As of: March 8, 2024 4:55 p.m
Akira Toriyama became world famous with “Dragon Ball”. He has now died at the age of 68. Jo Kaps, expert on Japanese comics and head of the Hamburg publisher altraverse, tells us in an interview what makes Toriyama’s stories so special.
Herr Kaps, wer war Akira Toriyama?
Because Kap: Akira Toriyama was best known for his Dragon Ball series, which helped spread Japanese comic culture to every other country in the world. If you add it all up, the series is one of the best-selling books in the world. Over 170 million copies have now been sold in Japan alone, and well over ten million in Germany. It would never have been conceivable that manga would have even come to the European or American markets without “Dragon Ball”.
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What kind of cosmos has Akira Toriyama left behind?
Grave: “Dragon Ball” is a modern fairy tale, but with a lot more speed, action and crazier than the classic fairy tales – although the old fairy tales aren’t that crazy. We have a world in which a little boy and a few companions set out on a journey to search for the seven magical dragon balls that can be used to summon the dragon Shenlong – and he grants every wish you can imagine. Funnily enough, Shenlong is brought together at the very beginning of the series – “Dragon Ball” ended up with 42 paperbacks. But you also notice that in the long run it’s actually about something different, namely a colorful arsenal of characters, their relationships with one another and the development of characters. In “Dragon Ball”, as in many other manga, things happened that were not known from comics: characters develop, they start families, they can even die. All of these things contributed to why this cosmos was so much more fascinating to young readers than what was previously told in comics.
What we know of Japanese culture in Europe mostly only reaches specialist circles. Why has this art form become such an international one?
Grave: I think this has a lot to do with the fact that cultural changes are always much easier to implement when they appeal to a young audience. If we think about the history of pop music: There were times when Paul McCartney was a real terror to parents and young people still thought the Beatles’ music was great. Mangas had a similar background: that young readers – without a fixed arsenal of ideas about what culture can, should or must do – opened up to such topics much more freely and thus these stories designed for children and young people were a completely different kind of door opener for Japanese culture than many other forms.
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Especially in this scene there is something like fan fiction, i.e. art products that are created by the consumers themselves. Could it be that the “Dragon Ball” cosmos lives on even without Akira Toriyama?
Grave: He actually made sure of that himself: A few years ago, Akira Toriyama allowed a young author who had studied his style for a long time to continue his story in another series. He worked on the conception of this follow-up series and also opened the doors for his characters to continue to develop indefinitely. He has also worked on many other projects that are still coming up. There was once a short story by him, “Sandland”, and an animated series has just been created for Disney, in which he was also involved. His idea of characters, his way of designing these characters, that has a very good chance of continuing to exist. To this day, “Dragon Ball” is still one of the ten most successful series on the market in Germany and is bought, bought, bought, even though it premiered almost 30 years ago.
You once met Akira Toriyama – what kind of guy was he?
Grave: In my earlier days I was an editor at Carlsen and worked on the series. So we once met at a convention in Tokyo, and it was fascinating that this person who made so many changes in this little bubble of the manga universe was himself an extremely reserved, modest, quiet person, with very simple and simple interests. He never let it be known that he was a superstar for many in this scene, but rather the opposite. You probably wouldn’t have recognized him if you met him on the street – he was so inconspicuous and shy.
The interview conducted Mischa Kreiskott.
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NDR Culture | Journal conversation | 03/08/2024 | 17:30