Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

I first came to know Yoshikazu Yasuhiko in the early-to-mid-90s via the Venus Wars manga when Dark Horse published it English in the US comic book style. I was captivated by his painted covers and slick, futuristic, dystopian sci-fi setting. I acquired the official US VHS of the anime adaptation a bit later and I was blown away again. 

My memory tells me that all of this happened when I was in high school around 1990-91 but the internet tells me that the US comic and the US VHS release both came out in 1993 after I had already graduated and was an adult (legally, though not really mentally).

Eventually the VHS and the comics were mostly forgotten and my focus moved on to a large degree to the vast and exciting world of underground DIY hardcore punk. Shows, records, and zines dominated most of my time and money for the next 10 plus years. I eventually moved away from western Pennsylvania to the great city of Philadelphia 5 hours to the east. I never connected with the local scene in Philadelphia and lost my love of going to shows and being out in public in general.

A few years later I was 40-year old a stay-at-home father and spent a lot of time reflecting on my own childhood and young adulthood and scouring the internet for info on all of the random bits of entertainment that I had enjoyed in my younger days. The Internet Archive and the world of blogging reintroduced me to a lot of old favorites and introduced me to a lot of new ones.

Jim Lee

Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

Somewhere along the way I came across digital collections of the Dark Horse reprints of the Venus Wars manga and a PDF of a character photo book for the Japanese release of the Venus Wars anime in 1989. Both were full of beautiful drawings and paintings by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko which blew me away the same way they had 15-20 years earlier. At the same time I was revisiting the Marvel crossover series "X-Tinction Agenda" from the summer of 1990. "X-Tinction Agenda" was my introduction to the X-Men and some of it was drawn by fan-favorite (as well as one of my favorite) artist Jim Lee.

In the first issue the enemy Genoshans attack the X-Men HQ with futuristic tanks, mechs, and a very familiar-looking one-wheeled motorcycle. Back in 1993 or 1994 or whenever it was that I was reading Venus Wars and watching the anime I was not thinking about "X-Tinction Agenda" very much and missed the tribute to Venus Wars that Jim Lee had thrown in. I definitely see this as a tribute and not a rip-off. Seeing these types of connections always makes me appreciate the shared interests of modern comic creators and fans.

In 2020 I found myself working part-time at a local grocery store when the pandemic hit. My wife was suddenly working from home and our house, which before we had two kids and were in lock down had seemed huge, felt small and stifling. So, like a lot of people it turned out, I got into model building. Specifically Gunpla, which are very customizable snap-together articulated models based on mecha / mobile suits / giant robots from the vast Mobile Suit Gundam franchise. Model building quickly led me to an obsessive deep dive into the Gundam universe.

One of the first things I discovered was the anime Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, which is a retelling of parts of the original Mobile Suit Gundam TV show from 1979. I quickly discovered the anime was based on a manga of the same name that was written and drawn by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and, even more exciting, the 12-volume hardcover collections of the manga were selling at a discount online. I bought them all over the next few months as well as some Japanese photo books that were released to celebrate the anime and were full of tons of beautiful illustrations that were not in the manga collections. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko was a character designer and lead animation director on the original 1979 series, so it makes sense that he would take the lead on the reimagining in The Origin.

Yoshikazu Yasuhiko has had a hand in a lot of other anime and manga, including some other Gundam properties, but aside from the 1984 anime series Giant Gorg, Venus Wars and Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin appear to be his most known works.