I like the Final Fantasy games a lot. So many rogue knights helping out fractured royal families and then, for no reason: a dragon! But I like the concept art that Yoshitaka Amano did better. It's so beautiful and graceful. He mixes together medieval fantasy shit with Japanese shit and comes up with things that it's hard to understand how he thought it up. How you do dat Yoshitako? If you like pretty drawings this is a good book for you to have. - Nick Gazin...
[more]
Finally what Vampire Hunter D fans have been yearning for - a set of figures based on renowned Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano’s illustrations within Hideyuki Kikuchi’s classic and legendary Vampire Hunter D series. The figurine set is based on the novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi that has gone from cult classic to become an international sensation, Vampire Hunter D has spawned a manga series and two animated feature films that have all captured the imagination of vampire fanatics around the world. But none has done so more than the original novels that held the fantastical and utterly creative imagery of artist Yoshitaka Amano. This set of three PVC figures are based on the characters from the first novel which became the story for the first...
[more]
Once more into the breach with Hideyuki Kikuchi’s prolific vampire hunter, although for this installment, D’s adventure comes in aggregate. For the series’ tenth volume, Vampire Hunter D: Dark Nocturne, a trio of short stories is on offer, attempting to distill the franchise’s essence into potent yet delicious cocktails. With most of the previous volumes clocking-in under 200 pages, rarely have the D books felt overly lengthy and in need of serious trimming; rather, I’ve usually found myself wanting just a few extra chapters, fleshing out characters, concepts, and allowing for more vivid imagery. So then it’s curious that these three brief tales manage to hit something of a sweat spot, displaying relatively ideal mixtures of exposition...
[more]
Pale Fallen Angels was originally the ninth of the Vampire Hunter D novels, but its first two books, which total 295 pages, compose the 11th volume released by Dark Horse Books. (The second two books of this four-book story will compose the 12th volume, which is due out in the U.S. in March.) Although the main gimmick in the plot – that D is working for a Noble this time, rather than hunting him – marks a dramatic departure from previous novels in the series, the story content, execution, and style remain typical of what has been seen in previous novels. That is both the novel's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. As has generally been the case in earlier novels, writer Hideyuki Kikuchi is at his best when describing exotic...
[more]
In the early 1980s, writer Hideyuki Kikuchi, heavily inspired by the 1958 American movie Horror of Dracula, penned the first of a long line of Vampire Hunter D novels, two of which would eventually be made into anime movies. The first, an iconic 1985 movie based on the seminal novel, is one of those anime movies that nearly any anime fan whose fandom dates back at least to the '90s has probably seen at some point, as despite its aged technical merits it still stands as a classic tale of a stoic hybrid hero and his battle against the forces of darkness. (And if you are too new to fandom to have ever seen it, Halloween is an ideal time of year to check it out.) Due to the popularity of that movie and its 2000 follow-up, Vampire Hunter D:...
[more]
I first watched Vampire Hunter Dthe 1985 animated workunder the cover of deep night. Lights off, tucked into bed with three pillows propped behind my back, a fleeting sensation of giddiness tingled down my spine as I pressed power on the VCR's remote control and heard the bulky black machine whirl to electronic life. While this wasn't my maiden brush with Japanese animation, it would be the most significant. Like many children of the 1980s, I grew up happily oblivious to the nationalistic origins of the cartoons filling my weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings. I just knew I really liked Voltron, and man, how cool it would be to fly a veritech fighter like Rick Hunter. Why Vampire Hunter D holds such singular importance is because...
[more]
Jean Wacquet, who conceived and edited Worlds of Amano, writes in the forward that Yoshitaka Amano's "work spans the divide between high art and popular culture, destroying, in the process, the numerous barriers between the different forms of graphic expression. In this, Amano is a true popular artist, in the fullest sense of the word." Wacquet says it much better than I ever could, and he makes a perfect introduction to this truly fantastic collection of illustrations. Worlds of Amano takes images from the last thirty years of Amano's career, with many of the illustrations collected in this book for the first time. On every page is something to catch your eye, such as the pale beauty of a face or a bright splash of red. Once you pick...
[more]
Some books simply require supersizing. A good example is Coffin: The Art of Vampire Hunter D. DH Press’ extraordinary slipcovered collection of Yoshitaka Amano’s famous illustrations for Hideyuki Kikuchi’s internationally acclaimed Vampire Hunter D, originally published in Japan in 1997. This superb retrospective of Amano’s paintings and drawings – some created as limited edition prints – of the immortal vampire hunter, is presented in the format of bournd portfolio, with the images stunningly presented, one to a page, on thick glossy paper. The book contains 74 full color illustrations, among them lithographs, silk screens, acrylic, and inks, stylistically varied from the minimal gestural sketches to highly detailed, fully realized ink...
[more]
November 08, 2006: Tale of Genji (Review)
Yoshitaka Amano has been praised around the world for his lush watercolors and evocative work dealing with myth and legend. In The Tale of Genji Mr. Amano brings his considerable talent to retelling one of the most famous of Japanese myths: written by Murasaki Shikibu shortly after 1000 AD and considered by most scholars to be the first novel ever written, The Tale of Genji is the story of the romantic adventures of Genji, the amazingly handsome prince and his many romantic conquests. Told through stunning paintings, Mr. Amano brings this classic story to life for a new generation.The Tale of Genji is a prime example of Amano's stunning art style, which flows across the pages like a meandering brook late in the summer months before the...
[more]
November 01, 2006: Fairies (Review)
In Fairies, Amano turns his attention to fantasy images, invoking colors and patterns reminiscent of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, yet giving each work a unique flavor. Amano’s fairies are refreshing departure from the cloying fairies that have come to permeate Western visual pop culture. His are mysterious, ethereal, evanescent, unknowable. Erotic, yes, in certain paintings, but they’re not remotely earth-bound. The Seiun Award-winning artist seems to believe in old-fashioned visual storytelling in which the frightening and unknown remain just that. His goblins and changelings have none of the anthropomorphic domestication we usually see at work in Disney cartoons and the like. Not every frightening fantasy creature can or should be tamed....
[more]
September 01, 2006: Fairies (Review)
Excerpts: The strength of Amano's work lies in the way he traipses between boundaries, borrowing pieces from aesthetics that are classically "East" or "West," "illustration" or "fine art," "painting" or "drawing." As such, it only seems natural that Amano would turn his attention to beings said to live in such a liminal zone, on the edges of dream, myth, and reality: fairies. Fairies exhibits Amano's interpretations of various fey creatures from Western mythology, primarily that of the British Isles--including the well-known cadre from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. What emerges may have roots in Celtic legend, but the imposition of Amano's particular aesthetic results in the creation of something entirely new. The same could...
[more]
May 01, 2006: Fairies (Review)
Looking at the incredible complexity of the images in Yoshitaka Amano's new art book, it's hard to believe he got his start creating characters for anime and games (Gatchaman and Final Fantasy VII, just to name a couple). In Fairies, his delicate designs and powerful contrasts of color and shape imbue Celtic myths with primordial power, evoking the same fear and wonder that the stories held when they were first told. The pictures themselves run the gamut from seductive to grotesque--on one page, the Fairy Queen Titania and her court revel amid moonlit flowers; on another, a spider-like boggart haunts a farmer's home. The ornate detail, smooth, sweeping lines and extreme lack of three-dimensionality give the art a disturbing sense of...
[more]
