In the fall of 2015, Masashi Kishimoto visited New York City to attend the New York Comic-Con. Prior to his panel, Kishimoto sat down with Anime News Network for an interview where he was asked about his artistic influences, Akira Toriyama’s “Dragon Ball” among them, and what he managed to take from them. Though Kishimoto confirmed that he gleaned different things from each of his influences, it was “Dragon Ball” that helped him to enthrall readers. “…What ‘Dragon Ball’ taught me is what was fun about manga, what makes a fun story in manga,” he explained. “In fact, I was reading it as it was coming out in weekly installments in Weekly Shonen Jump, so it really taught me what entertainment is and how to keep an audience captivated—and of course, the art influenced me as well.”
And as Kishimoto says, in addition to learning about entertaining storytelling, he was also greatly influenced by Toriyama’s art style. In fact, it was Toriyama’s art that inspired him to be a manga artist. Speaking with VIZ Media in 2012, Kishimoto explained that, as a child, his admiration for Toriyama’s characters and art is what led him to want to write and illustrate manga. “At some point between second and fourth grade, I got into Akira Toriyama Sensei’s ‘Dr. Slump’ anime and ‘Dragon Ball’ manga,” he said. “I loved his characters. I was especially attached to ‘Dr. Slump’s’ Arale and ‘Dragon Ball’s’ Goku. Also, his art really appealed to me. There was something about his cartoony drawing style that felt right, more so than realistic drawings. I thought to myself, I want to become like Toriyama Sensei.”
Great art inspires more great art. It’s a continuous circle of art that we hope never ends.
