Even after more than 30 years in the industry, and after creating the #1 selling shonen manga series of all time (at 300 million copies), there was until now no book about Akira Toriyama, one of the most influential manga authors in the world.

Written in French by author Olivier Richard, it’s clear that Richard gives respect to Toriyama and other shonen works, and that he understands the genre.

From the foreword, “In fact, as a best seller of the highest caliber, Dragon Ball falls into the same category as Star Wars, the cultural phenomenon. Like George Lucas’ space opera, Akira Toriyama’s manga has captivated millions of children, adolescents, and young adults who followed with almost religious fervor the adventures of Son Goku, the fascinating and charismatic hero of a true modern myth.”

[Note that the preceding quote and all others in this review were translated by Derek Padula.]

The books inside jacket says, “Olivier Richard has been interested in manga and Japanese animation for over twenty five years. He has written on the BD [comics in French], the cinema, animation and music in Rock & Folk magazine, Player One, The Show and Manga Player.”

Richard also worked in European television as a program director at MCM and helped distribute the Dragon Ball trilogy, One Piece, Full Metal Alchemist, and Bleach in Western Europe.

Akira Toriyama – The Master of Manga is 144 pages in total, divided into 13 chapters, plus the appendices and post content.

The book primarily talks about Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball, but also mentions many of Toriyama’s lesser known comics published in Japan, such as Wolf, Pola & Roid, and Kajika.

Unfortunately there is no table of contents or chapter titles, so you don’t know what you’re getting into before you invest the time to read it, and you’ll have to memorize the location of content if you want to reference it again later. There’s also no index, which is a shame since it’s non-fiction.

The book is very historical and follows a timeline of events, but it doesn’t tell much of a story. It’s a biography without really being a biography. Filled with What, When and Where, but not much of How, Who or Why. Some people might prefer that, but be aware that there are few quotes or original thoughts.

That said, there are occasional insights into Toriyama’s life that paint a nice picture of what his perspective might have been like during his rise as a manga author. For example, in Toriyama’s early years when his submissions were repeatedly rejected by Weekly Shonen Jump, and then finally accepted. And the powerful influence his editor, Torishima-san, had on his work.

In Chapter 7, Richard writes, “The editor feels that the character [of Goku] is not sufficiently developed, his potential is not operating at maximum, and is boring. He thinks Toriyama is too far from the original idea and that at present there is not enough fighting in Dragon Ball. …  As always, Toriyama listened carefully to his mentor.”

At the end of the book is an appendix, which contains 13 interviews with notable industry figures talking about Toriyama and his work.

Interviewees include editors in chief’s of many manga magazines, the head producer at Namco Bandai (Daisuke Uchiyama) who made the video game Dragon Ball: Ultimate Tenkaichi, a Bandai Toy developer, a professor of manga, journalists, manga authors, a children’s television director, and others.

The interviews are perhaps my favorite part of the book because they provide original content, even if they are mainly opinions and anecdotal experiences.

After the appendices there is a chronology of Toriyama’s life and career, followed by a timeline bibliography of Toriyama’s work referenced in this book. These can be useful as reference material.

The book is thoroughly researched and up to date, with a short section for the series’ latest incarnations, including the Dragon Ball SD manga, Bardock Super Saiyan Special manga, Dragon Ball Heroes carddass game, and Dragon Ball Online.

The book design is simple, clean, and easy to read, with detailed, full color pictures of Toriyama’s work and related merchandise. This adds greatly to the books value.

Should this book be purchased if you don’t speak French? Being unable to read the content will obviously have an effect on your enjoyment of the book, but if you’re familiar with any of the Romance languages, then you may be able to understand a bit. If you don’t speak French or don’t want to type the content into an online translator, then wait until your preferred translation is available.

It’s hard to find fault with Akira Toriyama – The Master of Manga. It is perhaps too simple, but less is more when you’re trying to achieve a specific goal, and this book achieves it.

Is Akira Toriyama – The Master of Manga worth buying?

If you’re a huge fan of Toriyama, then you probably already know about his life and career and won’t get much more out of this summary, as there’s sparse new content.

But for those who want a beautiful and concise reference manual on Toriyama, one of the most monumental figures in the manga industry, this book is it.

Dragon Ball Book Information

Author: Olivier Richard

Publisher: 12 bis

Price: EUR 19.00

Pages: 144

ISBN: 978-2-35648-332-4

Further Resources

Amazon France Book Page

Publisher Book Profile Page

Publisher Author Profile Page

The Dao of Dragon Ball Interview with Olivier Richard

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Dragon Ball Book Review – Akira Toriyama – The Master of Manga

The Dragon Ball Z Legend

The Dragon Ball Z Legend: The Quest Continues says right on the cover “An essential source for every anime fan”. To that, book cover, I say you are wrong. Entertaining perhaps, but certainly not essential, even for Dragonball nuts.

The books design is a series of Q & A. Fifty-Four (54) questions related to series’ trivia are posed and then answered in a couple of pages each. Unfortunately while the answers tend to be fairly on target, more hardcore fans will recognize numerous errors, and this gets frustrating after a while. Luckily the questions are varied and the answers are comical.

Every few pages there are advertisements for Dragonball paraphernalia, such as action figures, statues, and collectibles. They are kind of nice to see as they shine the spotlight on Dragonball’s incredible marketability and success, but it begins to feel more like a toy catalog than a book about Dragonball.

