivered story, rather than providing the types of premises designed for his style to other talent to flesh out. That might be fair.

Battle of Gods is definitely a good example of how Toriyama coming in and twisting around already existing ideas & concepts into a finished story can work to great effect. Maybe that's the secret ingredient for why that was really good and everything after it is average or an enjoyable but broken mess at best.

When you break BoG the movie down to bullet points, its really, really similar to a lot of the older Z movies what with a random, super powerful opponent attacking everyone in peace time during a party or something then Goku needing to use everyone's strength to beat them and save the world and being the only hope....

[Israelite Wolfman]

The Freeza arc and the Saiyan arc are two separate arcs.

The two are two parts of the same story: Frieza's Galactic Empire.

Battle of Gods is definitely a good example of how Toriyama coming in and twisting around already existing ideas & concepts into a finished story can work to great effect.

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, BUDDY! Toriyama didn't came up with the God of Destruction concept, it was some UNNAMED Toei Animation WRITER, Toriyama himself stated that in an interview before Resurrection 'F', he admitted they had a discussion at Toei after he asked to revive the franchise to pay up for DB: Evolution's BIG Fail and that some writer said something like: "We have the Kaioshins who protects life, how about an opposite form of gods who destroys it?", the rest is history.

[Jinzoningen MULE]

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, BUDDY! Toriyama didn't came up with the God of Destruction concept, it was some UNNAMED Toei Animation WRITER.

Yeah, but the original God of Destruction was a viral lizard person who was basically Baby from GT, only eviler and "scarier". Toriyama re-wrote it to such an extent that the original would be unrecognizable. He did invent Gods of Destruction as they exist now.

[ekrolo2]

The Freeza arc and the Saiyan arc are two separate arcs.

The two are two parts of the same story: Frieza's Galactic Empire.

Battle of Gods is definitely a good example of how Toriyama coming in and twisting around already existing ideas & concepts into a finished story can work to great effect.

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, BUDDY! Toriyama didn't came up with the God of Destruction concept, it was some UNNAMED Toei Animation WRITER, Toriyama himself stated that in an interview before Resurrection 'F', he admitted they had a discussion at Toei after he asked to revive the franchise to pay up for DB: Evolution's BIG Fail and that some writer said something like: "We have the Kaioshins who protects life, how about an opposite form of gods who destroys it?", the rest is history.

I never said anything about him coming up with most of BoGs concepts, he just took what another guy wrote and he twisted it around until we got the version of BoG that we did. Beerus already existed in original BoG movie script, hell, his remaining name is a pun on the original version being someone who infects people with evil making
him a sort of virus. That's what I meant when I said someone else should maybe come up with a plot then have Toriyama be the one to make a final version of it instead of Supers provably shitty approach which is simply not working. Giving Toriyama full free reign is also bad because then you get undercooked shit like Resurrection F.

[OhHiRenan]

I think Toriyama is a far better writer than people give him credit for. Maybe he is lazy, but his improv style of writing is exactly what made Dragon Ball so good. I genuinely believe that the original run's story is great. Does it have low points? Sure, but for the most part it's a very thematically consistent narrative that has a ton of great development and story beats.

Also, that art. Hot damn, the man's choreography is genius.

[Jinzoningen MULE]

I think Toriyama is a far better writer than people give him credit for. Maybe he is lazy, but his improv style of writing is exactly what made Dragon Ball so good. I genuinely believe that the original run's story is great. Does it have low points? Sure, but for the most part it's a very thematically consistent narrative that has a ton of great development and story beats.

Also, that art. Hot damn, the man's choreography is genius.

Agreed. Though the choreography actually gets a bit repetitive, if you ask me.

[ABED]

The two are two parts of the same story: Frieza's Galactic Empire.

They aren't the same story. They involve a few of the same players but the very second that Vegeta learns of the Dragon Balls, he's committing treason. He's his own person at that point. It fits the definition of an arc. It has a beginning, middle, climax, and end. If Vegeta had been victorious and gotten the DB's on Earth, he wouldn't have done it for Freeza.

[sintzu]

Battle of Gods is definitely a good example of how Toriyama coming in and twisting around already existing ideas & concepts into a finished story can work to great effect. Maybe that's the secret ingredient for why that was really good and everything after it is average or an enjoyable but broken mess at best.

Another thing he had in BOG was a script writer to take and give ideas to which was probably similar to working with an editor like he did on the manga.