Obscurities in Literature: Makoto Kobayashi’s Art of Dragon’s Heaven小林 誠 アート・オブ・ドラゴンズヘブン

I promise next time I’ll do a book in English! I stumbled across a video reminding me that the movie Dragon’s Heaven exists. I’d totally forgotten it. The movie has a heavy Moebius and 70s Euro comic style to it. I kept thinking it looked familiar- then I remembered why- my brother and I had come across a copy of that art book years ago, purchased at the now defunct US based Mandarake shop for a pittance of a price. Oh how I miss my SoCal Mandarake! While technically labeled an art book, this is more of a hodgepodge comic collection with a smattering of design work scattered throughout. Almost as as often as random fanservice shots. I’ll leave those for you to discover on your own as I’d like to keep this (kinda) family friendly. So who is this Makoto Kobayashi guy? There’s a few people with that name. He’s not the manga artist from Niigata prefecture- that’s the guy who drew “What’s Michael?“ This particular Kobayashi is a very talented mecha designer and illustrator who did work on a lot of big 90s anime- Giant Robo, Last Exile, Venus Wars, and was also involved with a few of the Gundam shows. His artwork was a staple of comic and hobby magazines throughout the late 80s and 90s- almost as much as his model work. His artwork has always reminded me of Kazuhisa Kondo’s (近藤和久) early gritty Gundam work, but looking back that’s probably due to me being exposed to Kondo first (although they were both contemporaries of each other). There’s still that Moebius vibe underlying everything. I believe it’s more apparent with the color work (and there’s outright homages to Moebius’ Arzach that he drew). Honestly outside of Kobayashi and sometimes Terada Katsuya there aren’t a lot of Japanese artists that really operate in that Heavy Metal/ Metal Hurlant style of art. I miss that. Enjoy my nostalgia trip and see us back here next week for some other obscurities in literature... hopefully in English!