c/o
Viz Comics
P.O. Box 77010
San Francisco, CA 94107
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Our first letter!
Being a manga fan of a somewhat newer generation, I didn’t find out about Yoshiyuki Sadamoto until about 1992. I had never heard at all of this first work at Studio Gainax, the 1987 film ROYAL SPACE FORCE: THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE, for which he was the character designer and an animation director, and I had barely touched upon the famous 1990 TV series NADIA (a.k.a. THE SECRET OF BLUE WATER), for which he did character design. I didn’t fully appreciate the depth of his skill until just a little while ago, a fact that makes me a little embarrassed to claim that I’m a great fan of his only now that his third major work, NEON GENESIS EVANGELION, has run to its completion (as an anime) in Japan.
EVANGELION is my favorite Gainax anime/manga to date. The director of the anime, Hideaki Anno, poured a lot of this own personality and soul into the TV series, making the characters much more realistic and much easier to relate to. As a writer and artist of the EVA manga (and co-creator of the basic story with Anno and others at Gainax), Sadamoto gives his own interpretation of the actions and motives of the characters in the series, even as he re-tells the events of EVA.
One aspect of EVA I admire is its superb artwork. Everything from its attractive women to its towering mecha to its massive Geofront is carried on the shoulders of the artistic talent of Sadamoto, Anno, and mechanical designer Ikuto Yamashita. Sadamoto, being the character designer and manga artist, has to portray the drama and emotion of a diverse cast of characters. His talent in characterizing emotion is among the best I have ever seen. He is able to insert very slight subtleness in an expression, conveying joy with doubt, or agony with confusion. Of course, the style in which each individual character expresses any particular emotion is planned according to that character’s individual personality, making the effect seem even more convincing. Rarely have I seen art with an emotional subtlety on par with Sadamoto’s.
Sadamoto employs a standard illustrator’s style in all of his artwork, utilizing gouache (a sort of opaque watercolor), airbrush, and color pencil to render his color images, including the cover of this issue. Gouache has traditionally been a medium associated with commercial illustrators, rather than painters, because of its smooth consistency, vibrant colors, ease of workability, and quick drying time. Many manga artists have used it, including Katsuhiro Otomo (AKIRA), Masamune Shirow (GHOST IN THE SHELL) and Kia Asamiya (SILENT MÖBIUS). In American comics, Alex Ross used gouache to spectacular effect in his fully-painted pages for DC’s KINGDOM COME.
Sadamoto uses gouache to create presentations that are both sharp and colorful, with a good sense of balanced design; many times using obviously schooled techniques of focal point manipulation by shape, contrast, and opposing hues. Some might argue that using such a “school book” method of composition and color theory could lend itself to a boring finished piece, but Sadamoto has consistently proven that to be untrue. Unlike many other manga artists, Sadamoto actually did go to art school, a fact that shows through in the quality of his work.
Using a similar philosophy to render the monochrome pages of the manga, Sadamoto takes a very artistically standard yet effective stance on layout and inking. Drawing on his knowledge of visual style, composition, and contrast, Sadamoto’s pages are easy to comprehend as well as being beautiful to look at. Again his schooled manner shines as the darks and lights of a picture are carefully planned and executed. The pages show a full range, from dark shadows to light highlights. Unlike many manga artists, he often uses lighting in a very realistic fashion, which creates an effect on the viewer of a tangible world that his characters inhabit. The characters themselves are treated with the same level of care, which proper line widths and cross-hatching used to rill out their features.
All of these elements, mixed with Sadamoto’s sense of style, humor, and composition, combine to make EVANGELION one of the hottest manga on the marker. Happy reading!
Kiyoshi Okuma
San Mateo, CA
Thanks for the perspective and the cool drawing, Kiyoshi! Kiyoshi Okuma is a doujinshi artist, filmmaker, and animator, and is currently in the B.F.A. program at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Kiyoshi mentions Ikuto Yamashita, who as EVA’s chief mechanical designer was in large part responsible for refining the highly distinctive look of the Eva Units based on concepts by Anno and Sadamoto. We’re hoping to include more of Mr. Yamashita’s comments on the series in this space later on. You should check out his superb manga, DARK WHISPER (published through Bandai, but now out of print). A portion of it was published in English as part of the only issue over released of MEGA COMICS, a magazine put out by the now-defunct merchandising arm of Gainax, General Products. MEGA COMICS can be found with a little searching at your anime con dealers’ room.
Carl Gustav Horn