Akira Toriyama was born on 5 April 1955, in Nagoya, Japan, and is a well known Japanese manga artist, as well as a game artist, character designer and art director, who began his career in his early 20s, and is probably best known for what is regarded as his finest work, Dragon Ball .
How rich is Akira Toriyama? Currently, Akira Toriyama’s net worth is estimated to be $45 million, accumulated mostly from his career as a manga artist, during a career spanning almost 40 years since his debut in this art industry in the late 1970s.
Akira Toriyama Net Worth $45 Million
Toriyama probably began his drawing career as early as elementary school, as a simple form of entertainment because there was apparently little else to keep young children amused and interested. Professionally his first job was working at an advertising agency in Nagoya, where he designed posters for almost three years. After quitting this job, Toriyama participated in an amateur contest named “Jump”, really in order to win money. Although Toriyama didn’t win the competition, he was later contacted and encouraged by Kazuhiko Torishima, who would later become his editor.
In 1978, Toriyama debuted with a series of two one-shot manga entitled “Wonder Land”, which was published in Weekly Shōnen Jump, a weekly manga anthology. Toriyama’s break-through occurred a couple of years later in 1980 with the publication of a manga series about a perverted professor and his robot Arale, entitled “Dr. Slump”. By the end of the series in 1984, Akira Toriyama had become a known name in the manga industry. In addition, “Dr. Slump” earned him a prestigious Shogakukan Manga Award in 1981, and was adapted into a series that aired on TV from 1981 to 1986.By the year 2008, “Dr. Slump” had sold over 35 million copies in Japan alone. Such a successful start in the manga industry heavily contributed to Akira Toriyama’s public recognition, as well as his net worth.
However, Toriyama’s most successful work to date was published in 1984 in Weekly Shōnen Jump under the name of “Dragon Ball”, which instantly caught the attention of the public. Initially an adventure/gag manga, “Dragon Ball” was later modified to represent a martial arts fighting series. Toriyama worked on this manga for 11 years, and produced 519 chapters, resulting in a total of 42 volumes. “Dragon Ball” has sold over 156 million copies in Japan, and a total of 230 million copies worldwide.
“Dragon Ball” soon began to be considered “the most influential shōnen manga”, as well as the “second best-selling manga of all time”. Eventually, this manga series was adapted into several TV anime, such as “Dragon Ball”, “Dragon Quest”, “Dragon Ball Z”, and “Dragon Ball GT”. “Dragon Ball Z” alone lasted for 291 episodes, and was yet again adapted into 16 films. Needless to say, Toriyama managed to gather a large sum of money from the sales. The popularity of “Dragon Ball” manga series spread worldwide, and was eventually turned into several video games, including “Dragon Quest Monsters”, “Super Dragon Ball Z”, and “Dragon Ball Online”.
A remarkably successful anime artist with a net worth of $45 million, Akira Toriyama became an influential person in the industry, and was even commissioned to illustrate characters for “Dragon Ball” games. Toriyama’s unique drawing style that defies the traditional conventions of manga series, his visually different characters and an interesting choice of alphabet to convey the message behind the pictures is what has drawn a large audience towards his work.
In his personal life, Akira is married to Yoshimi Kato, and the couple have two children.
