The geek world was stunned to hear of the passing of Akira Toriyama. He was 68 when he passed due to an acute subdural hematoma on the 1st of March of this year. After news of his passing came to light, a lot of people started reminiscing about his career and all of his accomplishments, which he has a lot of. Tribute videos also started popping up, giving the man props for all he’s done. Even gamers have gathered in various MMORPGs, such as Final Fantasy XIV, to mourn Akira Toriyama leaving us to be in King Kai’s planet in the afterlife.

After hearing of his death, I started to think about how he actually affected me and why his death hit me so hard. So, let me just go recall about how I came across his work and how Akira Toriyama influenced me in one way or another.

First off, I guess it comes to no surprise to a lot of you that I first came across Akira Toriyama’s work with Dragon Ball Z. It was the early ’90s and, just through pure word of mouth, everyone was excited for the local broadcast of Dragon Ball Z. I didn’t know anything about the show besides everyone being really excited for it. So, like any dutiful young adult who wanted to know what the hubbub was all about, I decided to tune in on channel 9 at 5:00 PM.

I will say, as someone who had been watching a lot of anime without knowing it (as I did watch Voltron, Star Blazers, Robotech and Battle of the Planets when I was very young), I wasn’t all that impressed as, well, I was instantly lost! Who the heck is this Goku and why is there an old man with a talking giant turtle with him? And who the heck is that green demon looking guy? Looking back, I understand why it felt like I came in the middle of the story because we all technically were as this was after the original Dragon Ball series. More on that later. Still, I thought Cha-La-Head-Cha-La was a banger of an opening song!

I also thought the look of the characters were just weird. This is mostly because of Akira Toriyama’s rather unique style of drawing that eschews traditional anime and Western cartoon ways. It did give his characters a rather unique look to them and made them stand out. I still had to get used to the look but, like the show, his style grew on me. In fact, it was a style someone of my limited drawing ability could do myself. Sure, I’m crap with drawing bodies with perfect proportions. But Goku’s face? I could make fairly good looking facsimiles easily!

I started to really love Dragon Ball Z by the third episode. It’s the one where Goku and Piccolo start battling Raditz and Piccolo loses his arm but still has to charge up the Makankosappo then Gohan bursts out of Raditz space capsule at the end of the episode. That’s when I knew Dragon Ball Z was something special.

This was also when I really started to learn more Dragon Ball Z and when I learned that it was actually a sort of continuation of the first Dragon Ball series. Around this time, they cancelled the local showings of Dragon Ball Z and, because serendipity is a real thing, decided they were going to start showing the original Dragon Ball anime locally!

While it didn’t have the high paced action and over-the-top fights of Dragon Ball Z, I actually appreciated Dragon Ball a little more because I did want to know more about Goku and the rest of the characters. I mean, it’s hard getting invested in characters who appear to have a wealth of backstory when you don’t know what the backstory is. Why is Goku friends with a bald guy, a fighter with a scar on his face, an anthropomorphic pig and someone with a third eye? Well, they were all introduced in Dragon Ball! Oh, and even though the opening isn’t as good as Cha-La-Head-Cha-La, Makafushigi Adventure is pretty cool in its own right.

It was around this time when I started to wonder what else did Akira Toriyama do. I mean, I can’t believe he just did one series and just lived off its success. He must’ve done other things, right? Well, I did dig deep into Akira Toriyama’s other works and I did try to get into them. I tried Dr. Slump but it just was so different from Dragon Ball that I couldn’t adapt to it.

What did stun me is he did character design work for video games. This just felt alien to me as I didn’t think manga artists did this sort of thing. Well, that’s when I learned about Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger. As much as I wanted to play them, I just couldn’t. I never tried Dragon Quest as I stupidly didn’t know there was an English version called Dragon Warrior. I did want to play Chrono Trigger as I was familiar with how many gamers were saying it’s one of their favorite JRPGs ever made. It was around this time when SquareSoft made their seminal hit for the PlayStation, Final Fantasy VII. So, I was really curious how good of a game it was and, sadly, I didn’t get to play that game until years later because I never owned a Super NES/Super Famicom. I did get to play it much later when they re-released it on the PlayStation and, yes, I do have to agree with them when they say Chrono Trigger is one of the best JRPGs out there. It’s actually one of the games I really strived to get all of the endings for and I did because I just love Chrono Trigger so much! It’s out on other platforms now so, if you love JRPGs, you owe it to yourself to try out the game.

However, what I will say is Akira Toriyama did more than just be the guy who made great artwork for the stuff I liked. It’s much more than that because, through these works that he was a part of, he inspired me to do other stuff as well.

Through Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, Akira Toriyama exposed me to look for other people who loved the shows and I’ve met a lot of cool people because of it. I’ve been to movie showings where I could feel the excitement of the audience whenever Goku would charge up to become a Super Saiyan and experience that magical feeling of enjoying something with a lot of like-minded people.

With Chrono Trigger, I actually learned how to be a little more persevering as I wasn’t the type who would even consider to 100% a video game before. I was the kind of gamer who would just play a game and then drop it off once I completed it. I couldn’t do that with Chrono Trigger because, despite it having 15 endings and some of them being decidedly silly and nonsensical, I still wanted to play through the game several times just to get them! Today, you could just go to YouTube and find a video with all of them. But I wanted to do them on my own!

I am sad that Akira Toriyama passed away at the rather young age of 68. I do feel he still had a lot more to offer to the world. But considering how much he’s touched the lives of many people from around the world, I do think he also lived a full life and probably passed on with the knowledge of how much good he’s put into the world in those 68 years. It’s much more than a lot of us.

Rest in peace, Akira Toriyama. You will be sorely missed.

What’s your best memory of Akira Toriyama? Let me know in the comments section below!