Founded on July 1st, 2015, Deho Gallery is a joint business venture by Japanese anime studios Dwango, Studio Khara and Studio Ponoc. The company’s mission statement is to preserve the art of hand-painted backgrounds for works of animation as well as video games and commercial advertising.

Evangelion director Hideaki Anno is among the board of directors, and veteran Ghibli background artist Kazuo Oga serves in an advisory role. The list of background artists that make up Deho are cream of the crop talent that have worked on top anime films; this art book is the first published collection of the studio’s expansive body of work and includes titles like Mary and The Witch’s Flower, Promare, In This Corner Of The World, Hirune Hime, Mirai, The Rebuild Of Evangelion films and many more.

Running at 240 pages, this is a pretty hefty book; the landscape format allows for most of the background plates to be fully reproduced on each page, escaping the ugly fate of many other art books where the work is butchered when printed across the spine. As such, the reproduced illustrations are huge and of excellent quality; plenty of eye candy from cover to cover. I only wish the book could have been released in hard cover format as the big size of the book makes it a little unwieldy to read as a soft cover.

(above & below) Background art plates from In This Corner Of The World, the critically acclaimed animated film directed by Katabuchi Sunao, based on the manga of the same name written and illustrated by Kono Fumiyo. The film has it’s own dedicated background art book, and I highly recommend it.

(above & below) Background art work from Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, the final film in the Rebuild Of Evangelion series and some of my favorite in this art book. I really hope to re-watch the film again soon too.

The sheer quantity and also quality of these background art pieces are testament to the amazing work that Deho Gallery is producing, and I hope they continue to create more stunning background art for all of us to enjoy. This art book is a superb collection of their expansive portfolio and comes highly recommended.

“Deho Gallery – Anime Background Art Book でほぎゃらりー 背景美術画集” details :

Dimensions – 29.7 x 1.8 x 21 cm
Softcover, 240 pages
Full color, In Japanese ( book is mostly images )

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