This is the best summary I could come up with:

“Thanks to the support of so many people around the world, [Toriyama] has been able to continue his creative activities for over 45 years,” the letter reads in part.

Toriyama began writing and illustrating manga in the late 1970s, having drawn the attention of editors at Weekly Shonen Jump, which published his debut work, Wonder Island, in 1978.

He created a string of series for the magazine over the next few years, including his first breakout hit Doctor Slump, which made him a household name in the manga community.

Following the adventures of a young, monkey-tailed martial artist named Goku as he faced the menaces of the Red Ribbon army and travelled the world in search of the mysterious Dragon Balls, the series was an immediate smash, and remains one of the most popular and successful manga of all time.

Dragon Ball’s success would give way to the similarly wildly successful anime adaptation of the manga, and then of course a successor series starring an older Goku, Dragon Ball Z, one of the most influential anime of all time, and responsible for some of the earliest explosions in popularity of the medium in the west when it was dubbed across the world.

Even up until his death, Toriyama was working on new stories: an anime adaptation of his 2000 manga Sand Land is due stream worldwide on Disney+ this month, and Dragon Ball Daima, a brand new chapter of the series that would bring Goku back to his youthful self, is currently in development for release later this year.

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