Akihiro Yamada

Akihiro Yamada (山田 章博, Yamada Akihiro) (born February 10, 1957) is a Japanese illustrator and manga artist. He was born in Kōchi, Kōchi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku in Japan, and now resides in Kyoto. Yamada is known for delicate images reminiscent of suiboku and depiction of fantasy subjects. He is the 1996 Seiun Award winner in art category.

Overview
While he has created many manga, Yamada is widely known as a novel illustrator and as a character designer. As an illustrator, his best known works are Fuyumi Ono's Twelve Kingdoms series and Ryo Mizuno's Record of Lodoss War. His character design credits include concepts for the anime series RahXephon as well as a variety of video games. His more recent work includes the concept design for the movie Shinobi: Heart Under Blade.

Character design
Yamada's character design credits for anime include RahXephon. His work on video games includes Saiyuki: Journey West on the Sony PlayStation, various Might and Magic and Wizardry titles for the TurboGrafx-16, both versions of Mystic Ark, Enix's role-playing video game for the Super Famicom and PlayStation and character designs for Shinkai Densetsu Meremanoid and Terra Phantastica. Yamada also worked on a game called Chaos Gear and a PC game, Black Rainbow.

Yamada's designs can also be found in Castlevania: Dracula X for the Super NES and in Front Mission 3 for the PlayStation. Yamada has produced many anime artbook compilations.

Manga
Yamada drew the manga Record of Lodoss War: The Lady of Pharis in conjunction with writer Ryo Mizuno, and is currently working on an Asian-themed solo manga, Beast of East.

Novel illustration
Yamada attracted attention outside of Japan through his illustrations of Fuyumi Ono's long-running The Twelve Kingdoms light novel series. He specially designed the rich cover illustrations for the home DVD releases of the anime adaptation of this series.

Within Japan he has illustrated covers for numerous translated anthologies of Cthulhu Mythos literature, and is currently working with Kurodahan Press on their translation of a four-volume Japanese anthology of Cthulhu Mythos literature, The Lairs of the Secret Gods (秘神界, Hishinkai). Yamada is drawing covers that are exclusive to the English translation.

Related links

 * Akihiro Yamada's Official Site
 * Akihiro Yamada's profile on Anime News Network