RafaStaryStory

Hello Hello Hello! I'm Rafa Stary (StaryStory), happy to be here in Infinite Pony World and drawing ponies! I'm an artist, My two dreams are becoming the official artist for a big visual / audiovisual production and creating a didactic content, see below for Stary Stories and also a post where you can help me in my arts. 

List of Contents

1. Contact
2. Fanart for Stary
3. Stary Pony Archives (2023-2024)
4. Stary Arts for My Little Pony Forum's Users
5. Stary Story (2012-2024)
6. My Tribute to Akira Toriyama, Creator of Dragon Ball (1955-2024)

1. Contact (Links will be added soon)  

Now on the Virtual Internet World

Youtube - Since 10+ Years ago / July 6, 2018 / April 3, 2020

Mary Stary Story - Since 2022 (Under Renovation)

Derpibooru - Since August 21, 2023

My Little Pony Forum - Since September 30, 2023 / October 28, 2023

Pixiv - Since November 20, 2024

Retired

Facebook: 2014 ~ December 2018 ~ March 2020 ~ November 22, 2022 ~ May 25, 2024

Twitter / X: October 2020 ~ April 2022 ~ May 21, 2023 / October 14, 2024

Kanzenshuu Forum: October 29, 2018 ~ October 15, 2024

DeviantArt: February 2, 2017 ~ August 2, 2017 ~ 2019 ~ December 28, 2023 ~ May 26, 2024

Tumblr: December 2022 ~ May 2023

Instagram: January 2020 ~ December 25, 2022 ~ February 25, 2024

Sonic Retro Forum: January 24, 2023 ~ May 26 2023 / April 21, 2024

Discord: 2017 ~ 2020 ~ April 2024 ~ October 10, 2024

Pinterest: 2020 ~ 2021

Reddit: March 11, 2021 ~ 2022

2. Fanart for Stary

Fan art of Pony Mary Stary with a few Dragon Balls made by @Interstellar Sketch, thank you for the fan art and for liking my art!

Extra commentary: even though this fanart was made when Mary's design was already changed, I think it was a good idea that this fanart uses Mary's previous design as reference, as her previous design represents the time when I was a My Little Pony fan, it was probably just a mistake from the artist who couldn't get a reference for her current design, but I still think it was a perfect choice!

3. Stary Pony Archives (2023-2024)

A collection showing all of my pony arts made in 2023 and 2024, covering completed arts, sketches and more! You can see them hehere.

4. Stary Arts for My Little Pony Forum Users

Art requested by @ZiggWheelsManning

Starting from April 2024, I started to run a thread where I received multiple art requests from different users from the forum, all of these arts were made for free, but in October 2024, my support for this thread ceased, a total of 21 arts were made, you can view the thread and the arts here.

5. Stary Story (2012-2024)

Art showing the Evolution of Mary Stary's design. ☆ From Left to Right: 1. Kid Maria Stary (2020-2022) 2. Adult Maria Stary (Late 2022-September 2023) 3. 1st Redesigned Mary Stary (October 2023-July 2024) 4. Current Mary Stary (Since August 2024)

A detailed chronology telling my journey on the internet, from 2012 to 2024, mostly focused on the artistic side and My Little Pony. Originally written on June 18 for this topic's reply, this version features corrections and additions covering the second half of 2024, where I stopped being a MLP fan.

1- Cartoons & MLP (2012-2014)

In 2012, I used to watch all kinds of cartoons, at the time, there was the boom of My Little Pony and Ponies, and i just couldn't avoid not looking at them, they were the very first 2D characters that I thought that looked cute and beautiful, the art style just caught my attention, then I started watching videos about it on Youtube and I got, well, obsessed with Ponies, but I never watched the show for some reason, I just can't explain why, I don't think it was because it was made for girls and I didn't wanted my parents to discover it, my parents were already aware of it and they had no problems with it, so it's weird, I'll never remember why I avoided watching it, but I loved the characters and watching clips and crazy edits about them on Youtube. But then after 2014, I just moved on from MLP, not exactly because I stopped liking the ponies or anything, but simply because a lot of new cartoons started to show up at the time, they just got my attention and eventually made me forgot about MLP, here, my relationship with MLP takes a long break and only returns a decade later. During this time, I used to only make traditional drawings.