The books layout is quite nice. The arrangement of the pages, the silhouettes of the dbz characters and the page art combine to make it feel unique and easy to read. It should be noted here that aside from the action figures and toys there are no pictures from the series itself, only silhouettes of the characters. I presume this is for legal reasons, as the book is not authorized by the owners of the Dragonball license.

The Quest Continues is filled with trivia, but after completing the book it just doesn’t feel complete. It’s not an easy task to create something that contains the entirety of Dragonball Trivia (thousands upon thousands of facts), so it’s not as if I expected it to be a tome, but it kind of let me down. However if you go in knowing that the book is just the tip of the iceberg than I think you’ll be satisfied.

The Dragonball Z Legend is written for casual fans of the series. It is not an essential Dragonball guide, and it is written more for insiders who already know this stuff, so it’s somewhat fan service-esque. It’s got just enough to keep you interested and reading but is filled with inconsistencies and trivial errors that will annoy you as you do, creating a weird situation where I wonder just who this book was written for.

For the pickier types of fan I say stay away, and read about the trivia elsewhere, but for casual fans it will prove to be entertaining and thought provoking.

DBZ Book Information:

By Satoshi Ikeda & Martin Foster
Published by Cocoro Books and DH Publishing
Price: $11.95
Pages: 188
ISBN: 0-9723124-9-8
Amazon Link: The Dragon Ball Z Legend: The Quest Continues

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Dragonball Book Review – The Dragonball Z Legend: The Quest Continues

Dragonball Z An Unauthorized Guide

Fair warning… This review is scathing, and it makes me feel bad to have written it, but it’s also very true and needed to be said. With that mentioned…

To paraphrase a seminal comedy of our time, Billy Madison, “Nowhere in this book’s incessant rambling and incoherent nonsense does it even come close to forming an intelligent thought. I am now dumber for having read it.”

Truly, Dragonball Z: An Unauthorized Guide should never be read, by anybody, including DBZ fans. I don’t even know where to begin with this book other than to say that it consists of over 200 pages of random observations, incorrect assumptions, little to no facts… and insights from a 10 year old.

This book was written by a mother and son team. Unfortunately the 10 year old appears to be the more intelligent of the two, and his comments are few and far between. I would have preferred if the whole book were written by him. Seriously, I cannot believe that this book was ever published. It’s like a bad blog post gone wild with stream of consciousness and then multiplied exponentially.

At this point I should mention that I am a hardcore Dragonball fan. I’m writing my own book about DBZ, you know? So when I read a book like this it makes me want to cry, throw the book into the opposite corner of the room, and then cry some more. Yet fate of fates has assigned me with the task of reading the whole thing so I could write this review. Bear that perspective in mind.

What’s so bad about it? For starters, it’s completely random and chaotic. The so-called chapters diverge from their own subject material so many times that even the author questions why we should listen to her anymore?

“You can’t pay attention to me, by the way, when I’m sitting here, making fun of Yamcha’s fork cuts. After all, why listen to me? I’m a grown woman who eats pizza for dinner every night and who talks to stuffed pigs when I think nobody’s around.”

Indeed Lois, indeed. And nowhere in the rest of the book does she give us reason to think otherwise. Sadly, this isn’t coming from a comedically inclined prologue or introduction; this is in Chapter 4, the main focus of the book.

Sometimes when children say unintelligent things it comes off as ‘Honest’, and “Innocent’, and it makes you gaze inside at your adult perspective cruelly honed over years of real world life and cause you to shockingly look at things with fresh eyes, dropping your preconceived notions. Bill Cosby created an entire series of television shows built on this premise. Unfortunately this book does not fall into that category, because when Danny’s comments, such as “This may be better than Pokemon, there is more action.” are used it feels like they’re solely so that Lois can somehow apply it to a random aspect of her life, which is only tangentially related to Dragonball or the quote, if at all. And her musings, while definitely unintelligent, are bereft of the benefits of simplicity often applied to such a lacking.

What about the actual content of the book, is it DBZ related? Yes, sort of, I’ll give it that. It does discuss each of the main characters, the basic plots, and why the Dragon World is entertaining and captivating: All of these things are expressed. But if you’re not familiar with Dragonball on an ‘all too familiar basis’ to begin with, you’ll be completely lost by the end of the first chapter. The book doesn’t explain anything particularly well.

The character analyses are one dimensional, looking at them as either “Good Guys vs. Scum and Filth”, and the descriptions of each are shallow and not even worth the time it takes to read the words. You can type any DBZ characters name into a search engine, pick the first link, and find out more about the character in a few seconds then you’d find in this entire book. Honestly, I just did it, and it worked.

The one saving grace is that this book provides a unique perspective that you don’t find in most others. The ‘mother and son duo’ that are actively interested in Dragonball and were so enamored by it they took the time to write an entire book. That’s not something easy to do, and not something you hear about on a daily basis, for this subject or anime in general. On that particular front I give them my respect.

But if you can base your whole approval of a book on the fact that it was merely written, I’d say you either need to go a bit deeper or prepare yourself to read every book in existence, because that’s the only way I could ever recommend Dragonball Z: An Unauthorized Guide.

DBZ Book Information:

By Lois and Danny Gresh

Published by St. Martin’s Paperbacks

Price:$5.99

Pages:211

Amazon Link: Dragonball Z: An Unauthorized Guide

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Dragonball Book Review – Dragonball Z: An Unauthorized Guide