Best known for creating Dragon ball, Akira Toriyama has been a world famous mangaka for many years. However, he didn’t draw the franchise’s newest manga, Dragon Ball Super. Responsibility is assigned to Toyotarou, a Japanese artist who has worked on several Dragon Ball projects. A quote from a recent interview might explain why.
In an interview for the upcoming film, Sand Land, translated and shared by Anime Senpai, Toriyama gave his reason for stopping drawing manga. Mangaka revealed that he always works with a particular pen holder, which he tends to misplace in his workspace. Regarding using a different pen holder, Toriyama said, “it doesn’t feel right.” While this may be a frivolous answer, it also makes a lot of sense considering how long he’s been using it.
According to a tweet shared by Dragon Ball scholar Derek Padula, Toriyama has been using the same pen holder for 51 years. Quote from Dragon Ball: El manga legendario, published in 2008, which Padula translated into English from Spanish. This quote reveals that Toriyama has a lot of pen holders, but always returns to the same one, which he now misplaces again, as quoted from Anime Senpai:
‘SAND’ was completed by scanning the ink manuscript into a computer and using software to apply my own solid colors and tones. I can hardly sleep at all… After watching all the episodes, I lost my beloved wooden pen case that I used before debut. It was the pen holder that had long been familiar to my hand, carved and worn by a knife and sandpaper. It is the pen holder that has become familiar to me for a long time. I bought a new pen holder and tried sharpening it one way after another, but it just didn’t feel right. Since then, I used it as an excuse to draw almost no manga (laughs).
With Toriyama’s sense of humor evident in Dragon Ball, it wouldn’t be surprising if this was one of his many jokes as this is a question many fans have been asking. If true, though, that’s probably not what readers might expect. Mangaka is regularly under severe stress due to deadlines and intense work, which is probably what most fans assume happened. For now, the official reason is that one of his favorite comic book creation tools has been lost. Given his prolific work and the fact that he mostly uses the same tools, it makes sense that it would feel strange NOT to use it when crafting subsequent stories.
Dragon Ball Super has been serialized since 2015. Still written by Toriyama, fans have been quite well received by Toyotarou’s Dagon Ball illustrations, with the series being a bestseller. Sand Land will release in Japan in August this year, allowing fans to see another movie. Akira Toriyama work on big screen despite loss Dragon ball creator’s pen holder.
Source: AnimeSenpai.net, Derek Padula
