Tori for Smart People

General Mood
Artwork
Target Market
How Great is He?

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Tori's Manga is very very gleeful. With the exception of Cell from DBZ, all the other characters are incapable of complete evilness. The weather is always sunny and Hawaii-like. Even in the middle of supposedly nerve wrecking battles, Tori manages to squeeze jokes in.

Unlike many Kakkoii characters, the characters are presented to us at face value; they do not try to hide some kind of silly dark past. Even when Trunks was presented, he tells his story so as to not keep the audience in the dark. Despite that Toriyama does not keep the audience in the dark, he can still maintain suspense not with .

Tori's characters are generally round. It would be very difficult to find any character with an anexeric figure. His characters usually look very friendly and innocent, perhaps because his intention is to target a younger audience. Even beautiful women are slightly round. There is, however, one flaw and that would be that his characters' face become the same after you remove the hair. However, I have seen worse cases, so he is forgiven.

Also, realize that he puts a lot of details into machinary. However, even his machines have a kind of friendly round look to them. He also put a lot of details into his backgrounds as well.

Tori's point is not to create altimatly violent manga even though he ended up doing it. It is quite obvious that he started off his projects hoping to amaze young children. Despite that Dragonball Z can only be broadcasted during midnight in many places, it is not grotesquely violent. The most major violence is from punches and kicks (and fireballs). There is no guts and gore.

His works are known to anybody who know manga. It was said that there are more people who read Dragonball than Superman. I don't know how true that is but I don't doubt it. Even people who don't read manga or watch anime know Dr. Slump and Dragonball.

However, someone has said that he is the new Osamu Tetsuka. Well, I can't agree with that. The plot of Dr. Slump is basically none. It works because it is nonsencical. The plot of Dragonball is a variation of another familiar plot. Boy learns martial arts, boy gets strong. It is just more developed since the audience gets to watch the boy from the day he was a child to the day he becomes a child again. (I believe GT is not his work actually. I am not sure.) His short stories are as silly as his long works. Each little piece of Osamu Tetsuka requires more thinking than that. Perhaps it is because people now a days don't read old works and don't understand how great they are and make silly claims like that. Let's just say if we ask Toriyama himself if he feels that he is the next Osamu Tetsuka, I am sure he will reply he doesn't feel that he lives up to the name. Sure Tori is great, but there is a reason why Osamu Tetsuka is greater.

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last updated: July 2, 1997