Akira Toriyama's Bird Studio building is being demolished

Pictures have surfaced showing Bird Studio, the studio and company of the late Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, being taken down and demolished little by little. It's sad news. I guess it's probably not as sad as when we first found out that Toriyama passed away, but in my words, "it's just another brick onto that house."

Before getting into what this does and doesn't mean, it helps to understand what Bird Studio was, because it was never the kind of operation many people might picture.

Bird Studio was Akira Toriyama's company, not a big corporation

The easiest way I can explain it is to compare it to how my own work is set up. I have a company name, there are assets under that company, and I work for that company. That's how it was with Akira Toriyama. Bird Studio was his company, and he was the person working for it.

It wasn't a place with a bunch of employees running around like a corporation such as Toei or Shueisha. That's not what it was. It was mostly Toriyama himself with some other people, especially later in his career. He may have had a couple of contracted employees at one time, but as far as we know, it was him working with Toei and Shueisha. Based on everything we know about how he worked, we don't have any reason to believe otherwise.

Toriyama worked from home and by email on Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest

Once Toriyama retired from doing full time manga, he primarily worked from home and communicated through email. From what we understand, whenever he did something, whether it was one shots, work for video games like Dragon Quest, art for projects like Blue Dragon, or new designs for Dragon Ball projects after the original run of the manga, he did it from his home.

Toriyama never went into Shueisha other than way back when he first started, and he didn't go into Toei at all in a working sense. I'm sure he's been there, but he wasn't a creator like some other showrunners. Once email became something everybody had at home, that's how he worked. He would draw on his tablet, submit his work, and answer questions by email. The Dragon Quest 30th anniversary documentary that came out in Japan, which I believe was about 10 years ago now, went into how Toriyama worked. So Bird Studio was never some giant skyscraper.

The Bird Studio building appears uninhabited and is coming down

The unfortunate truth is that since Toriyama's passing, the building seems to be uninhabited, and now it's being taken down. I'm not sure if it's going to be rebuilt, but I doubt it will be. The place where he used to work is, little by little, being demolished.

It's unfortunate because so many wonderful things were created there over the years. No one is going to work out of that building anymore. It was Toriyama's place, and seeing it come down is another acknowledgement of his passing and another sign that he's gone.

Why Bird Studio is being torn down is uncertain

I want to make this clear: the actual reason this is happening now is uncertain. We don't know anything about what Toriyama left behind for his family in his will. We don't know who's controlling his assets or his estate. Presumably it's his son, but there hasn't been any information on that.

Japanese culture is different from the West in that there's a lot more respect around these things. Whatever happened with his family after Toriyama's passing is going to stay with his family. You're not going to have tabloids trying to dig up information about who's fighting for his estate or whether there are any issues with it. There probably aren't, but it's between his family, and they're the ones who decide all of this. Someday we may find out why Bird Studio is being taken down here in the fall of 2026, but until we do, I don't think it's wise to speculate, because ultimately it doesn't matter all that much.

Bird Studio may live on as a trust for Toriyama's children

Toriyama's family aren't the gatekeepers of the future of Dragon Ball in the sense of writing more stories. But there are bigger things at stake, and that would be what happens to the company itself. Even though the building may be getting torn down, the company may exist as a trust for his children. That's more of a financial topic than I have room to get into here.

I think the entity known as Bird Studio is probably going to stay open indefinitely, maybe for a generation or two. There's always going to be more Dragon Ball coming out, and Toriyama's family and his estate keepers are going to get paid a portion of it, whether that's video games, anime, merchandise or movies. Presumably that money goes into Bird Studio and then gets distributed to the family.

No word yet on Dragon Ball's future from Toriyama's family, Toyotaro or Akio Iyoku

It's been almost three years now, and we still have no update on what's going to happen with the Dragon Ball story or the manga. Nobody has officially said Toyotaro is going to continue it, and nobody has said anything otherwise. Toyotaro has been talking about coming back on social media, but there are no details.

If you've read something stating that someone knows, they're lying to you, because no statement has been made by Toriyama's family or by Akio Iyoku about future Dragon Ball stories. Presumably Toyotaro will be involved, along with Akio, I'm sure. But there have been no statements from his family about anything, and you're probably not going to hear one. They keep these things to themselves, and how this works is nobody's business.

A reminder that Akira Toriyama is gone

It's the end of an era. That era already ended when Toriyama passed, but this is a reminder of it. He's gone, and this is where he worked.

With another passing earlier today as well, I'm reminded why I always say to take care of yourself and each other. We're only here temporarily. We're not going to be here forever, and no one is immortal. So I'll say it again: take care of yourself and each other.