Photos of modern metropolises taken during the lockdown – without people, cars and all the hustle and bustle, completely deserted – made an electrifying impression on everyone. This is also the impression that Anime Architecture: Imagined Worlds and Endless Megacities makes when you take it in your hands and start turning the pages. This album is a tribute to the cities that have appeared in some of the world’s most popular anime, including Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor and full-length movies from the Evangelion series.
The book is beautifully published, the colors are intense and saturated, the sketches and designs are expressive. The author, Stefan Riekeles, has supplemented the pictures with interesting descriptions and an introduction, which shows the backstage of the production. When you remove the characters and the action, all the amazing details suddenly become visible. The worlds presented in the book have been created since the late 1980s and often intended to be a vision of the future in 20-30 years – that is, our present. In the frames from Akira, you can see a poster informing about the upcoming Olympic Games in Tokyo, which were supposed to take place in 2020. So there’s something all the more disturbing and catastrophic about the fact that we’re enjoying Anime Architecture in our times.
The featured illustrations come from:
AKIRA, 1988
Patlabor: The Movie, 1989
Patlabor 2: The Movie, 1993
Ghost in the Shell, 1995
Metropolis, 2001
Innocence, 2004
Tekkonkinkreet, 2006
Rebuild of Evangelion, 2007, 2009
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