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

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

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

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!

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Derek Padula Interviewed on The Thunder Child

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!

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

New Dragon Ball Facebook Page

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.

Arghh!

We must have gone to at least 20 apartments, and applied for several. The process was exhausting, driving through LA traffic during the middle of the day, filling out applications, and dealing with a lot of other issues that came up.

The bottom line was that we couldn’t find anywhere nice to live that was also affordable; At least not at our standards. The place we thought was perfect for us was instead given to a friend of the land lady.

Meanwhile, my laptop crashed. Windows 7 decided not to work anymore after I installed the PHP Zend web development framework. For some reason the PNPClass.sys file, a Windows driver, became corrupt, and god help me there was no way to fix it. Including multiple re installations of Windows. None of them would even run. Something went wrong at the hardware level.

What this meant is that the last 4 months of work, including the Dragon Ball book related content, research, and notes, was gone! It was all gone!!

Inexplicably, the backups that I had been making of the book vanished from my USB thumb drive when I went to find them later.

Truly devastating to have your life’s work disappear.

I researched the heck out of hard drive recovery methods, and ended up using a Linux boot disc to try and access the files. But they had already been written over during the attempted re-installs.

So I used a super nerdy program called PhotoRec to recover the files one layer down, but as it happens, it only recovered the files that I didn’t need, not the ones recently written or updated.

In addition, some of the blog posts I wanted to make, such as my recap of Anime Expo 2011, were put on hold, as well as any future articles.

Everything was gone and I was just going to have to accept it.

Then, needing some type of OS, I tried to install Ubuntu Linux, which worked for a day before crashing at the startup screen again, after spending hours setting all of my programs up. The hard drive was officially dead.

The entire experience was exhausting, and almost made me buy a Mac! I came very close to doing so, but was able to get my laptop fixed by the manufacturer free of charge, since it was still under warranty. Although truth be told, the new Macbook Air does look awesome.

In any case, I had to come to terms with the reality, both internally and externally. I realized that Los Angeles was too expensive and that things weren’t working out, despite my best efforts.

Moving Right Along

Deborah and I decided to move to Fresno, California, where her mother has a nice house. That way, we can get away from the Los Angeles traffic, the expensive apartments, food, and stressful cycle of working to survive and then continue working. By doing so, we could escape the hamster wheel of modern life.

Before the move we sold almost all of our belongings on CraigsList, except for personal items. That was a very freeing, and lucrative, experience.

So far so good. Fresno is a little hot, but otherwise awesome. Living in the suburbs of a countryside type city has a lot of perks: All of the benefits without any of the drawbacks. Really nice, actually, and I’m very grateful to be here. Things are looking good.

What this means is that I’m now able to focus on the projects that are important to me, like finishing the book. Also completing freelance websites and saving up money for the wedding and other momentous occasions in life.

On a very positive note, for an even more inexplicable reason my DBZ book content came back! It showed up again on my USB stick, and I have no idea how or why! But I’m very glad it did, as I’m picking up right where I left off!

Lessons Learned

The first lesson I learned is to use a cloud backup of all my important files.

Now I use CrashPlan to automatically backup my hard drive. If anything should happen in the future, I always have it available in the cloud.

Secondly, I’m better at following through and completing the things I start. Otherwise, I simply won’t start it. I had so many important articles partially complete, that when I lost them, I felt like they could never be written again, or in the same way. Inspiration only strikes once.

Furthermore, I’m trying to minimize and simplify my life down to the essentials. Eventually I may become a digital nomad and travel the world while building websites and writing.

The whole experience of 2011 has been difficult yet beneficial. I’m finding out who I am, what I want, and how I can better benefit other people.

Overall, I’ve realized that while the book is a work in progress, so am I.

I guess this is what means to be in your 20′s.

Look forward to the release of the book at the end of the year, and more blog posts along the way.

Also, more and more people are contacting me about the “How to Train Like Goku” bonus article, so I’ll make that a priority for those who want to pre-order the DBZ book.

Thanks, everyone!

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Work In Progress

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.

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Dragon Ball Book Progress Update 3

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.

Krillin has no last name and his parents are never mentioned. Combine this with the fact that he entered the monastery at a young age and it implies that he was most likely sent there as a child. This was and still is common practice for the Shorin and Shaolin Temple’s, as parents send their children there in the hope of the child having a more fortunate future. Although this is conjecture as it was not stated in the series.

Krillin's iconic forehead "Dots"

Like other Buddhist temples, the monks of Orinji shave their head. This practice is part of their ordination into the temple and is known as tonsure. Shaving the head is an act of transformation for a new monk that enters the brotherhood and represents a physical renunciation of the external and vain attachments found in society, which are meaningless to a dedicated practitioner on the path of spiritual enlightenment. The tonsure is repeated throughout ones dedicated time of practice as the hair grows back.

The characteristic dots on Krillin’s forehead are not genuine dots, they are burn marks. These marks are characteristics of a monk who has sworn vows to uphold the Three Refuges of Buddhism, which include the Buddha, the Dharma (teachings), and Sangha (monastic community). During a ceremonial ritual known as “Jie Ban,” or “Shou Jie,” three cones of incense are inserted into their forehead and lit on fire. The Sinologist Herbert A. Giles wrote in his book The Civilization of China (2004 edition), “… The unfortunate novice being supported on both sides by priests who encourage him all the time to bear what must be excruciating pain.” As the incense smolders into the flesh they leave a permanent burn mark in the form of a circular scar.