2- Cartoons & Looney Tunes (2015-August 2017)

In 2016, I started making digital art for the first time, I used to post my art on Deviantart, it was mostly about the cartoons I liked, specially Looney Tunes, that was because at the time I had my very first American/Foreigner friend (Nikki Roessler), she loved Looney Tunes too, so we decided to create our own Looney Tunes characters, her OC was inspired by Road Runner, while my oc was basically just Daffy Duck but brown (I remember it was supposed to be orange, but I used to color him brown for some reason) and wearing a hat. I believe he was my very first oc of all time, if I had a oc before him, then I don't remember. 

My account was “OmegaFastTunes” on DeviantArt, you can still see it here.

My oc "Rafa Duck" and Nikki Roessler's oc "Nikki Runner", made on February 2, 2017.

3- Sonic Interval (August 2017)

After a while, I just forgot about Looney Tunes and a few other cartoons I really liked at the time, for the same reasons as MLP. I was still a huge Sonic fan, so all my content was based on Sonic. It was in this year that started to upload my first Youtube videos, they were all gameplays of a few Sonic hacks (the videos and the channel don't exist anymore), here, I made my second oc, and well…he was again just a already existing character but a bit different, but he was worse than “Rafa Duck”, he was “Sonails the Foxehog” (yes), a poorly made fusion of Sonic and Tails, he barely existed for 2 months (I wonder why).

My account was “Rafa Fast” (my original name before Rafa Stary), you can still see it here.

Sonails the Foxehog, made on August 27, 2017.

4- Back to Dragon Ball (September 2017-November 2018)

In August 2017, the new Dragon Ball anime, Dragon Ball Super, was finally released internationally, I used to be a Dragon Ball fan during the run of Kai in the early 2010's, but when the show stopped airing on Cartoon Network, I just forgot about the franchise (exactly the same as MLP), and I just wasn't aware about the release of the two new movies in 2013 and 2015, so I just really returned to it when Super premiered on Cartoon Network in the middle 2017, and since then, Dragon Ball has been my all time favorite franchise (well, actually it was alongside with Sonic until 2023, then alongside MLP until the middle of 2024, now it's just DB)

Starting from this point, everything I did was based on Dragon Ball with a bit of Sonic. I created a 3rd oc, unfortunately I lost the very few drawings I did of him, but he was basically just a red haired Saiyan that I created in the Xenoverse video game. So, with this, my arts went through a drastic change, a change that already started back with my Sonic drawings in the previous month, but it was with Dragon Ball that I pretty much completely abandoned the more Cartoonish art style seen in my 2016/early 2017 drawings, and adopted the more Asian / Manga / Anime-ish style that I still use to this day.

5- Sonic Kawaiiverse (December 2018-September 2019)

With the change in my art style due to Dragon Ball, I had an idea, since at the time I got back my interest in female characters again, I decided to make my “own series”, where I pretty much transformed the Sonic characters into anime girls, yes, decided to call it “Kawaiiverse”, I did a lot of drawings about it and almost a full comic, but I never finished it. It was with this project that I started posting my arts on Facebook, my old friends there started to really like it, and with this, I started to slowly meet other artists for the first time, that was new to me as the only artist I interacted with before was Nikki Roessler in 2016, so Kawaiiverse was pretty much what opened the doors to the world of artists for me.

Unfortunately, I deleted my facebook account where I posted all of the drawings from this period, meaning that all of them are completely lost, my DeviantArt with these drawings was also lost.

6- Maria Stary (October 2019-April 2020)

When July 2019 arrived, my previous old Tablet broke, I couldn't draw digitally anymore, so I could draw traditionally only, which really sucked for me at the time. Meanwhile, I met a girl, she was very fun and made my days of no Tablet or Internet really happy, we quickly became friends, her name? Was Maria, exactly, by this point, I technically had no oc, that Xenoverse oc was abandoned, and all of “my characters” at the time were just anime girl versions of Sonic characters, so Maria gave me the idea of finally, after 3 years of unoriginal ocs, creating a actual original oc. So I started drawing on paper, designs for my new girl oc, then it was in October 2019 where I got a design concept for her that I would use for her final design til this day, a Girl with blonde hair, I also decided to call her Maria, because of my friend, as for her surname, I was deciding between Astroy and Stary, which are just the words “Astro” and “Star” with a “y” in the ending (such creativity hehe), I ended up using both, but only “Stary” survived.

