Manga king Yoshitaka Amano enjoys a growing reputation on the art gallery circuit.

He is an artist with a mythic status in the world of animation, potent enough to dissolve grown men into dumbstruck, fan-boy puddles. So as the metal black door to the Tokyo studio of Yoshitaka Amano slides open, we wonder what we’ll find: a pale Otaku recluse, perhaps living among the ethereal anime fantasies that have made him famous. 

But the 56-year-old man who comes to greet us in this minimalist concrete and glass building nestled behind the Chinese Embassy in upscale Hiroo is genial and warm, if visibly tired. “I’ve been up all night trying to make a deadline,” he explains, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t like not getting enough sleep but it can’t be helped.” 

The product of his labours is wrapped in cardboard and stacked up around the studio, ready for shipping to the Art Statements Gallery in Hong Kong, where it will go on show next month. After that, exhibitions in Copenhagen, Seoul and the Chinese mainland will keep him working his 12-hour days for months, weekends included.   

“I love to work,” he explains as we sit down for a chat over oolong tea. “When I was a boy I was prone to tonsillitis and colds. If I didn’t draw, I got sick. It became my therapy. My teachers used to scold me for not studying, but you know some people like math, or sport? The only thing I liked to do was draw.”

That raw talent famously caught the eye of Tokyo animation house Tatsunoko Productions – creator of Speed Racer – which apprenticed Amano at the tender age of 15. “They put me in a room and wouldn’t let me come out until I came up with something,” he recalls, laughing.  “But it felt like my destiny, joining a company like that.”

Over the following 15, mighty caloric years the shy boy from Shizuoka churned out some of the most famous characters in anime history, including Hutch the Honey B, Tekkaman: The Space Knight and Gatchaman, transplanted to the unsuspecting West as Battle of the Planets.   Then he left, aged 30, to join game company Square, where he dreamt up character designs for thevideogame Final Fantasy. 

The role-playing megahit, originally commissioned by Nintendo, has grown into a franchise, spawning nearly 30 games, two full-length movies, sales of over 80 million units and elevating its creator to the small pantheon of animation greats. It also introduced the world to his signature style, a freakish mishmash of nineteenth century Japanese and European influences, and US psychedelic and pop art.   

“I adored American comics and people like [pop artist] Peter Max when I was growing up. They made a big impact on me when I made animation characters. So what’s interesting now, and I’ve just returned from a comic convention in San Diego, is how many Japanese comics and anime titles are coming out in America.”  

The huge influence of American pop culture on Japanese animation has been digested and is making its way back to the West, he says, pointing out that two movies by animation masters Mamoru Oshii and Hayao Miyazaki have been selected by this year’s Venice Film Festival.

But he likes the cultural differences as much as the similarities. “Well, Japanese stories tend to be very detailed, almost like movies. And in Japanese manga, the heroes are more ordinary. One hit comic here is about a salaryman at a consumer electronics firm who is popular with women, is good at his job and has some money. That’s a Japanese superhero,” he says, laughing. “He doesn’t have any superpowers but he’s good at what he does. American superheroes are righteous and try to help the rest of society. I guess the Japanese hero is closer to reality, probably because the readers are often ordinary salarymen themselves.”

The enormous expansion of comic-book culture “amazes” him. The rebooted Batman franchise is set to hit Japanese cinemas, the latest in a long line of movie adaptations of the Marvel and DC comic characters and stories he grew up reading in Shizuoka Prefecture. “It’s no longer this exclusive world, is it? The people who read comics when they were children are now in their 40s and 50s like me, and their children now read too.”   

Amano’s love of American comics has never faded. He is currently working with US publishing giant Dark Horse on illustrations for Shinjuku, billed as his first “totally original [comic] work in nearly a decade.” The story of a bounty hunter who arrives in the eponymous Tokyo district to save his sister, and the world, it is set for release next year. Amano is enjoying the work but he says what he likes to do best is just paint on the second floor of his Hiroo studio, while listening to rock and classical music.   

“I find that the business side of what I do is restrictive. It moves in straight lines. If you don’t watch out, you can get trapped in one genre. I try to make sure I don’t. Art is more unpredictable, which is what makes it fun. With animation and manga, the format is decided, but with this work I have more freedom.

Painting for galleries increasingly consumes his time. Over the last two years his fantasy-rich canvases have been exhibited in Berlin, Switzerland and New York, and his 50-inch originals now carry a price tag of 1.8 million yen (about $129,000), twice what they sold for a few years ago. One of his paintings was snapped up at UK auction house Sotheby’s last year for 3.7 million yen, evidence of a growing reputation on the international circuit.  

One day soon, this shy, unassuming man who found comfort from a sickly childhood in paper and crayons could find his work on the walls of the world’s top galleries. “It doesn’t feel like work for me. It’s my hobby, my life, my therapy. It’s the same now as when I was a boy. If I don’t do it, I fall ill.”

Yoshitaka Amano’s work will be shown at the Art Statements Gallery from Sep 4-Oct 17. Get your cover signed by Amano on Sat 30 at Art Statement Gallery, 5, Mee Lun Street, Central, from 2pm.