Akira Toriyama created Dragon Ball in 1980.
Akira Toriyama . He first achieved mainstream recognition for his highly successful manga Dr. Slump , before going on to create Dragon Ball -- his best-known work -- and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series , Blue Dragon and Chrono Trigger . His next series , Dragon Ball , would become one of the most popular and successful manga in the world . is a Japanese media franchise created by Akira Toriyama . The initial manga , written and illustrated by Toriyama , was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1984 to 1995 , with the 519 individual chapters collected into 42 tankōbon volumes by its publisher Shueisha . is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama .