Blog, April 22

About the Space Battleship Yamato art book

It has been a month since the release of my Space Battleship Yamato art book. I’m very happy to receive generally positive comments from those who have picked it up.

I thought it would be almost impossible for me to publish an art book through a publisher. I’m like a late-comer to the manga world, and I’m not particularly popular nor have my works sold well, so I thought it would be enough to compile my illustrations in a doujinshi, and I’ve published several so far. But then, in November of last year, Hideaki Anno contacted me and said, “We’re going to do the 50th anniversary of Yamato, so I want to publish art books by both you and Tamamori-san.” That’s when things started to change.

From then on, I helped out with not only the art book but also the 50th anniversary project, including tracking down the scattered original manuscripts of Yamato manga by Yuki Hijiri.

Last year, I was busy with the design work for 3199, and I couldn’t draw a serialized manga, so I made a doujinshi for the 50th anniversary of Yamato with Kiyo-san at the summer Comiket.

The editorial department at Kadokawa was also slow, so there were times when we didn’t do anything for several months. Initially, we were aiming to release it in October 2024, the month of the 50th anniversary, but we couldn’t do it within the year, so we aimed for the end of March. We had to make it in time for the Anniversary Exhibition no matter what! With this new determination, I persuaded the hesitant editorial department, who said with a smile, “We don’t want to publish a book at the end of the fiscal year because we’re busy,” and got to work.

I considered two designers as candidates and asked one of them to work with me who happened to frequent Kadokawa. When I got to know him, I found him to be a nice guy who was honest and loved manga, but he wasn’t the type to push his own design ideas forward. He was different from me, the type who wanted to have a session with other talents. On the other hand, the editorial department thought he was a good person for project because he would do what we asked him to do rather than assert himself. And that ability was a great help in the latter half of the art book editing.

While I respected the opinions and ideas from the designers, I ended up proposing many of the basics of the book design, so it wasn’t the experience I was looking forward to, where I would have someone treat me with a completely different sensibility, and that left me a little disappointed.

(Below are some layouts I proposed)

Of the illustrations I’ve done in the past, those from 2005 onward still have line drawings on paper, but the coloring has been digital, so since around 2015 I’ve been slowly correcting the sketches and coloring whenever I have free time, and although it wasn’t in preparation for this art book, it was a great help.

On top of that, I had skipped some drawings that were quite time-consuming, or rather, poorly done and needed to be revised, so I was revising those drawings from the end of last year until the end of February.

For example, this picture.

My drawings of the Yamato crew at the beginning of the 2199 manga series were terrible in many ways, so I revised all the line drawings and increased the resolution from 350dpi to 600. I enlarged the old color data and layered it on top to revise it without changing the old atmosphere. There are also other examples where if I had made corrections, the picture would have become something completely different!

In addition to these examples, I made detailed changes to most of the pictures that were published. Because of this, the only completely new works are the cover art and the picture of Teresa on the double page spread.

I was originally supposed to have finished by the beginning of February this year, but I was busy with major art surgery and couldn’t finish in time, so I ended up not submitting the work until the end of February, two weeks before the opening of the exhibition. I apologize and thank the editorial department for accommodating this.

The person who was really supportive was Mr. Occhi, who is often criticized in the manga editing industry. But with his many years of experience, he was a strong ally, managing the progress, negotiating with the printing company, and opening up the schedule. It’s a job that a younger editor wouldn’t have been able to do. He was the former editor in charge of my 2199 manga, and he was caught up with various troubles when the series was suspended, and he got the blame, so he was transferred to a subsidiary. But in a way, I felt that he was doing a job that would help him restart his career as an editor.

Once the composition of the art book and the pictures were ready, aside from any additions or corrections, I showed it to Mr. Anno for his input. That process began around the start of the year. As an editorial team, we also consulted with Yamato rights holders to get the OK for the content, and negotiated whether we could publish Yamato parody-like pictures that I had drawn for doujinshis.

I got a good response from Takeshi Nogami and Icarus Publishing, but surprisingly, I got a NO from the Kadokawa Group’s Dengeki series Eromanga Sensei and Media Factory’s Girls und Panzer, which I also serialized myself. A bit disappointing.

Anyway, Mr. Anno said, “You’ve covered almost all of Yamato‘s art!” so I passed the supervision with a smile and finished the draft. I also received a recommendation for the obi. However, Occhi went ahead without me and made adjustments to the design and decided which parts to emphasize, so I was not satisfied with the finished product. If I was writing an article introducing a food dish and said “It’s delicious, so eat it!” without conveying the impression or emotion I got from the dish, it would have been a complete failure as a food review, but they designed it that way.

I proceeded with the color proofing in parallel with the submission of the illustrations. At first, I thought the color draft was close to my image, but in fact the black was too strong, and the pictures looked crushed or muddy, especially in the darker pictures with space in the background.

I tried to make adjustments as much as possible by reproofing, and there were some things that would have required redoing the printing, but with the release date approaching, there was a limit to this and I gave up. There were some pages where the colors were not as I had hoped (for example, the clouds in the background of the cover look dark and plain, but in fact they are painted with very fine shading and expression).

I have regrets like that, but I think I did my best in the limited time. Looking back at my work, I wish I had drawn more pictures with backgrounds. I like drawings with backgrounds, but due to time constraints, advertising, and commercialization, the characters became the main focus. That’s a shame.

Yamato is set in outer space, so the background becomes an endless sea of stars, but that’s just an excuse, and I can’t deny that my image is poor. I don’t think I draw pictures that can be used as examples for others, but I still feel a little sorry and embarrassed for the people who buy and look at them.

I was given the opportunity by Mr. Anno to publish a Yamato art book, and I think it was a big turning point in the sense that I was able to reflect on it for the future. His plan is to also release a digital version, so at that time he wants to include illustrations that were not published due to page count constraints, and we may have to make some additions and revisions.

I’m working with the editorial department to resume the 2199 manga serialization from May once the design work for 3199 has settled down, and I will continue to work hard. Thank you for your support.

At the Yamato Lecture talk events at LOFT9 Shibuya on May 11th and Loft PlusOne West in Osaka on July 26th, I will be discussing the art book with guests Shinji Nishikawa and Ryo Kudo Ryo, offering commentary and insights.

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