Yoshitaka Amano

static shots, but.

And the way like the, like in, let's say the, for instance, the intro, um, the intro, uh, pixel intro that they do kind of reminds me of like if you were to pixelate Yoshitaka Amano's like artwork into these thin pixelated like you know characters and such and have them like it just kind of felt like an HD 2D version of what Yoshitaka Amano would have like drawn and in Final Fantasy.

I think that's the vibe I get from that when you see the Magitek armors and you see all those other things.

It's so cool looking.

And as a kid who had played, like, Mario games and Zelda games, when I saw Final Fantasy, when I saw them playing it, to me it looked like Zelda II or the original Zelda where, you know, oh, you have this character walking around this map.

And then I saw them get into a battle, and you see these larger-than-life sprites that are designed by Yoshitaka Amano, and they were perfectly converted into the 8-bit.

And you've got this cast of characters, and they're fighting these, these enemies, and then they're leveling up and they're getting all these skills and they're going into town and they're buying weapons and they're buying items.

And I was like, "Oh, my gosh, this is amazing.

And you can see who the character designer was.

That was Yoshitaka Amano.

I don't know if my sister has the books.

I might have to get her a couple of them for Christmas.

It's the same thing like Nexka on your list.

Yoshitaka Amano has a very distinctive style.

But I know when he's drawing something from Final Fantasy versus something like Vampire Hunter D.

This is a good point.

So it's in the one, the book that contains The Ice Schooner, Black Corridor, and, like, a short story called Flux.

'Cause I remember that one, 'cause that has this fantastic, I think it's a Yoshitaka Amano cover-

It does

... of Uhlich Skargil...

...

the, uh, yeah, mock-ups of the, uh, cards illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano.

Yeah.

Can you tell us a little bit about that, about the, uh, artist for that, Ed? And you could tell us about those cards if you'd like.

I, it's, uh, Shamrock and Loki, and, uh, I don't know exactly what Yoshitaka Amano has done, but he was interviewed in, I believe it was the, uh, Monochrome Time in one of the Color Walks.

Yes.

You're right.

Yoshitaka Amano-

We are leaving the kinetic energy behind and stepping into the macabre, the gothic, and the unexplained.

And you cannot discuss the gothic atmosphere of 80s anime without immediately confronting the monumental influence of artist Yoshitaka Amano.

His character designs are just unmistakable.

Ethereal gaunts.

It works because the roughness adds to the grit of the wasteland.

How so?

Translating Amano's incredibly delicate, wispy linework into standard animation cells is notoriously difficult.

The animators couldn't make it perfectly fluid, so they leaned into heavy shadows and stark, high-contrast lighting.