My very first finalized concept drawing of Maria, made on October 4, 2019.

In March 2020, Maria finally got her final design, which got a lot of inspiration from the character “Maria Robotnik”, from, you got it, the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise. The Star symbol is a reference to the stars in the Dragon Balls. One of the first ideas for Maria's character was that she was going to be a girl of “luck and wishes”, another reference to the Dragon Balls, as they are also related to luck and wishes.

In April, I released my own story for Maria, which was basically a “video comic”, followed by a short easter special. Unlike how it was with my previous ocs, who only lasted for a few months, Maria (now Mary) is still with me to this day, for 4 years ^^

Maria's original final design, made on April 4, 2020.

7- War (May 2020-October 2022)

So far, things apparently looked really good for me for 7 years, but here is where the problems start, the beginning of what I consider to be the worst years of my life on the Internet, the latter half of 2020, and the complete 2021 & 2022 years. Unfortunately, it was so problematic, the hell of a bad and traumatic experience, that I really, genuinely prefer to not talk about how things played out, I really don't like to talk about it, it's all past now and all that matters for me now is that I got everything behind me and I learned from this experience and now I feel much better. But to not let this part of the story completely blank, I'll try to tell what happened in this period, but very vaguely, without any details. 

Basically, I started becoming sort of a popular artist on facebook in May 2020, as said previously, I started to meet other artists in 2019, but it was essentially in May 2020 that I joined the artist community, where I met and interacted with a lot of them etc, in the beginning, everything was looking good and fime, but then, as the months passed, some artists started to act really strange, showing very strange behavior between others, this culminated into something that I like to call as “Artist Wars”, I started to notice this by the end of 2021, a lot of artists and their fans were against other artists and their fans, with some trying to take down others, doing things like trying to discourage others from posting their arts, you know, bad things. Unfortunately, I participated in this “war”, this was in 2022, some really good friends supported me but a lot of people and specially artists attacked me as well, 

The climax of this “war” was in March-May 2022, when two Artists with a lot of fans joined forces to knock me out. I was one of the artists who got the worst of this situation, I was too naive at the time, so a lot of these bad things happened because I was simply too dumb.

After May 2022, the war cooled down, with each artist and their fans going into a corner, in this period of June-October 2022 I would say that an "Artist Cold War" occurred, as there were no longer conflicts and things like that, but there was a lot of tension between everyone behind the cameras and the chance of another battle occurring was big. A lot of friendships were broken and many artists gave up sharing their work because of this, at least on Facebook. It was truly a scary, devastating and specially, a sad situation, a lot of very unfair stuff happened to me and many of those artists. I had to delete my account (meaning that I lost a lot of my drawings as well). 

By the end of 2022, I created my new account, even though I still had some friends who supported me in the war, very good friends, I preferred to just cut off my contact with them, i think it was the right decision to be made. All of this traumatized me a lot and would still take some time for me to get over it.

8- Post War (November 2022 - June 2023)

By the end of 2022, I created a new account, so I could restart everything, with new friends, etc, I changed my name to Rafa Stary (I said in another thread that it was in 2023, sorry, I misremembered it, it was in November 2022 and not in 2023), I was prepared for a new beginning, created my blog, started to make more content for my Youtube channel, even changed Mary's design a bit, by making her into a adult. 

One of the drawings of Mary's first adult design, made on July 5, 2023.

But I just couldn't fool myself, I was still very impacted by the war, the damage disturbed me a lot during the first half of 2023.

I was clearly scared and weak, I wasn't confident about my art, I tried to expand my work to other internet places such as Twitter and Instagram, but I gave up on them just in a few months, my videos on Youtube weren't performing what I expected (they were only music edits and some trivia about soundtracks, my expectations were too high), and worse, I just couldn't make any friends, because of the fear, I didn't want to trust anyone, everything was falling for me. One of the artists who joined forces with that other artist in order to destroy me, found my account, and, he wanted to make a peace treaty, I accepted it, and we even tried to be friends and interact with each other, but it just didn't work, I just wasn't comfortable with him around, I didn't trust him, because of that, we just stopped talking to never see each other again. A friend also found my account, but he was quite problematic, so it wasn't easy to deal with him. During this time, I met a american guy (Vinny Morrison), who had very few friends and everyone thought he was a weirdo, I admit I had the same thought in the beginning, but after trying to understand him and learn more about him, I quickly warmed to him and he became the first and only person on the internet in the entire year of 2023 that I felt comfortable having as a friend.

