Book Review: KABA: Otomo Katsuhiro Artwork

Kaba is Japanese for Hippo, which explains the cover image. Otomo Katsuhiro (Wikipedia) is the creator of Akira (Wikipedia), the popular Japanese animation, which has gone Blu-ray on its 21-year anniversary. However, in this art book, there are only a few illustrations from Akira, and even those are from the manga.

This hardcover art book is the collection of work from 1971 to 1989. In it are illustrations created for books, records, videos, comics, commercials, special sections dedicated to YOU (a TV series), The Watermelon Messiah and Farewell to Weapons.

There are lots of character designs, mechanical robots and detailed cityscape drawings. There are captions for both Japanese and English. Otomo Katsuhiro's concept are often pretty warped, as shown in Akira. The illustrations follow the same style. In The Watermelon Messiah, a Watermelon planet crashes onto another planet breaking apart with the humans scrambling to eat what's left.

The last two pages provides a glimpse at his working studio from 1982 to 1986. It was packed.

There are no pictures and videos for this review because the publisher Kodansha Limited says it's a copyright infringement.

This book is available at:
Amazon.com | Amazon.co.jp

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Here's the Amazon Japan buying guide for your reference.