Kazuhiko Torishima: Difference between revisions

'''Kazuhiko Torishima''' (鳥嶋 和彦, born October 19, 1952) was a long-standing editor of publications printed by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shueisha Shueisha] and was an key figure in the creation of the original {{DQ}}, assigning artist [[Akira Toriyama]] to the project as the main illustrator.

At one point a promotional contest was held within Jump, with the prize being a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_&_Watch Nintendo Game & Watch]. The task of managing this contest was given to Torishima due to his fondness for games being common knowledge amongst Jump's editorial staff, but he felt that it wasn't very interesting to just hand out games as prizes in unrelated contests. Instead, Torishima proposed that Jump dedicate pages to featuring video game content unrelated to the manga printed within a given issue, something he expected to face serious backlash for from his superiors<ref>『週刊少年ジャンプ秘録!! ファミコン神拳!!!』集英社、2016年5月25日、66-73頁</ref>. These pages would focus on PC games at first before shifting attention to the less-expensive and more popular Famicom and MSX platforms that were more readily accessible to Jump's key demographic of young boys. When it became apparent that rival magazine [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoroCoro_Comic CoroCoro comics] was garnering more attention from young gamers thanks to printing tips and tricks in sealed pages that could not be read in stores, Torishima followed suit but in a grand fashion by launching a new game section that included full colour pages and written reviews in addition to cheats. The review section was important to Torishima as games were still quite expensive for children, and thus he felt that guiding his readers towards worthwhile titles would be a necessary undertaking.

This new section would be called "Famicom Shinken" (ファミコン神拳), a play on the term for the fictional martial art used by the character Kenshiro in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fist_of_the_North_Star Fist of the North Star] which was being published in Jump. The connection to the series wasn't limited to just the name as review scores were given in amounts of "Atatatata", the war cry that Kenshiro shouts in battle, and the writers for the articles were credited as "successors" in the same way that the protagonists of the post-apocalyptic manga were the successor to their respective school of combat. Yuji Horii was contracted to write for Famicom Shinken, using the pen name of Emperor Yu (ゆう帝)

With Weekly Shonen Jump being the trendsetting magazine that it was, it wasn't long until competitors began copying Torishima's winning formula and entire magazines dedicated to games were also beginning to appear on shelves. These magazines were fully staffed where as Famicom Shinken was worked on by only three or four employees at a time, and were able to push the discovery of cheats and techniques to a whole new level in addition to providing reviews from a larger pool of players. Having felt that he had already pushed his writing staff's capabilities to their limit, Torishima decided a different approach was necessary: instead of covering games that were already on store shelves, Jump would teach it's young readers how games were made.

 

Yuji Horii and [[Koichi Nakamura]] had already begun development on the original {{DQ}} in November of 1985, with Torishima hearing of the project thanks to his working relationship and friendship with Horii. The game was still in it's conceptual form but Torishima convinced his superiors that the exclusive coverage would be worth taking the risk of dedicating pages to an unreleased title, and to sweeten the deal he used his authority as Toriyama's editor to assign him the responsibility of illustrating the game. As Toriyama was under a very strict contract with Shueisha that stipulated that his work could only be printed in periodicals published by the company, this guaranteed that Famicom Shinden would have the best coverage of the game by including his illustrations alongside the written articles.

 

The first world would first learn of ''Dragon Quest'' in the pages of the eleventh issue of Jump, February 11 1986, showing the prototype of the title screen, an explanation of the game's nature as an RPG, as well as several screenshots of towns and battles, all accompanied by Toriyama's artwork. Jump would continue to feature exclusive content about the game until it's release on May 27 1986 and publish a strategy guide as well, with Shueisha circumventing the digital publishing rights of [[Enix]] thanks to a contract with Horii.

 

 

 

 

Torishima had become editor-in-chief of Weekly Shonen Jump by the early 90's, and sought to create an entire magazine dedicated to covering video games in a way that the handful of pages allotted to him in a given issue of Jump could not. After a false start in 1990 that was tied up in copyright complications, the first issue of [[V Jump|V Jump magazine]] would hit store shelves in July of 1993. The cover art was provided by Toriyama, featuring several ''Dr. Slump'' characters cosplaying as heroes and villains from {{DQ2}}.

File:Toriyama the hero and Torishima the demon king.png|Toriyama depicting his artist/editor relationship with Torishima in a playful way