Yasushi Nirasawa: BLOOD of NIRA's CREATURE 韮沢靖追悼画集
82Chances are if you ever flipped through a copy of Hobby Japan in the 90s, you probably stumbled across something by Nirasawa. The man was incredibly prolific in the modeling/ sf/ fantasy world of Japanese publishing and it was easy to see why. His work is wild and imaginative, and full of one of my favorite subjects- MONSTERS.
By no means an exhaustive collection, this book brings together a lot of design work he did for a variety of sources- some big name stuff, like Godzilla Final Wars and a variety of Kamen Rider designs, and plenty that even I wasn't aware of (like obscure Mega Drive/ Genesis video games and somewhat unsurprisingly, movies like Miike's Great Yokai War). Also present in this collection are his toy designs for the likes of Devilman and Mazinger, some of the designs he did for Hagiwara's manga Bastard! (another big impact on younger me), and even figure designs for Marilyn Manson(!?).
There's a lot here to unpack. Every time I pull this book off the shelf I always chance upon something new to ogle. Those are the best kind of books!
A shame he left us early. I can only imagine what further curiosities he could have cooked up!
Books like this are great resources if you ever want to try cooking up some new monsters designs for the tabletop- in fact, one of Nirasawa's first published books was just that.. and one that I sadly regret letting go of.
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