THE ART OF KATSUHIRO OTOMO by Jeremy Mark Robinson This is a book about the genius Japanese artist Katsuhiro Otomo (b.
1954).
Best-known for the Akira manga of 1982-90 and the Akira movie of 1988, Otomo is also an all-round artist who writes fiction, writes and directs short and feature movies, produces commercial art, and design projects.
Among Otomo's works are the movies Steam-Boy, Mushishi, Metropolis, Memories and Roujin Z, and manga such as Domu, The Legend of Mother Sarah, Hansel and Gretel and Sayonara Japan.
The works of Otomo have been celebrated with awards - he won the Kodansha Comic-Strip Award in 1984 for Akira, and the Science Fiction Grand Prix Award in 1983 for Domu.
There are very few genuine auteurs in Japanese animation: the animation industry, like all filmmaking on a large scale, is truly collaborative.
However, you can definitely see elements in the films directed and written and supervised by Katsuhiro Otomo that are auteurist: Otomo has his own style, visually, but also his own concerns, thematically, politically and psychologically.
Akira is a giant of a movie that opens at full blast: this movie rocks from shot one.
It really rocks - at a far higher level of intensity than any comparable movie, including all of the classics regularly trotted out as hi-octane movie-making.
Akira is clearly one of those movies where the filmmakers have thrown everything they can think of into the mix, and it's a movie in which the filmmakers have given their all.
Meanwhile, the manga of Akira exceeds all expectations - about storytelling, about what a comicbook or manga is, about how an action-adventure-fantasy story can work in a contemporary setting, and how a story can be genuinely thrilling, genuinely political, genuinely wild and epic.
In short, Akira ticks all of the boxes: (a) it has action and spectacle in spades, (b) it has fascinating characters and situations, (c) it is incredibly exciting, (d) it is very unusual, sometimes downright eccentric and.
| Animation | The animation industry like all filmmaking on a large scale is truly collaborative |
|---|---|
| Otomo that are auteurist | Otomo has his own style visually but also his own concerns thematically politically and psychologically |
| Akira is a giant of a movie that opens at full blast | This movie rocks from shot one |
| Akira ticks all of the boxes | (a) it has action and spectacle in spades (b) it has fascinating characters and situations (c) it is incredibly exciting (d) it is very unusual sometimes downright eccentric and |
Crescent Moon Publishing The art of katsuhiro otomo, hardcover/jeremy robinson
