Japanese · b. 1955 · 1984 – 2024
Akira Toriyama's manga-inflected character designs for the Dragon Quest series gave the franchise its warm, instantly recognisable visual identity, and his work on Chrono Trigger remains the most celebrated collaboration between a manga artist and a game development team.
Akira Toriyama was already the creator of Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball — two of the most successful manga series in Japanese publishing history — when Enix approached him to design characters for Dragon Quest (1986). His visual language: clean outlines, exuberant character expressiveness, a palette leaning toward primary colours and warm earth tones, and a gift for memorable creature design, was precisely suited to a game aimed at a broad Japanese audience that already knew his work from manga. The Slime, Dragon Quest's most iconic monster design, is a Toriyama creation — a simple teardrop with eyes and a smile that communicates harmlessness and approachability while remaining visually distinct from every other game creature of the era. His collaboration with Square for Chrono Trigger (1995) produced some of his finest character work: Crono, Lucca, Marle, and Magus are immediately identifiable as Toriyama characters while serving the game's time-travel narrative with costumes and visual cues that communicate their historical context. Toriyama died in March 2024, prompting an outpouring of tributes from the global games and manga communities.