For me, the strongest appeal of anime director Makoto Shinkai‘s work remain the spectacular background art that his team create for each film, from his earliest work Voices Of A Distant Star to the more recent 5 Centimeters. This art book showcases beautiful work from his latest hit film Your Name, with over 200 pages of unadulterated, raw background art plates. There are no pages of text safe for the short annotations accompanying each painting; just pure background art at its very best.
Many of the landscapes and images depicted in the background art are real life locations of the Hida region in the Gifu prefecture, as well as the Shinjuku district in Tokyo. No doubt the art team must have done a good amount of location hunting and taken plenty of reference photographs in preparation for their work. The results are stunning reproductions of the real life locales, but imbued with that painterly quality of anime.
(above left) There’s quite a bit of product placement in Makoto Shinkai’ films, like the Suntory brand on the vending machine. I’m pretty sure these companies help fund the production costs of the film in some way.
(above) This painting of red autumn leaves look just like what I saw on Mount Fuji.
(above) The NTT Docomo skyscraper, a landmark building in Shinjuku. It was also featured prominently in Makoto’s Garden Of Words anime short.
Whether you enjoyed Your Name or any of Makoto Shinkai’s earlier films, there’s no denying that they feature some of the most stunning background art that anime has seen in recent years. This sumptuous art book collects all that was featured in the film into a single volume and is an absolute feast for the eyes. Highly recommended.
“Your Name – Makoto Shinkai Anime Background Art Book 新海誠監督作品 君の名は。美術画集” details :
Dimensions – 25.8 x 18.4 x 1.7 cm
Softcover, 208 pages.
Full color, In Japanese ( book is mostly images )
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August 22nd, 2017 at 2:25 am
Gem
August 22nd, 2017 at 2:28 am
Hi. Thanks for your review. I’ve been following your site for quite some time. Are the backgrounds in Your Name done of Photoshop or are they painted on paper? Thanks.
August 22nd, 2017 at 3:25 am
Bharath – Thanks for reading my blog. I believe most of these bg art are done digitally these days. ( I’m not 100% sure though. )
August 25th, 2017 at 3:57 am
Bharath – From what I have seen, most backgrounds are digitally produced. It was mentioned in a documentary that people were amazed by Studio Trigger for creating their backgrounds (for Kill La Kill and Little Witch Academia) using nothing more than cheapish paints. Something that’s not seen a lot in the industry anymore. Save for Studio Ghibli. At least from what I’ve seen.
September 10th, 2017 at 1:38 am
Hey, I purchased this book, its worth it .. amazing detail excellent quality of pages. thanks for sharing good books
September 12th, 2017 at 5:45 am
Ankit – You’re welcome ! Regarding our question on that other anime art book, I usually only review them after I’ve seen the film ( and I haven’t ), so maybe later. Thanks !