Unfortunately, he was too busy, so he couldn't spend much time with me, but the time we had together was one of the very, very, very, very few good experiences I had in 2023's first semester, because everything else was really sucking to me, even Sonic, my favorite franchise at the time along with Dragon Ball, was disappointing me a lot, that's why I stopped being a fan, I was too depressed so very silly things were really getting into me.

But even with Vinny, it just wasn't enough to help me, I was just getting worse and worse, I just couldn't overcome the damage from the war, that kept me feeling traumatized and paranoiac.

I almost put an end to my arts because of this, I still liked to do them, but I really started to want to stop sharing them on the internet, a few people saw them and praised them, but I couldn't trust their comments, and I wasn't satisfied with my arts, they looked bad for me, I remember making a post where I said this “if I could drop my artist talent just like a Minecraft item, for someone else to take it, I would do it, anyone could give better use for it”, I was truly disappointed and unconfident, and the Advances in AI with art just made me feel even worse, making me think that it evaporated my purpose of doing art.

I started making several reflective posts about life, because I had nothing else to do, I no longer had the courage, power and will to post my art, videos, or to do anything with minimal effort, I was genuinely weak and broken spiritually, and I didn't want to ask for help from my family at all, I didn't want to worry them and waste their time. I really didn't know what to do anymore, I was just lost, with no goal or purpose in my life.

But then, a light at the end of the tunnel emerged, can you guess what it was?

Part 9 - Back to My Little Pony / Joining MLPF (July 2023-August 2024) 

With everything indicating that I was lost, by the end of June, I started to notice a few posts on my facebook feed, they weren't about MLP but they had a few characters from the show in them, and that just made me remember that MLP exists and how I used to be obsessed with it a decade ago, so it was a surprise to me, and at the time, I had the idea of “copying” Vinny Morrison, he was a fan of Sonic and Love Live, and his love for a very “cool” and “manly” series, but also for a “girlish” series really caught my attention, so I wanted to search for my own “girly” show to watch and become a fan, it was one of the very few or maybe the only thing I got myself any excited to do in that terrible time I was. 

So I decided to start watching MLP in July, of course, in the beginning I thought I was going to drop it after 10 episodes because It was too girly and childish, but I ended up being very impressed, and I was really enjoying it a lot, but not only that, the show was making me feel very happy and…hopeful? It was a unexplainable feeling to me, I started to care about the characters so much, loving their interactions and everything, but specially, the Friendship Lessons, I just can't explain how much the ending of those early Seasons episodes impacted me, yes it was cute and all but, it was so heartwarming. I don't think I said this here before, but I felt like if the show wanted to say something to me and touch my spirit, as if I had started watching it at the right time, exactly when I was so depressed and destroyed inside, Pinkie in “Party of One” specially made me look back at myself and how I was almost mirroring the way she acts in that episode.

I was loving it, every episode, but I just couldn't assume myself as a fan yet, but then, it happened, watched “Sisterhooves Social” and that episode just nearly made me cry (or did and I just forgot) the super simple story of two sisters having problems with each other, and in the ending loving each other again, nothing more, nothing wooow, nothing too complex, just a simple story about two sisters having a bad time between them and solving it in the end, with a plot twist that caught me very well, that episode hit my heart in a whole new level, it made me assume to myself that I was a fan, at first, I did think about if showing it to people was a good idea, but I didn't care, just one or two weeks after I started watching it, I was already in Season 2 and sharing everything about MLP in my Facebook profile, I was feeling very happy and satisfied doing that, something I wasn't feeling before I started watching the show, and guess what? I stopped making those posts talking about my life being a waste etc, how my drawings suck, those stuff, I stopped with them, it truly felt like if the show was some sort of a manifestation of a divine light that had the power to take me out from the darkness, because the change was simply instantaneous, I wasn't feeling depressed anymore, it was beautiful.

A drawing of Human Fluttershy, my very first My Little Pony fanart, made on August 6, 2023.

It took me a few months to finish watching it, as nowadays I really take a lot to finish a show, but every time I spent with the show was worth and was helping me a lot, it made me want to post my arts again and specially, made me love them again, I month after I started watching Season 1, I was already making fanart of it.

