The Winter 2021 Manga Guide

Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater

What's It About? 

From Akira Toriyama, the legendary manga creator of Dragon Ball, comes this special collection of short stories spanning the first few decades of his career. Serving as both a collection of his early works and a history of his life as a manga writer and illustrator, this giant tome is packed with everything you could ever want as a fan of classic shonen manga. (from Viz)

Akira Toriyama's Manga Theater will be released by Viz on December 7

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Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

Even if you're someone like me who was originally introduced to the man's work through Dragon Ball Z, Akira Toriyama's premiere status as a comedy manga-ka is rather well-documented these days. With that context in mind, it's fun just on a basic level to get this triple-length collection of his earliest published stories, which continue through various non-franchise comics he was putting out well into the '90s. The contained nature of everything means most of these swing for those comedic sensibilities that made Toriyama a household name with Dr. Slump, and there's a neat arc to seeing how those comedy stylings evolve alongside his artistic preferences. I'm now convinced that Vegeta didn't actually grow taller over the course of Dragon Ball's run; Toriyama was just gradually coming around to drawing characters who weren't super-deformed stumpy weirdos in general! As well, this collection does something I wish every anthology of its kind would do: letting us know the time and place each entry was originally published.

Covering over a decade-and-a-half of the author's work, Manga Theater casts a pretty wide net with regards to content and appeal. It means that different parts are going to work better for different people. I was personally impressed to see just how strong Toriyama's comedy chops always were, with an early story like Tomato the Cutesy Gumshoe providing a ton of laugh-out-loud moments. That's a recurring strength pretty much throughout the whole collection, even as you come up on later stories like The Elder and Cashman where you can see Toriyama experimenting with more action-based storytelling. Speaking of that kind of content, getting a glimpse of some full-blooded Dragon Ball prototypes in the form of stories like Dragon Boy and The Adventure of Tongpoo will be a selling point for plenty of other people, I suspect. I was also personally impressed with the balance Toriyama had reached by the late story Ackman, which is very entertaining and funny all the way through, save for tripping up with a hoary old transphobic joke at the end of one chapter.

The whole exercise can actually be mildly disheartening in some places. Chapter breaks in the first third of this collection are peppered with Toriyama reminiscing on his efforts to create these early pieces, and they're as loaded with anecdotes of the kind of crunching, deadline-pushing exhaustion we know the man has always struggled with. His work clearly pays off, as even through the stylistic evolution of his art, the clean, cartoony sensibilities of it always look wonderfully polished and serve his sense of comedic delivery exceedingly well. That realness to the presentation of everything here could be considered a boon itself then, I suppose, reminding us that no matter the legendary status of the content created, there's still always been a humble human being at the heart of it all along.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

This may sound obvious, but how much you enjoy Akira Toriyama's schtick is very likely to determine how much you enjoy this book. That's because this is a three-volume omnibus of Toriyama's early work, ranging from 1978 through 1994. It's an impressive span of time, but there's not necessarily an impressive range of work in terms of how much his storytelling varies over the years. That means that this is most likely to appeal to readers who can't get enough of his signature beats, which in this collection are primarily goofy science-fiction, potty humor, and people with barely two brain cells to rub together.

That's perhaps more damning than it needs to be, because it should go without saying that Toriyama does all of those things quite well. His heroes may not be smart, but they're full to the brim with gumption and enthusiasm, and if they don't always win the day in the way they intended, well, they still come out on top in one way or another. Female characters are a bit less impressive; consistently across the tales they're depicted in a range of sexist ways, from moderate to extreme. The purported heroine of “Tongpoo” is perhaps the most egregious, assuming she can seduce her way out of any situation and having gone so far as to bring a sexy maid(ish) outfit on an interstellar exploratory mission for just that purpose. Interestingly enough, the degree of stupidity displayed by the female characters tends to correspond directly to the fanservice; the young lady of “Tongpoo” is consistently drawn with upskirt angles where the farmer heroine of “Mr. Ho” wears a calf-length dress with a high neck and long sleeves. While it's true that Toriyama wrote these stories for a male demographic, that's really not an excuse for how poorly he writes female characters – even in 1983, which seems to have been the year most of these were created.

From a historical perspective, this is an interesting journey through Toriyama's work. Characters don't really take on his signature look until 1988's “The Elder,” which sees Toriyama really settling into his stylized art. “Dragon Boy,” from 1983, is very much a Dragon Ball prototype (Dragon Ball started in 1984), and even more interesting, the multi-chapter “Chobit” definitely bears resemblance to the CLAMP title of similar name – Chobit herself looks an awful lot like her successor, Sumomo, from her tiny size to her pseudo-Arabian outfit.

It is, however, a LOT to take in at once. The stories and gags start to feel repetitive after a while, with characters randomly yelling, “Ultraman!” getting old quickly and every story being goofy in almost the exact same slapstick-and-fourth-wall-breaking way. I think this would work better if read in moderation. Otherwise, this is strictly for the Toriyama fans.