Toyotarou first came across Akira Toriyama's work in grade school with Dr. Slump, then the Dragon Ball anime, and finally the Dragon Ball manga.[2] With his school notebooks covered in its characters, he was already making up story arcs for Dragon Ball chapters in his head.[3] To this day he has never drawn any original work of his own, it has all been Dragon Ball-related.[2][4] Previously a television director, Toyotarou never desired to be a career manga artist. "I figured it would be impossible to do it officially, so I resigned myself to doing it as a hobby."[4] In 2012, he brought artwork to Shueisha, and six months later he debuted with the first two-page chapter of Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission.[4]
Career
Toyotarou made his professional debut with Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission in the November 2012 issue of the monthly magazine V Jump. It is a tie-in manga with the video game series Dragon Ball Heroes and ran for 28 chapters until it was put on hiatus after the February 2015 issue. A chapter 29 was included in the Bandai Official 5th Anniversary Fanbook: Dragon Ball Heroes 5th Anniversary Mission book published on November 19, 2015, and all previous chapters were uploaded to the game's website for free.[5]
Toyotarou also drew a manga adaptation of the film Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F', which was written by Toriyama. It began in the April 2015 issue of the monthly V Jump and ran for three chapters.[6]
Toyotarou began Dragon Ball Super in the August 2015 issue of V Jump, which was released on June 20, 2015.[7] He illustrated the manga while Toriyama wrote the story. Although the anime usually adapted Toriyama's story ahead of the manga, some characters for the "Universe Survival arc" were reported as being designed by Toyotarou, and a few by both him and Toriyama.[8] After covering the last story arc seen in the anime series in November 2018, the Dragon Ball Super manga continued with original story arcs.[9] Following Toriyama's death in March 2024, Dragon Ball Super was put on indefinite hiatus.[10]
Toyotarou also worked with Toriyama on Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 The Manga, an adaptation of the 2016 video gameDragon Ball Xenoverse 2 that he illustrated exclusively for the collector's edition of the game.[11] He created the one-shotDragon Ball Super Divers for the December 2024 issue of V Jump, which was published on October 21, 2024. It is based on the arcade game of the same name that was created as the successor to Dragon Ball Heroes.[12]
Toyotarou explained that for Dragon Ball Super he received the major plot points from Toriyama, before drawing the storyboard and filling in the details in between himself. He sent the storyboard to Toriyama for review, who gave feedback and made alterations before returning it to Toyotarou, who illustrated the final manuscript and sent it to Shueisha for publication.[2] During the last week of his monthly deadlines, Toyotarou estimated that he spends about 18 hours a day drawing.[14]
Toriyama said that of everyone who works on the Dragon Ball franchise, Toyotarou's artwork is the closest to his own.[15] Amy McNulty of Anime News Network concurred, calling Toyotarou's art "virtually indistinguishable" from Toriyama's.[16] Toyotarou himself said he is confident in reproducing Toriyama's characters and their subtleties, but needs to practice on robots and mecha.[2] As far as the differences, he noted that he draws more panels and close-ups than Toriyama and does his screentone digitally.[4]