My love for the series also made me decide to change Maria’s design, some drastic changes would be made to her design mostly because I was no more a Sonic fan, so I decided to make a redesign that takes inspirations from My Little Pony (and more from Dragon Ball as well), with her hair getting messier, a ribbon being added to the left side of her head, and two stars in the two sides of her skirt, there's no more a star in the center of her shirt. The blue parts of her design were also all changed to Pink and Purple, as a reference to MLP.

First drawing for Maria's redesign, made on October 31, 2023.

At the time, I had the courage to interact more and have friends, unfortunately, it took me a while to make that work given how my view was still partially affected by the traumatic events, but I would never understand it if I didn't try, so I had slow start by joining some MLP facebook groups, but maybe the format wasn't the most appropriate for me, so I searched for a alternative, and here we go, MLP forums, but, I started it pretty wrong. I was used to what i saw in other forums (like Kanzenshuu), and for me, everyone was too serious in these forums, showing no sympathy, so unfortunately, when I came here, I thought it would be the same thing, I just really wanted to talk about MLP with someone and nothing more, I wasn't expecting to make any friend here, I didn't think it was possible, unfortunately, it took me a few months to realize that i was wrong, but better late than never! I started to actually try looking at other sections from the forums that weren't just the G5 news/discussion, and I started to notice people being funny, silly, talking regularly and very friendly, it really surprised me, I thought it was exactly the opposite, I remember that at the time, some members tried to act friendly with me, but I just ignored that behavior and acted very serious because I completely unaware of how the site was outside of the serious threads I was usually visiting, so around February I decided to start giving this “side” of the forum a chance, being more friendly and just enjoying it, being just myself and not forcing a serious look.

In my early months on this forum, i was being completely wrong and wasting my time, why I didn't try to explore it from the beginning? The experience I had here on the forum in first half of 2024 was truly amazing, I made 900 posts, interacted with almost everyone, participated in art contests and events, made free arts and even contributed to the community a few times.

Eventually, that behavior would change and decrease. 

Part 10: Loss of Interest in MLP / StaryStory (September 2024-Current)

Unfortunately, some things come to an end, as months passed, I started to lose interest in MLP, as well as my excitement in doing the varied things I used to do in the forum. I started to think that MLP wasn't as amazing as I used to think, all the new feelings that it gave to me were old news and weren't exciting me anymore, while I still like MLP, I stopped loving the series completely by the arrival of September, I stopped making MLP fanarts and my activity on the forum decreased drastically, I've isolated myself a lot as a result of me feeling empty, disappointed with a lot of things, and trying to focus on other things, I almost decided to quit the forum because of this.

Fortunately, I've changed up mind, and I won't be quitting the forum, but things here for me definitely won't be the same as in the first half of 2024, still, I don't regret any of that, all that experience give me truly a amazing experience that made me so happy to the point of forgetting my problems, I truly appreciate that. Unfortunately, now I can't avoid thinking that I still have a lot of problems, and that surely disappoints me. I'm in a new chapter of my life, I need to face these struggles, but I'll still show up here to share my feelings and happy moments, Mary's design has also been changed for the last time, now her Pink Color Palette returned to Blue, but to a more Violet blue, with more details, armbands and multiple stars in the skirt, a new design to represent a new phase.

Final: 

I really apologize for overlooking the importance this place has for me, words aren't enough to describe, this site is still my favorite place to have any online interaction in general, it's always fun to be here, the amount of effort put into it, and specially, how it finally made me find new friends, it made me feel complete again, everyone is so nice, this place lives and it is more than important for me now, it helped me a lot, just like MLP.

Even though I still have a lot of problems nowadays, I'm definitely feeling a lot better now, how i am today just can't be compared how I was in the first half of 2023, I could never expect how the show and the forum would help me so much, made me love sharing my arts again, made me stay positive, I learned a lot, rewatching Dragon Ball in the latter half of that year too also taught me too to not give up and stay strong, so I learned with everything makes me happy, the friendships I made here truly made me walk in a new road.

A decade ago, I couldn't make many friendships because I just didn't know how, so I was already happy enough watching cartoons and playing video games.

