Toriyama Akira – Sakugekijo Vol 1 Manga Review

Posted By yonghow on July 11th, 2019

Toriyama Akira’s Sakugekijo ( Manga Theater ) is a series of three manga tankōbon released between 1983 and 1997 that collect several one-shots written and illustrated by the artist. The stories were originally published in various Shueisha magazines between 1978 and 1994.

This first tankobon volume that I’m reviewing here was was published in mid 1983, one year before the artist embarked on his soon to be massive hit Dragonball.

The drawing style and narrative is markedly similar to the earlier Dragonball volumes, with the characters often drawn in “chibi” forms and comedy playing a huge part in the storytelling. None of these is meant to imply any shortcoming though; even at this stage of the artist’s career he was already a master storyteller and he most certainly honed his skills when working on these earlier manga.

Toriyama Akira Sakugekijo Vol 1 Manga Review

This is a nice little volume to pick up if you want to explore Toriyama Akira’s earlier works. All three volumes are available for purchase on Amazon Japan.

Toriyama Akira Sakugekijo Vol 1 Manga 鳥山明作劇場 1″ details :

– Dimensions – 17.4 x 11.4 x 1.8 cm
– softcover, 208 pages
– Black and White, in Japanese