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Yoshitaka Amano Interview
For over fifty years, Yoshitaka Amano has entranced audiences with his ethereal illustrations, spanning a variety of mediums including anime, games, novels, and fine arts. Beginning his career in 1967 at Tatsunoko Productions, Amano worked on anime such as Speed Racer before moving into character design for titles like Gatchaman, Tekkaman, and Honeybee Hutch. After becoming independent in 1982, Amano continued working as a freelancer on projects such as Vampire Hunter D and the critically acclaimed Angel's Egg. RPGamers likely know Amano from his longstanding work on logo, character, and world designs in the Final Fantasy series.
At Anime Expo 2026, Amano was on hand to showcase his latest work: a new animation project, ZAN, based on a series of illustrations that were later adapted into a 2013 visual novel. RPGamer sat down to talk with Amano-sensei and his team about ZAN, his current work, and what lies ahead for his career and art. The interview was conducted in Japanese with a translator. Also present were Mariko Suzuki, Amano's manager; Hiroaki Ikegami, a member of Yoshitaka Amano Inc.; and Michael Gombos, Senior Director of Licensed Publications at Dark Horse Comics.
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Jordan McClain (RPGamer): I'd like to start with ZAN, which began as DEVA ZAN over a decade ago as a visual art project. What changed that made now the right moment to finally bring it into animation?
Yoshitaka Amano: Actually, it wasn't like we ever really left. At the time, things with 3D and CG animation were just coming to full swing in terms of what we wanted to see with ZAN. And of course, it was a book that came out and things that I had been working on. But the people that we were working with kind of pulled out. There were some parties we were working with. It just... some things happened – it wasn't anything bad. But they pulled out. And then Mr. Ikegami got together a new team of folks to sort of reunite everything for a different take on it.
And now 3D and CG are so ubiquitous that we actually wanted to take things full circle and kind of bring it around to the classic hand-drawn animation. So, in a way, what had been fresh ten, fifteen years ago would have been the CG or 3D stuff that is ubiquitous now, maybe overplayed. And so, we said, well, we have the team, we have the people, the players to build a team to do DEVA ZAN in a new way. What if we took it back to the classic Japanese animation style? And thus, imbued it with a new freshness that it wouldn’t have had if it were done CG or otherwise.
RPGamer: To expand on that, is there something you think you get with hand-drawn animation that you don't get with CG?
Yoshitaka Amano: It's really, what I see it as, or what is special about it, is I’m just getting back to my roots. I mean, as you know, I was part of Tatsunoko a long time ago, and I drew for them. So really, this is kind of being who I was in the first place. I’m getting back to real animation, where I started, and I’m bringing it full circle.
RPGamer: During the long period between ZAN's release as a novel and now, has the original vision for ZAN evolved, or has it remained consistent over time?
Yoshitaka Amano: Everything’s remaining the same, but the core concept of ZAN was, generally, for most things – animation included – you start with the story and say, here's the characters, here's the story, whatever, and then you draw the illustrations. And so, for me, ZAN started as sort of an amalgam of illustrations and from then, I drew the story out of it.
So oftentimes for my work, I’ve been commissioned to create a world for something like Final Fantasy. But with the book with Dark Horse, that Dark Horse published, I didn't really have a story or anything like that, but I’m just going to start creating my own world and from that, we’ll draw a story.
RPGamer: So much of your work is visually driven. With ZAN and its upcoming animation, how do you approach building the narrative as you expand those images in that sort of world into a full animation?
Michael Gombos: It's kind of a little unorthodox, and I wasn't sure. So, Carl Horn, he's the editor. He was the editor of Evangelion, kind of a famous editor in the manga world. Originally, Amano-sensei and Suzuki-san sent all – we had the original illustrations for ZAN at Dark Horse – so they sent the actual original paintings. And they said, “here’s the paintings, and here’s about what we were thinking when we were drawing it.”
And so, it was kind of a puzzle. It’s not like Mad Libs, but imagine you had four hundred different sentences, and there's forty different ways to arrange them and to make a story. And so, he sent the illustrations in order, and then Carl Horn was kind of the visual interpreter. And that story that is in the Dark Horse book is what has become ZAN now. But Amano-sensei didn’t write a story. The images didn’t come to Amano, and then Amano wrote the story. He did the images, which told a story, and then Carl Horn interpreted what the images were. We knew the characters’ names and whatnot, but he basically formulated the story from the ZAN images.
Mariko Suzuki: And that was just for the visual novel. For the new animation that's happening, we do have a director attached to it who's going to refine it and make it a more palatable story for audiences that you could put into animation. Because the book is rather esoteric – I don’t know if you’ve read the book.
RPGamer: I have not had the chance to read it. It's at a distant library, and I just couldn't get it before. But I'm familiar with the concept of it, I think.
Mariko Suzuki: So, for the anime, there's a director attached who kind of refines things into something that works for animation. Because reading a book and watching animation are two different things.
RPGamer: Completely different, right. So, the ZAN project boasts a lot of legendary veterans of the animation industry. How do you preserve your vision for ZAN while also working with such a large collaborative team?
Hiroaki Ikegami: The most important thing was, he was able to keep his thing, and the most important element for actually getting all the creators on board was that they would respect Yoshitaka Amano's vision for what the story was. He didn't have to worry about anyone overshadowing or overpowering each other. The main qualification was: will they respect the work that's done and wanted to work with Amano-sensei? So they didn’t recruit, they kind of put their hands up. And then the people who would therefore respect his work were the ones that were brought into the project.
Mariko Suzuki: So we're pretty sure that it'll be something great. [laughs]
RPGamer: [laughs] Amazing, I love to hear that. Have any collaborators influenced ZAN in ways that surprised you creatively, or has it sort of stuck to the initial vision?
