Customer Reviews

The Art of Yoshitaka Amano: Hiten (Japanese Language Text)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an art book, so it's basically all pictures. Most of it is rich, full-color paintings, and if you're not familiar with Yoshitaka Amano's work, it's a mixture of Anime and Western Fantasy style artwork, done with the intensity of a serious artist. Great stuff!

"Hiten" offers a huge selection-close to 100 plates-of vibrant images. I can never tire of examining and immersing myself in each dreamscape. His figures are just the right combination of reality and fantasy...to sum it up...it's gorgeous!!

To put it simply, Hiten is superb. To put it less simply, Hiten is a book filled with brilliant, shimmering examples of the mastermind fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano. Within each painting are details abounding, with more noticed at every examination. The art doesn't always make sense, but it doesn't have to . . . it is fantasy, and fantasy is the imagination. And surely, very surely, anyone who takes the time to completely absorb the book will have their imagination occupied for more than the instance it takes to browse the pages.

I do not believe I can actually do justice to Hiten in words, for the adjectives existing in all the vocabularies of all the languages of Earth and beyond could never be that adequate. And so, I can only go back to the heart and soul of fantasy, a piece of which is within Hiten: The Art of Yoshitaka Amano

I want so very badly to give this book 5 stars. Particularly, the excellent picture on page 62 from the 1985 movie Tenshi no Tamago (Angel's Egg) is reason enough to buy this book. Which brings us to the problem. This book is paperback, and as far as I know, no hardcover version exists. This book is definately still worth owning, its just that I personally worry about the longevity of a paperback book and also its place in a collection of works by Amano.