3 years ago, I was given the opportunity to make it work, by joining the artist community, but that community had a lot of problems, and I was too dumb to understand them, and I did everything to not lose my followers and friends, and that failed miserably, making me feel traumatized and unable to make any more friendships.

But now, thanks to MLP and the forum, I could see that there was still hope, I'm really glad that this forum exists, I'm glad that FiM helped not only me, but a lot of people to start having bright days, these people always come to the forum to spread fun and smiles, I'm happy that this opportunity is given to everyone, I hope this site continues for eternity! You are always a reason for my days to keep shining! 

I am here, still trying, loving to do what I do, I have friends here, all of this helps me to have more courage, being myself, sharing my stuff, I'm truly grateful for everything, I'm sure this time it's going to be different, I won't commit the same mistakes as I did 3 years ago ever again, I don't want conflicts, I want to just avoid that now, relax, I want to be happy, I want peace, with awesome friends, I can still feel bad for some things, but I am for sure now much stronger than before, I'll not repeat my mistakes, it's all past and what matters is the present and what I'm doing now, and I'm doing a lot!

And this is my journey, I really wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the help from my family, Dragon ball and of course, MLP and my friends from the forum! I'm eternally grateful to everyone!! 

6. My Tribute to Akira Toriyama (1955-2024)

My tribute to Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball, who passed away on March 1, 2024. Written on March 9 for the Mary Stary Story blog.

A few years ago, I was absent for a month in the internet and a friend of mine at the time asked me if it was because of the death of someone famous, I said “no” and that I couldn't imagine myself crying because of the death of someone I never met.

Today I can now imagine it, because it happened, and maybe it will never happen again, because of the unique event it was and how important it is to me. It's like he was a member of my family.

Dragon Ball is one of the franchises that I've known for the longest time in my life, I don't remember when exactly I discovered it, but I remember watching it on Cartoon Network in 2009 when I was just 5 years old, and since that time I was already in love, I remember that before I could watch the Boo saga, the channel had already started airing Kai in place of Z, and whenever the Cell Saga ended I kept asking myself why there wasn't the Boo Saga, because in the video game I had on the PSP there were the characters from this saga, I really wanted to see the complete work, I managed to watch GT in its entirety on another channel, and then Kai's Boo Saga and Super I watched for the first time when they were released internationally in 2017.

 I may have taken a few breaks, but I never stopped being a fan of the series, especially after it returned with the release of the movie “Battle of Gods” in 2013. Since then, I've seen countless arts, videos on YouTube, and even video games, Dragon Ball Xenoverse was one of the games I played the most in my life, and even though I stopped playing video games, Dragon Ball games are one of the only ones that I still check out from time to time.

Toriyama's work is important to me in countless ways, if it weren't for Dragon Ball I don't know where I would be today in relation to the arts, I remember that I was already inspired by Toriyama and Dragon Ball's art style in my early years from school, the artistic evolution I had for more than 10 years, completely inspired by Toriyama's work.

2023 was one of the worst years for me, mainly because I started to not like my arts anymore, I didn't stop doing them but I saw them negatively, I no longer felt love for them, and I started to think that I didn't deserve to have such good skills, everything got worse when the AIs got improved, and that's when I felt totally irrelevant, a total waste and that my arts had no more value, it was a very complicated time.

At the end of 2023 I started to rewatched all of Dragon Ball in order, until the end of Super, and that's when I started to change for the better, seeing that amazing art and world all over again, it excited me, I redid my original character's design, and I started loving my arts again, nowadays I draw them and they make me happy, I'm interested again in writing stories, paying homages to manga panels, making jokes, etc., it's really enjoyable, I don't think I'm perfect, I've already made a lot of mistakes, but I will always try to do my best.

Not only I draw nowadays because of Dragon Ball, but I also listen to music because of Dragon Ball, it was from the works of Hironobu Kageyama and Shunsuke Kikuchi that I started to care so much about soundtracks, I always listen to at least one song of Dragon Ball per day, to the point that I memorized all the BGMs of DB & DBZ.

When I was introduced to Dragon Ball I didn't know that it came from Japan, I only found out about it much later, honeslt I've never read another manga that isn't Dragon Ball, and I've watched very few anime in my life, like Pokemon and Naruto, I think they're good, but none of them I kept watching and they didn't even come close to impacting me like Dragon Ball did, there's something special about Toriyama's work that I don't think can be described through words, of course, the Nostalgia factor is always strong, but when it comes to Dragon Ball, I feel like it goes beyond.

