“The fact that I was able to continue as a cartoonist while living so far out here is largely thanks to him.” Hisashi Tanaka-san (age 66, of Ichinomiya, Aichi), a cartoonist who worked as Akira Toriyama-san‘s first assistant, and who now heads the Department of Art and Design at Ōgaki Women’s College in Gifu Prefecture, laments the sudden parting.
In 1980, he was working a company job while pursuing a career as a cartoonist, when he received a shock from Dr. Slump, which had started running in Weekly Shōnen Jump. “From facial expressions to movement, the human depictions were really solid. It wasn’t the kind of art you’d expect from an artist on his very first serial,” he reflects. Then, several weeks later in the same magazine, he learned that Toriyama-san was seeking an assistant in the vicinity of Nagoya. “I had thought you had to move to Tokyo if you wanted to become a cartoonist. I jumped at the opportunity without a second thought.” After sending in two test illustrations to the editorial department, he was hired without issue.
Work as an assistant started the morning before deadline, once Toriyama-san had finished penciling. As they worked, “We were constantly shooting the breeze about music, comics, current events, hobbies, you name it,” but Toriyama-san‘s hand would never stop moving. By the time they finished, it would already be night. They typically sent the manuscript out to Tokyo via plane from Nagoya Airport.
In the two years that Tanaka-san worked as an assistant, he says he was never once reprimanded. Even as Toriyama-san found himself busier than ever with the worldwide popularity of Dragon Ball and the megahit status of the Dragon Quest video games (for which he did the character designs), he would always entertain an idle conversation with a smile. That impression of him never changed, from the very first time they met. “He was like a good-natured big brother, four years my senior.”
(Article by Hiroshi Ōyama)