Eiichiro Oda could never understand how Akira Toriyama drew “armpits and hands” in his manga

Akira Toriyama is a legend among manga artists and that includes the authors of famous franchises like One pieceEiichiro Oda has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Toriyama and Dragon Balland once he got the chance to speak to the legend himself, he couldn’t hold back.

THE One Piece Art Book, Color Walk 1was released containing an interview between Eiichiro Oda and Akira Toriyama. Although it was an interview, it was more of a chat session between the mangaka, where each of them expressed their fandom for each other’s works.

Eiichiro Oda Was Impressed By Akira Toriyama’s Art Style

Right at the beginning of the interview, Eiichiro Oda exclaimed that Akira Toriyama is God and that he is in an entirely different dimension from him, especially when it comes to drawing. The author went on to say that even though he had never read Doctor Slump (Akira Toriyama’s previous serialization), he had first encountered Toriyama’s work in the early chapters of Dragon Ball.

I fell in love with it. I thought, “This is so cool!” At the time, I loved Disney, but I thought, “This is even better than the Disney stuff!”

Then the One piece the creator mentioned an extremely minor character of Dragon BallRanfan. Ranfan is a competitor in the 21st World Martial Arts Tournament. Oda commented that in one of the scenes of Dragon Ball Adding Ranfan, he really liked how her armpits were drawn. Apparently, at that time, the author really liked drawing armpits, and Toriyama’s illustrations were the first he encountered in which armpits were well drawn.

Oda then went on to praise another minor character, Taopaipai, an assassin in Dragon Ball.

When he posed, his hands were so well drawn. At that time, the only thing I drew were hands. Those two things were what shocked me the most in Dragon Ball… the armpits and the hands.

THE One piece The author was shocked by how accurately Akira Toriyama drew the hands. Toriyama’s art style has always been unique and easy to decipher, which helped him gain even more popularity.

Akira Toriyama regretted not studying muscle models before creating Dragon Ball

After Eiichiro Oda’s long rant about Akira Toriyama’s drawing style, he had the most shocking confession to make:

But Dragon Ball grew up with increasingly muscular characters. I regret not having studied muscular models at the time, but I still haven’t managed to do so…

Eiichiro Oda seemed incredulous at this statement as he hastily said that the way Dragon Ball The muscular characters in the series were very impressive. Toriyama later clarified that he had put too much thought into the stylistic appearance of the muscles rather than the appearance of real muscles. While they are aesthetically pleasing, they are not accurate.

THE Dragon Ball The creator also stated that he created muscular female characters because he simply didn’t know how to draw women. Although he admitted to many flaws in his drawing style, all fans know how talented Akira Toriyama was.

Dragon Ball is available to read on Viz Media, and the anime is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.