The name Yasushi Suzuki probably doesn’t ring a bell with you yet, but if The Art of Yasushi Suzukiis any kind of harbinger, he’s bound to become a household name before long. Nominally a concept designer for video games (he’s done designs for Treasure's Arcade / Dreamcast / GameCube title Ikaruga and also their N64 titleSin and Punishment), he’s also contributed illustrations for book covers and card games, and is right now putting the finishing touches on his first foray into manga, Purgatory Kabuki.Purgatory Kabuki’s due out later this year (and believe me, I’ve been waiting very eagerly for it), but if you like what you see here then you have every reason to add this volume to your artbook collection. That said, don’t look for more here than just the pictures, or you’re likely to be a bit let down.

Describing any artist’s work is always a hard job, because so much of what you could say is easily eclipsed by just showing a few pictures and calling it a day. But after "re-reading" Art… a couple of times, I think I finally singled out the elements that make his art special. He applies colors like a painter, but understands line and posture like an illustrator, so in every picture you can see the best of both tendencies. This especially shows up in his designs forPhantoms: The Soul in the Cage (another manga production slated for 2008 from publisher DGN Production Inc.), or the designs for Purgatory Kabuki itself. He’s also equally comfortable drawing the curves of human bodies and the angular contours of machinery—look at the Card Masters designs later in the book—although many of his more outré character designs have the same sharpness to him, but there it works.