THE LIBRARY

The artist hired at 15 who drew Gatchaman, the Vampire Hunter D novels, the first Final Fantasy games and their logos, then became a gallery painter.

A Tokyo trip at fifteen, a portfolio shown to Tatsuo Yoshida, and a company dormitory: how a Shizuoka schoolboy joined the Speed Racer studio in 1967.

Gatchaman's bird-suited five were a Tatsunoko team creation: founder Tatsuo Yoshida led, and teenage Yoshitaka Amano worked on the designs from 1972.

He quit at thirty in 1982 and went freelance: Twilight Worlds in S-F Magazine, four straight Seiun Awards, and the novel covers that made him famous.

Yoshitaka Amano has painted every Vampire Hunter D cover since the first novel in 1983. His D, all hat and cloak, overruled the author's own image.

Amano was the film's character designer, but director Toyoo Ashida redrew parts of the cast, and Amano has said he was not pleased with the result.

Angel's Egg is Mamoru Oshii's direction and Yoshitaka Amano's world: Amano is co-creator of the story and the film's art director, and it shows.

Four artists in relay: Naoyuki Kato, then Yoshitaka Amano for volumes 20 to 57, then Jun Suemi and Shinobu Tanno, across a saga running since 1979.

Yes: from 1984 Amano illustrated the Japanese Elric editions, plus Corum and Erekosë. Moorcock praised the covers and wrote a preface for Amano.

A 1999 prose novella by Neil Gaiman, painted throughout by Yoshitaka Amano. It won the Bram Stoker Award, and the folk tale behind it never existed.

Yoshitaka Amano designed the characters and monsters of Final Fantasy I to VI, working from text descriptions, and returned as designer for IX.

Every main Final Fantasy logo wears a Yoshitaka Amano emblem. The format began with FFIV's Kain, and he redrew the first three games' marks later.

Amano paints the interpretation, not the sprite sheet. His Final Fantasy figures are taller, paler and stranger than the characters you control.

Amano drew Front Mission's people, all forty of them, and Kow Yokoyama built its machines: the 1995 strategy game's split authorship is its look.

The original Arslan novels wear Amano art: he illustrated the Kadokawa edition's ten volumes from 1986. The current edition is Shinobu Tanno's.

In late-1990s New York, Amano turned fine artist: acrylic and automotive paint on aluminium box panels, his cartoon icons rebuilt at room size.

From Maten in 1984 to The Sky's three Final Fantasy volumes and the 328-page Beyond the Fantasy biography: the Amano books worth shelf space.

Neal Adams comics, Peter Max psychedelia, Art Nouveau, ukiyo-e and a lacquer worker's household: the five ingredients of the Amano line.

From a 1987 PC-8801 cartridge of ideas to Ys X: Falcom's action-RPG series, nearly four decades of one adventurer, documented.

Ys I (1987) and Ys II (1988) were designed as a single game and split in two: the duology that founded Falcom's series, its six Books, and its floating land.

The Ys signature: no attack button. How Falcom's off-centre collision combat worked, why it was built for kindness, and where it still lives.

Hudson Soft's 1989 PC Engine CD remake and its 1990 TurboGrafx-CD release: Red Book audio, animated scenes, and some of the first voice dubbing in games.

Wanderers from Ys (1989) turned the series sideways; The Oath in Felghana (2005) rebuilt it into one of the most loved action RPGs of its decade.

Koshiro, Ishikawa, and the anonymous-by-design sound team whose collective name hides some of the most famous melodies in RPG history.

Ancient Ys Vanished (1989-91, seven episodes) and Castle in the Heavens (1992-93, four): the games' story told as early-90s anime, scored by Falcom's…

Falcom wrote one scenario bible and licensed it to two studios: Hudson's Dawn of Ys and Tonkin House's Mask of the Sun (both 1993), resolved by…

The 1995 Super Famicom entry that changed the controls, softened the difficulty, and became the one mainline Ys the modern era left behind.

Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim (2003) rebuilt the series in 3D; The Oath in Felghana and Ys Origin (2006) made that engine sing.

Ys Seven (2009) gave Adol a party and three weapon types; Memories of Celceta (2012) rebuilt Ys IV on the same system for the 25th anniversary.

The 2016 shipwreck that became the series' breakthrough: a castaway village, two timelines, and the most loved Ys of the modern age.

Monstrum Nox (2019) turned a prison city into a playground; Nordics (2023) took a young Adol to sea for the series' 35th anniversary.

Novelizations from the 1980s onward, two rival Mask of the Sun manga, anthologies, and the Tribute: the paper branches of a game series.

From PC-88 key art to the Taue illustrations and modern key visuals: how one adventurer has been drawn for nearly forty years.

Four point eight million copies by 2017 and a series still sailing: the case that Ys is not a failed giant but a successful permanent.

Togashi ended it himself: his body, his standard for the work, and a life outside the desk, in his own Yoshirin de Pon! account.

Planned from the start, on the Kinnikuman model: detective cases first to establish the cast, then the Dark Tournament.

Yes, after the tournament: the manga deposes King Enma and Genkai dies. The anime leaves both out and ends brighter.

Kanzenban editions, the 2018 OVAs, stage plays in 2019 and 2020, and Netflix live action in 2023 at number one worldwide.