At some point in their life a monk will retake the vows and receive three new marks alongside the first, which reaffirms their faith. Monks can have 3, 6, or 9 marks, and are representative of their time invested in cultivation and apparent level of wisdom. Krillin has 6 marks when we first see him. Another function of the marks was to signify a Buddhist monk to lay people in the case of death, so that they would be properly cremated, or to show others that he was a celibate cultivator. Giles also wrote, “The fully qualified priest receives a diploma, on the strength of which he may demand a day and a night’s board and lodging from the priests of any temple all over the empire.”

This ritual is no longer seen in China today as a result of the Cultural Revolution. The marks have been replaced by tattoos on less noticeable parts of the body for those who still want to follow the custom.

Krillin entered the temple at age 4 and left the monastic order at age 12 in search of a great master who could teach him the higher levels of the martial arts. He was picked on by the other students of the school and wanted to increase his powers in order to enact revenge. Also to impress girls. There is no greater teacher on Earth than Master Roshi, but Master Roshi’s whereabouts are unknown, so Krillin leaves Eastern Village to travel the world on a quest to find him. This can be likened to a monk traveling through India looking for a Law Master and esoteric sutras that contain formulas to attain higher levels of enlightenment, or to a martial pilgrim on the search for more advanced techniques. He wants to ascend but needs a true master to do it.

Krillin arrives on Master Roshi’s Island with the intention of becoming his disciple. He lands on the island and says, “My name’s Krillin and I’ve come all the way from a village in the east. Please allow me to be your student and fight like you.” Master Roshi is initially reticent, but Krillin wins him over by offering pornographic magazines as a gift, which the Master readily accepts. Compared to Goku, Krillin has a much more personal relationship with Master Roshi at first, primarily because of their shared interest in the ladies.

Yet even though a part of his mind is focused on women and worldly concerns for such a long time, and is less than perfectly pure as a result, Krillin spends his entire youth and much of his young adulthood without a girlfriend. As a result, he is free to train. And he is still a very good person by any regular standard, proven by the fact that he is the only character other than Goku shown able to wield the Spirit Bomb, which is an energy technique composed of righteous energy. Others may also be capable, but he is the only one given the opportunity to do so, and Goku believes in his ability to do so successfully.

Krillin's Wife, Artificial Human 18

It isn’t until Krillin’s late 20′s that he has his first date, which doesn’t exactly go well. However, he eventually does find a wife in Artificial Human 18, and starts a family with a beautiful daughter named Marron. Krillin had the opportunity to destroy Artificial Human 18, but when the crossroads presented itself, Krillin chose the more difficult and rewarding path. After a grueling ordeal Krillin ultimately saves her life and the two marry and start a family.

Krillin loves his wife, and despite the wicked actions of her past, still defends her to others. He explains in DBZ episode 209, “She’s not a robot. She’s a human with a few extra parts.” It is symbolic that when we see Krillin with his wife and daughter after a time jump of many years that he has let his hair grow out. Goku and the other warriors didn’t even know he had hair until then. Krillin explains that he had just been shaving it, as he was seemingly taught to live in such a manner at the temple, with its strict code of conduct. This indicates that Krillin stopped training the supernormal aspects of his life in order to become a family man. The standard of the martial monk no longer applied, although he still lived in a virtuous and noble manner.

Goku actually marries and starts a family before Krillin does, in his late-teens no less. Goku is completely unaware of what marriage means, being utterly oblivious to society’s conventions, but he goes along with it rather well when it unexpectedly enters his life. At the time Goku replied to Chi-Chi that he wanted a bride, he says that he “Thought ‘bride’ meant something to eat.” Chi-Chi didn’t realize his naivety and so holds him to the promise nevertheless. She confronts him at the 23^rd World Martial Arts Tournament in order to cash in on the promise. Because the opportunity presented itself, Goku then proposes, as this is apparently what he was supposed to do according to society’s conventions. He probably would never have pursued a wife on his own. Krillin longed for a wife and yet it wasn’t until he finally gave up trying to find one that she arrived.

Middle aged Krillin and his Family

What’s most interesting is that Krillin left a monastic order in order to improve his martial arts skills and subsequently impress girls, with the ultimate goal of marriage and a family. Goku on the other hand unwittingly stumbled upon a wife and created a family, and yet spends the majority of his years in solitary cultivation away from the people who long to be by his side. His Saiyan nature and desire for self improvement meant that he was often alone, and this is how he preferred it, even though he had a family that wanted him at home. Krillin’s human nature and desire for a family meant that he was training in order to eliminate his loneliness, and once the pain was alleviated and the goal achieved, he stopped his training.

In the later portions of Dragon Ball and onward Krillin is seen as both a powerful warrior and as somewhat helpless to do anything about the dangers he faces. He’s always there to put up a fight, but against the opponents who come to destroy the Saiyans he really can’t do much. Goku and the other Saiyans are the only ones at a high enough power level to have an effect against the ever increasingly powerful enemies. For this reason Krillin is used more for comic relief and side stories, as well as on an occasional fetch quest for the dragon balls. He’s still an extremely integral character in the series, but more often than not he takes over the role of the “Where’s Goku!? He has to save us!” type character. In this manner he is just like San Zuang, crying for Monkey.

Still, despite his flaws and humorous failures, Krillin represents the unlimited potential of man and what can be accomplished through hard work and determination. His perseverance and willingness to try, even though he knows there’s little chance of success (often to buy time for his friends’ survival), has made him a fan favorite. He is the everyman.

Much like San Zuang, Krillin continues his journey on the difficult path, cognizant of his own weaknesses and fully aware of life’s hardships and rewards.

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Side by Side – Krillin

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.

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Dragon Ball Website Fusion