INFLUENCES III - Nobuteru Yuki - the character design king (Patreon)

Welcome to another installment of artists who made me who I am today! People whose style I studied and copied and obsessed over for all my teenage weeb years! Today I pay homage to another king and ask you to go and watch all his stuff!

This time, it's someone who isn't as heard of these days, but whose work you'll definitely have seen in perhaps some surprising places. It's the animator and artist Nobuteru Yuki.

This gentleman has worked as key animator on everything from Dirty Pair, Macross: Do you Remember Love and Megazone 23 to Hokuto no Ken and Heavy Metal L-Gaim but, at least in the western world, it's his distinctive character designs that you'll most probably remember him for. Let's take a look and see how many you recognise.

Starting out as a fan manga artist, Nobuteru Yuki soon started getting hired for character design roles, with early titles including the 1980 movie Toward the Terra, the gory 1987 action OVA Battle Royal High School and  1989's comedy Cleopatra DC.

↑ Battle Royal High School

↑ Cleopatra DC

1989 was his big break, when he provided character designs for the massively ambitious and insanely detailed movie The Five Star Stories, based on the longest-running mecha manga in history (1986 to current day) by mecha god Mamoru Nagano.
This thing is really insane to behold - the manga's mecha designs alone are so overly detailed it was thought to be impossible to animate. But the crazy bastards did it anyway:
https://youtu.be/FZtgSKysrcE?si=uc6D5zmBS9mau3cp&t=149

Bubble-era Japan money at work, right there.

↑ The Five Star Stories

At this point you can really see Nobuteru Yuki's signature detailed faces and even more detailed eyes, as well as his ability to change styles to match any source material he's adapting.
The same year, he also did characters for the now cult classic and notoriously censored (in the West) violent police action title Angel Cop.

↑ Angel Cop

1990 was another big year, when he designed all the characters for the all-time classic Record of Lodoss War. Essentially Japan's Lord of the Rings, it was based on the Lodoss books which themselves were among the earliest Japanese high fantasy novels.

↑ Record of Lodoss War

In 1991 he designed characters for the OVA adaptation of the popular Sukeban Deka (Delinquent Detective) manga.

1992 was back to fantasy again with The Weathering Continent -  a slow and atmospheric tale when compared to the action of Lodoss War.

1993 was yet another landmark year, with Mr Yuki's masterfully detailed faces and character designs elevating the now absolute classic Battle Angel Alita OVA. James Cameron was a fan of the OVA and would try for decades to make a live action movie of it (tricky, as anime was practically unheard of in the west at the time, outside of hardcore fans. Pitching it to studios at the time didn't meet with much interest). He finally did though, with Robert Rodriguez in 2019.

1996 was, it seems, the busiest year yet. His glorious characters populated the fantasy mecha masterpiece The Vision of Escaflowne (and later its movie), and also the movie "X," based on CLAMP's famous manga.
My favourite band, X-Japan, aptly provided the ending song "Forever Love," which has been making CLAMP fans cry for almost 30 years now.

Anyway, watch Escaflowne. It's isekai done right, and Isaac Newton's in it. And it looks way to good to be a TV series (but it is!).

↑ Escaflowne

↑ X the Movie

1997 was a videogame year! He did art and character work for Dragon Force II (a sequel to my favourite Sega Saturn game) and Azure Dreams (my favourite Playstation RPG/monster training dungeon game).

1999 was also a videogame year! He designed the characters for the much beloved Playstation RPG Chrono Cross, the sequel to Chrono Trigger.

↑ Chrono Cross

It seems he slowed down a bit in the 2000s. In 2002 he designed the characters for the anime Heat Guy J, which seemed to go under the radar a bit. You can certainly tell it's him though.

In 2005 his character art took a seemingly bizarre and simple turn for the anime Paradise Kiss, which I couldn't even sit through due to the lack of detail and shading compared to his masterworks of the past.  
Petty, I know, but at this point in my life I was really starting to dislike the way anime looked in the bleak, early digital paint 2000s and moving farther back into the past for my fix.

↑ Paradise Kiss

Nobuteru Yuki is still active, doing animation for shows such as Macross Frontier, and character design for a show this year called Under Ninja. But it does seem like his most prolific period was the 90s - how would anyone top Alita, Escaflowne, Lodoss War and X all in the same decade??
I would die fulfilled having worked on just one of the show he has.

For me, it's his ultra detailed eyes, faces and the way he shades fantasy armor that I really took away and learned from. Any of his pre 2000-era shows are hugely recommended, as even the ones a little more thin on story are at least a glorious feast for the eyes.

Nobuteru Yuki has more than a few art books out, as you'd expect from such a career. Online scans seem really scarce, but should you wish to purchase any, they include:

• 1999 a WORK of CLOVER
• Anvil Rough-Drawings
• Anvil II Rough-Drawings
• Anvil III Rough-Drawing Works
• Chrono Cross - Missing Piece
• Escaflowne Fan Book (for the feature film)
• Escaflowne Fan Book (for the TV series)
• The Five Star Stories
• Heat Guy J
• Heat Guy J Rough-Drawing Works
• Heat Guy J Second II
• Phantasien
• The revise pictures of XX
• Seikendensetsu III Illustration Book
• Senshi Bankō: Phantasien II
• Solatorobo LITTLE TAIL BRONX ARCHIVES VOL 1–3
• Toward the Terra Pilot Film
• Xenosaga: The Animation—Character Design

- Paul