Yoshitaka Amano Interview

My latest Newsarama interview is online today. I talked with Yoshitaka Amano about his newest book release: Mateki the Magic Flute, an adaptation of the famous opera, published in the U.S. by Radical Books.

Newsarama: The story of the Magic Flute is a famous one. Why is this story important and special to you to adapt to a graphic novel?

Yoshitaka Amano: The story itself is so well known, I don’t think I need to repeat it here. What actually attracted me most is the music Mozart wrote. Even though I knew the story from the accompanied texts, just listening to music gave me an inspiration of making it more like a ballet sequence, without words but the movements of images.

NRAMA: Which characters in the story were the most fun to adapt?

YA: I enjoyed creating The Queen of the Night. In the music, she felt like something out of this world, shapeless and mysterious. It reminded me of some Japanese “Nou” characters that appear from the world beyond this life. (Editor’s Note: Nou or Noh 能 is a significant form of classic Japanese drama surviving from the 14th century)

NRAMA: Which sequence gave you the hardest time conceiving and illustrating?

YA: I didn’t have any particular difficulty in creating images, but when I think of it as an actual animation, I’d like to make it into a very dynamic work and that might be challenging.

Read the rest of it on Newsarama.