Deva Zan was no ordinary project for me as an editor. If I were to start from a personal level, I’m of the generation whose first exposure to Japanese pop culture was the anime Speed Racer. You might not associate Yoshitaka Amano’s ethereal style as an illustrator with the manic demon on wheels, but at age fifteen Amano was already working at Tatsunoko, Speed Racer’s studio, during the production of the show. So even if I didn’t know his name back then, I’m amazed to think that Amano-sensei has been there from the very beginning of my life as a fan.
In the 1980s, I first experienced Amano’s dual nature as an illustrator of action and vision through the original anime version of Vampire Hunter D, as well as his collaboration with Mamoru Oshii (later to gain worldwide fame for Ghost in the Shell), Angel’s Egg. That same duality of action and vision, the warrior who fights in hope of enlightenment as well as victory, is very much on display in his debut novel, Deva Zan. It’s a project Amano has been developing for years, but the Dark Horse illustrated novel that’s about to hit stores is his first full expression of it.
There is a long tradition in fantasy-adventure stories of the warrior with a philosophical bent, but the stakes are much, much higher for Zan, the novel’s eponymous hero. We first meet him as a veteran of the Boshin War, the last stand of the old samurai order against a modernizing Japan in the nineteenth century. Zan is already traumatized from the slaughter, yet he is desperately needed to fight again, this time in the ultimate of lost causes—the struggle against the universe’s annihilation by entropy. To have any hope, Zan must reforge himself as a samurai, and be no longer just a butcher, but a warrior possessed of self-understanding, who knows why and how he should fight.
Deva Zan, then, truly fulfills Amano’s intent to fuse elements of Asian spiritualism (the novel touches upon Hindu and Buddhist as well as bushido concepts) with epic, dimension-spanning adventure. The novel is illustrated with over two hundred of Amano’s paintings—and I was lucky enough to see all the originals! In this digital age, it’s not every day I get to handle the artist’s own work, and that’s especially true with Japanese creators. But Amano-sensei sent Dark Horse several boxes of paintings to include in Deva Zan—work that was done on everything from poster board to delicate rice paper. Of course, we gave everything back, ^_^ but we had to wheel out the boxes on a cart, and the shipping department built a custom crate to ensure the safe return of the artwork.
You’ll find the Deva Zan illustrated novel is a somewhat more convenient way to experience Yoshitaka Amano’s art, as well as his words. As we’ve said, over his multidecade career, Amano has illustrated hundreds of books by other authors, but Deva Zan is the first one for which he’s done both story and art. I think you will find that the qualities for which his art achieved international renown—mystery, verve, wonder, elegance—are to be found in his writing as well. Dark Horse is honored to publish Deva Zan, a new stage in the work of a great Japanese creator.
—Carl Gustav Horn
Editor