Yoshitaka Amano: Right now, we’re at the stage where it is kind of a confluence of all these influences together and we’re working on it together. So, no one is really influencing anyone, per se. Everyone has a chance to speak up, and I’m not feeling influenced. They’re all respecting the work, and we’re all working together to create something.
RPGamer: One of the things in the press release that really interested me was wanting to create alongside Amano-san. So, in that regard, what does that sort of collaborative process look like going from something like the Dark Horse visual novel into animation?
Mariko Suzuki: Another thing to notice. When we’re working with the creators, there is, like, no… there is hard timeline for ZAN, but it’s really, really long. Like I said, it’s kind of esoteric. Basically, about one tenth of what’s the book is going to be in the animation. You don't have to adhere yourself to any specific timeline. You could have a creator working on something that’s happening in the past, or in the future in ZAN. And so, everyone was able to work together to interpret what was in the book and make it something, again, we didn't do the whole thing front to back. And there was no hard timeline. So, we say omnibus, but what we mean is it's kind of customizable where you can put in different stories into the thing.
RPGamer: Beyond the visual design and the action, what emotional or philosophical themes are most important for you in ZAN? And what do you hope audiences feel when watching ZAN?
Yoshitaka Amano: Just have fun with it, that’s all. I just want them to enjoy it. I mean, the first thing is, it has to be enjoyable or no one's going to get to the part where they think about the philosophical or emotional parts of it. So basically, that they enjoy it first and then the people will have a chance to, once they’ve enjoyed it, take what they want from it.
RPGamer: And are there any intended philosophical themes in ZAN, or is it more left to the audience's interpretation?
Mariko Suzuki: And you know, he's very into mythology. As you know, he used to work on the Greek mythology works, but there's all these different mythologies, like Olympus being a mythology, even Star Wars being a mythology. But he just kind of wanted to have mythology laid forth that he worked on. So, the idea of mythology has always interested him, and we’ve talked about it since way back, so to create his own mythology was a big deal.
RPGamer: Yeah, I believe ZAN has Buddhist influences – or at least the Dark Horse novel did. Have there been any overarching, guiding influences with mythology behind ZAN, other than Buddhist philosophy?
Yoshitaka Amano: You know, there's many religions, but there's probably just one truth. And for example, there were the twelve disciples, and that's kind of a maybe more Christian thing. But then in ZAN, there’s twelve, there's a team of twelve, so, it's not necessarily all based on Buddhism. It shares things across many religions, but I didn't expect it to be specifically about a religion. It's a truth that could be interpreted through various religions if you wanted to. But not strictly Buddhist, or anything like that.
RPGamer: Having talked about ZAN as a creative work, I'm curious about the structure behind your work. The press release mentioned Yoshitaka Amano Inc., which was recently formed. That gives your work a formal structure. So what led to its establishment, and is there anything it makes possible that wasn’t possible before?
Yoshitaka Amano: At the root of a lot of things, specifically Tezuka Pro or Tatsunoko Pro, was a person who wanted to create something. And then other people came in and were able to help make more things out of that. This is really the first time I’ve been able to do what I want to do. Because it started with a person, a production company based off of the vision and the creativity of a person, and then we were able to do things by adding more people into the mix and creating, basically establishing, a company to do what we want.
This is the first time I have my own company. It’s just like there was a Tezuka Pro or Tatsunoko Pro, this is kind of Amano Pro, basically. That's the easiest way to think about it, I think. That is at the core of it, so now I can do what I want to do and bring in the people that I want to bring in to work on projects with me. And Miyazaki Hayao is another example of what I’m trying to do. Tezuka, Miyazaki, Tatsunoko, all of them at the beginning were just like this, so this is how I want to do it my way.
RPGamer: With the announcement of AMANO, the exhibitions, and broader experiences, what is the intent behind how you want audiences to engage with your work in that regard?
Yoshitaka Amano: It’s a one-stop shop for how I want people to feel. The way that I feel when I’m engaged or immersed in my art, I want to immerse people in my art so they can feel maybe how I feel when I’m creating or drawing it. So, they can go to the exhibit, walk around, immerse themselves in my art, and then have a coffee in the café that’s based on my thing, and just kind of feel fully immersed in whatever they’re doing, just like how I feel immersed when I’m creating it myself.
RPGamer: Is there a plan for how wide the exhibitions will be?
Hiroaki Ikegami: Basically, what we would like to do is kind of make it almost like a franchise, where if you wanted to have it in your country, you could then approach us and we franchise it and have it be selected or adapted for the taste of the country or however they wanted to do it. So, anywhere that could have it. There's no, like, we want to have it in 30 countries, or we want to have it in 30 cities, but wherever people like the idea is that they would franchise it and then people could take it anywhere and have it everywhere.
RPGamer: Is there anything that Amano-sensei wants our readers to know about the future of ZAN, future projects, or anything at all?
Yoshitaka Amano: I have a broad perspective and just do art, but if someone wanted to take something and interpret it their own way, like make a game out of it, they could make a game out of it. Or however they come up with, and the animation turns out. I want the readers to know that I’m excited to see how people take what I do and develop it into what they would like to see.
The main thing for me is to just be original. I want to do my main thing that I do, and it’s not anyone else’s. It’s something that I’ve created, and it’s an original piece that isn’t something you’ve ever seen before – something totally fresh and new.
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RPGamer would like to extend our deepest thanks to Yoshitaka Amano for taking the time to answer our questions, as well as to Mariko Suzuki, Hiroaki Ikegami, and Michael Gombos. RPGamer would also like to thank Jon Baumgardner at JBranding for helping to coordinate and schedule this interview. RPGamers interested in learning more about ZAN can check out the official press release, visit ZAN's official website, or view ZAN's pilot film, which premiered at Anime Expo 2026.
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