Bird Studio Production - Dragon Ball

Created by Akira Toriyama in 1983 to continue working on the hugely successful hit manga Dr. Slump, Bird Studio in Nagoya is a manga and design production studio responsible for creating and developing the Dragon Ball series. Toriyama’s motivation for making the studio lies in his penchant for independence. In Bird Studio there is never more than one assistant, with Toriyama himself doing most of the work outside of backgrounds. The most famous of Toriyama’s work to come from Bird Studio are the Weekly Shonen Jump mangas Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball, with help from assistants, Hisashi Tanaka and Takashi Matsuyama and Shueisha editors, Kazuhiko Torishima, Yu Kondo and Fuyuto Takeda. After the completion of the original run of Dragon Ball in 1995 however, Bird Studio produced only a small number of one shot mangas such as Cowa!, Kajika, Sand Land, Nekomajin, Kintoki and Jaco the Galactic Patrolman. Bird Studios is also where Toriyama came up with character designs for the famous Dragon Quest game series and the other video games he was requested to work on including the Tobal series, Blue Dragon and Chrono Trigger.

Weekly Shonen Jump Magazine

Weekly Shonen Jump is the best-selling and longest running of all of the Jump comic magazines. Released in 1968 and targeting the young male demographic, Weekly Shonen Jump contains a range of stories often depicting over the top action and fighting scenes such as Fist of the North Star, giant robots like Mazinger Z, comedy as seen in Gintama and other subject matter that appeals to young men. Every two or three months, the chapters of each manga are released as a collection in book form which in Japan are called “Tankobon”. Weekly Shonen Jump’s peak came in 1995. This began in the mid 1980s when Dr. Slump and the Dragon Ball manga were being serialized and came to an all time high in 1995 when 6,530,000 copies of the magazine were in circulation. Despite the fame surrounding the Dragon Ball series, Dragon Ball Super, unlike previous iterations of the series is not published in Shonen Jump, but instead in V-Jump along with Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission.

Kazuhiko Torishima

Kazuhiko Torishima was Toriyama’s first editor from Dr. Slump through the first half of Dragon Ball. In 1976 he joined Shueisha’s editorial department in the Shonen Jump department. Toriyama’s Monthly Young Jump competition entry Mysterious Rain Jack in 1978 inspired Torishima to hire Toriyama as an author for Shonen Jump magazine. Together with Toriyama’s writing and Torishima’s editing, they worked to create the hit phenomenon Dr. Slump. Torishima was the original inspiration for Dr. Slump character Dr. Mashirito and the Dragon Ball character Evil King Piccolo.

Hisashi Tanaka

Hisashi Tanaka, working under the pen name Hisawashi was Akira Toriyama’s first assistant working with Toriyama on the first half of the Dr. Slump manga until 1982. He is also the author of a number of original mangas and now teaches art design at the collegiate level.

Takashi Matsuyama

As Toriyama’s second assistant, Takashi Matsuyama worked at Bird Studio from 1981 contributing to the Dr. Slump series through to the end of the Dragon Ball series in 1995. Famed for his illustrating Penguin village in Dr. Slump and Master Roshi’s house and Namek in Dragon Ball.

Shueisha

Shueisha, Inc. is one of Japan’s major publishers. Based in Tokyo, it is the biggest manga publisher in the world holding allegedly up to 30% of the Japanese Market share. Shueisha was not originally an independent company, starting its life as the entertainment-related publishing department of Shogakukan in 1925 before separating and becoming its own company the next year. Shueisha publishes a number of famous magazines including Weekly Shonen Jump, Weekly Young Jump, V-Jump, Ultra Jump and more. Shueisha also owns part of Viz Media, a company that publishes a lot of manga in North America. Some of the more famous titles published in Weekly Shonen Jump have sold incredible numbers of copies. Dragon Ball by Akira Toyirama has sold over 150 million copies and One Piece by Eiichiro Oda has sold over 140 million copies overall according to statistics from Viz Media. Shueisha also works with the Walt Disney Company publishing books based on the Final Fantasy and Disney crossover game, Kingdom Hearts.

QVolt

Far from producing only manga and character design, Toriyama is also a fan of technical design, mini-models and cars, and so the QVolt was also designed at Bird Studios. The QVolt is an original electric car that Toriyama designed himself. Taking over a year to develop the car with careful consideration to value and balance it was finally unveiled in 2004. It is a small single seated electric car that was offered in five different colors and had a top speed of about eighteen miles per hour. Making this an extremely rare item only nine cars were manufactured for public consumption, but fortunately for fans miniatures are still available for purchase.

Links

Dragon Ball Series
Dragon Ball Z Series
Dragon Ball Kai Series
Dragon Ball Super Series
Dragon Ball GT Series
Super Dragon Ball Heros
Akira Toriyama