Akira Toriyama net worth: How rich was the manga artist before he died?

Akira Toriyama net worth—

Akira Toriyama, the influential Japanese manga artist who created the Dragon Ball series, has died at the age of 68.

He died on March 1, 2024, from an acute subdural haematoma. The news was confirmed by Bird Studio, the manga company that Toriyama founded in 1983.

Akira Toriyama net worth at the time of his death was estimated to be $50 million.

Who was Akira Toriyama?

Toriyama was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1955. After drawing throughout his childhood, he decided to forgo tertiary education and, after high school, began to work at an advertising agency where he designed posters.

His first brush with the manga industry came at age 23, when he entered a piece into a contest run by a weekly manga magazine. It didn’t work out – but he soon began sending in drawings to a different publication: Weekly Shōnen Jump.

In 1978, that magazine ran Toriyama’s first published work, titled Wonder Island. Both Wonder Island and its sequel, Wonder Island 2 – which referenced the screen culture of the time, including Dirty Harry and sci-fi franchise Ultraman – were unpopular among readers.

Undeterred, he kept drawing and in 1980 produced a breakout hit: Dr Slump, a comedy about a robot girl and her trials and travails as she interacts with the world around her.

Serialised in Weekly Shōnen Jump until 1984, it ended up earning him one of Japan’s highest manga honours – a Shogakukan manga award. An anime adaptation soon began airing on television, and Toriyama founded Bird Studio off the back of his early success.