Dragon Ball Book Review – Akira Toriyama – The Master of Manga
Akira Toriyama – The Master of Manga provides an easy to read summary of Toriyama’s life, career and success in Japan. It’s succinctly edited and well designed. While it doesn’t bring much new content to the table, it is the first book to be written about Akira Toriyama and does a good job at what it set out to do; chronologically revealing the life and career of Akira Toriyama.
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.”
Derek Padula Interviewed on The Thunder Child
Yep, an interview with me. First one ever!
TheThunderChild.com recently interviewed me about the inspiration for writing The Dao of Dragon Ball book, how Dragon Ball changed my life and other topics related to personal endeavors. They are a science fiction and fantasy website, and Dragon Ball has a good mix of both.
Learn more about The Dao of Dragon Ball and its author in this Dragon Ball book interview!
New Dragon Ball Facebook Page
Here’s a quick little update to let you know about The Dao of Dragon Ball Facebook page.
Win a FREE copy of The Dao of Dragon Ball book by Liking the Facebook page!
Or Follow me on Twitter to enter the contest!
Better yet. Do both! Your name will be entered twice!
I had to create this new page because the old group was being archived by Facebook, since it was part of their old format.
Please be sure to like the page and tell all of your friends about it as well. The website is becoming more popular, and I’d like to make sure that trend continues!
Work In Progress
2011 has been a year of changes.
In spiritual cultivation communities, the master’s teach that understanding and improvement comes through conflict, either with ourselves, with others, or with our environments. This year I’ve experienced all three, continuously.
At the end of 2010 and start of 2011 I had a high paying job at an internet startup. I thought it would be great, but unfortunately I wasn’t happy and the job consumed every aspect of my life. I decided that I wasn’t happy there, and chose to quit.
This decision had a lot of ramifications. A few negative, but mostly positive, such as figuring out what I really want to be doing with my life.
Also, I started dating, and on May 1 I proposed to Deborah Yun.
Deborah’s a really great person who is always striving to be better in life. She has taught me a lot, and helped fill in the gaps and missing pieces on the road to fulfilling my potential. Plus she’s cute and funny.
You can see her photography at www.deborahyun.com.
But very quickly we both found out that living the freelance life (me a website developer and her a photographer) in Los Angeles can be very difficult and tiring.
We decided to move in together for a lot of reasons, including saving money and being closer to one another.
Dragon Ball Book Progress Update 3
Son Goku Statue
Hi there. A reader requested an update on The Dao of Dragon Ball book’s progress, so here it is.
Most of the book is done in rough draft form. However, new information keeps appearing, new rabbit holes to go down, and I feel like it’s all essential to the book’s content.
For example, right now I’m studying the world’s largest martial arts tournament that took place in China in 2004. I’m reading about the history of Qi Gong and how it exploded in popularity. And I’m learning more about the VHS fansubbers of Dragon Ball in America. There’s tons of stuff.
I’m also completely editing the “… To the World” chapter. It’s currently 48 pages, so I’m going to break it down into smaller chapters with more focused content so that readers have an easier time understanding the global history and overall story of Dragon Ball in the world today.
Then I will continue editing the rest of the Dragon Ball book, which includes finishing the final martial arts chapter on Divine Combat. It’s tough because I’m basically trying to explain how the supernormal abilities depicted in Dragon Ball are actually possible without falling into pseudo-science. Meanwhile, it has to tell a story at the same time.
I work on the book everyday and am making steady progress.
Here I’ll quote the Venerable Master, Lao Tzu. I saw this on a Facebook fan’s page (be sure to friend me on Facebook, by the way!):
The soft overcomes the hard.
The slow overcomes the fast.
Let your workings remain a mystery.
Just show people the results.
-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Hopefully the results will speak for themselves.
Side by Side – Krillin
Krillin Holds up the World
By reader request, here is an excerpt from The Dao of Dragon Ball that focuses on the character Krillin. This excerpt is from the Side by Side chapter in the Journey to the West section, where the characters from Dragon Ball are compared to those of Journey to the West.
Please note that the final version in the book may change.
Images seen in this blog post are not included in the book.
San Zuang / Krillin: A Warrior Monk
Young Krillin (created by "Rexobias")
Speaking of warriors, another character who represents San Zuang in a few noticeable ways is Krillin, a monk from Orin Temple (Japanese: ???, Orinji).
Krillin is comparable to San Zuang most evidently because they are both monks. San Zuang is a Buddhist monk of a Tang Dynasty China sect with Idealist origins, and Krillin is in the order of Orinji. His shaved head and outward appearance are testament to the discipline and strength of his character. These are traits cultivated in the temple environment and would aid him both in life as well as death (the afterlife). He is 13 when first introduced.
Krillin’s Japanese name (????, Kuririn) alludes to his martial monk heritage: “Kuri” means chestnut (as a pun expressed in the funny shape of his bald head), and “rin” means tree. His name references the Shaolin Temple of China, as Shorin is the name given to the Shaolin School’s branch in Japan. The Shorin Temple is a Zen Buddhist school that uses martial arts as an aid to its spiritual cultivation method of Buddha Law cultivation.
His name has other humorous aspects as well. “Shorin” in Japanese is written as ??, which in English means “Few Trees” or “Young Forest.” “Orin” in Japanese is written as ??, which in English means “Many Trees” or (essentially) “Expansive Forest.” So his name is an inverse spoof on the Shorin. Orinji also sounds like the borrowed English word “orange,” which is another of the countless and clever food references created by Toriyama.
Dragon Ball Website Fusion
Goku is beat up and exhausted, but also happy.
The website and the blog have just performed the fusion dance and are now an entirely new and all powerful warrior!
Well, perhaps not all that, but at least they finally look the same.
I have concluded what was an exhaustive learning experience of the WordPress framework, how to create and style a theme, integrate it into an existing site, add all of the WordPress hooks and make it look pretty.
The amount of bugs that were squashed was ridiculous, but the battle is over and everything looks to be at peace.
In terms of upgrades, the home page’s recent Blog Posts section pulls content from WordPress and displays the 3 most recent posts. And the footer’s Tag Cloud actually works like it is supposed to and displays the top 25 tags from the blog.
I also added new content to the Bonus section of the site.
In addition, the entire site has been streamlined and should now load a bit faster.
Overall, I’m much happier with the new theme compared to the previous iNove theme. That was too generic looking. This one integrates very well.
What do you guys think of the blog’s new look? I’d love to hear your feedback.
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