Many like Dragon Ball for the fights, violence, and these are incredible elements of the series, but they aren't the main reasons for why I love the series so much, I love this series because of the adventures, the characters, the world, the moments, they are everything that make this series so rich and alive for me.

Dragon Ball is a light, happy, a simple work, something that I read and watch to smile even in its saddest moments like deaths and sacrifices, it doesn't make me angry, Dragon Ball makes me me feel like a kid again, a unique feeling, and my childhood is something I really miss, Dragon Ball is a life experience, I like other series, films and comics too, but I'm sure that only Dragon Ball would be greatly missed by me if it simply disappeared, this series, its characters, its lessons and moments that have been repeated countless times were already part of me long before writing this, Dragon Ball is essential to my life.

Akira Toriyama was more than a man, I look at this and for me it's hard to believe that he was a human being like us, but in Dragon Ball, even mortals surpass the Gods, and for me Toriyama did the same, I admit that outside of Dragon Ball, I haven't seen any of his other work, I've never checked out Dr. Slump or Sandland, and even though I plan to check them out, I don't think that to be a fan of Toriyama you need to see everything he made, everyone is a fan in its own way, just the fact that people who have never touched the series know the names Goku and Dragon Ball or even Kamehameha, is already an excellent way to demonstrate its importance to the world, he did more than just a simple comic series for boys, he was responsible for the growth of a culture, at least for me, it is extremely difficult to imagine how the world of not only anime and manga but also Japanese culture would be without Dragon Ball, it is extremely difficult to imagine, how I would be today without Dragon Ball.

As much as I think that many good things that exist today in this series would not be possible without other talents such as the Toei Animation's team, Takao Koyama, Kazuhiko Torishima, not to mention that for me, the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z Animes are better than the manga, it is simply undeniable that none of this would be possible without Toriyama, he could have stopped whenever he wanted, given up sooner, but he preferred to continue working tirelessly for more than 10 years without rest, simply unbelievable.

When I say that he was more than a man, it's because as a simple human being, he was also good and an example of a person, at the same time that he became this icon, this is not something that everyone can carry.

He only had 2 goals, to make a series that would make children happy, and to have a peaceful life, and he achieved it, in fact, the results were greater than he expected.

It breaks my heart that he recently wanted to work on more projects, unfortunately, he won't be able to, but everything that has been delivered is more than enough, this text is not enough to describe how important his work is to my life, on the day his death was announced, I was just in shock and had no reaction because I couldn't believe it, the next day, I finally believed it and I bursted into tears, tears that speak for themselves.

Dragon Ball was already special to me, but after this it will be even more, I don't know how I will look at the series from now on knowing that its creator is no longer in this plane, I will continue checking the new animes, manga chapters, films and games that are released, after all, the creator leaves but his work remains and will be continued by others.

I think nothing will surpass what was done between 1984 and 1995, but as long as they respect Akira Toriyama and what he did, I will accept anything and see it as a great tribute, just as what I do will also be a great tribute to this king.

Maybe I don't use something related to Dragon Ball as a cover image or avatar (I use MLP instead), but that's because I don't need to, because I believe that my arts, my art style, what I do on the internet and even my way of interacting and to speak, they already demonstrate in themselves how much I love this silly story that only had the intention of pleasing Japanese kids, last year I started doing redraws of DB arts replacing the characters with MLP characters, something I started doing just for silly purposes to have fun paying homage to my favorite fictional work of all time, but after that the reason for me making them becomes even stronger!

Not only me but the entire Mortal World which is now regretting this loss, as it loses yet another star, I wish that the Another World is as good as you imagined in the Dragon Ball universe!

I draw because of Dragon Ball

I like animations because of Dragon Ball

I like music because of Dragon Ball

I like creating stories and characters because of Dragon Ball

I created a blog to show all my stuff because of Dragon Ball

I created a YouTube channel because of Dragon Ball

I consider myself an Artist, because of Dragon Ball

All of this wouldn't be possible without Akira Toriyama, Akira Toriyama is Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball is Akira Toriyama.

Thank you very much for everything, master!!! You are not dead! You just left your physical body to have the infinite rest, A Legend is Eternal!!!

- Rafa Stary