Pluto Creator Naoki Urasawa Addresses Akira Toriyama’s Legacy

Both fans and anime creators alike are mourning the loss of Dragon Ball’s creator Akira Toriyama. Passing at the age of 68, the legacy left by the prolific manga artist cannot be overstated. While we’ve witnessed the likes of Naruto’s Masashi Kishimoto, One Piece’s Eiichiro Oda, and many other mangakas sharing their thoughts, Pluto and Monster creator Naoki Urasawa has taken the chance to share his thoughts on Akira Toriyama and his works. 

Urasawa has had a prolific career in the manga game, creating dark stories that are able to inject some life-affirming moments into their pages. Naoki’s stories such as Monster, 20th Century Boys, and Pluto all have made names for themselves in different ways. While Pluto and Monster have received anime adaptations, the classic tale known as 20th Century Boys has yet to hit the small screen. Considering how beloved the story has been without an anime series, an adaptation would take the anime world by storm. 

A Tribute To Akira Toriyama From Another Manga Master

Toriyama has had an effect on both the entertainment world and other manga creators that have been working on the industry for some time. Urasawa shared his heartbreak that he was never able to meet Toriyama and how he experienced one of Akira’s earliest works, “I read Jump back when Dr. Slump was a new serial, and thought to myself ‘This man will take manga to a different level’ but I never imagined how extraordinary he truly would become. It’s a pity we never met to have a long chat. My sincerest hope is you are resting in peace.”

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If you haven’t seen the latest anime adaptation from Naoki Urasawa, you can catch Pluto on Netflix. Here’s how the streaming service describes the serious story that re-imagined the character of Astro Boy, ” “In an ideal world where man and robots coexist, someone or something has destroyed the powerful Swiss robot Mont Blanc. Elsewhere a key figure in a robot rights group is murdered. The two incidents appear to be unrelated…except for one very conspicuous clue – the bodies of both victims have been fashioned into some sort of bizarre collage complete with makeshift horns placed by the victims’ heads. Interpol assigns robot detective Gesicht to this most strange and complex case – and he eventually discovers that he too, as one of the seven great robots of the world, is one of the targets.”