futurelog

by Range Murata

“Stunning, dark, exhilarating and disturbing, Murata's collection of contemporary Japanese comic art gives an inside view of the explosive work happening there today.” ― Publishers Weekly This full-color collection compiles more than twenty years of comics, cover art, promotional art and character designs from legendary Japanese artist Range Murata. The oversized release contains dozen gate-fold posters, and several comics from the ROBOT anthology along with renditions of each of his magazine covers. This is the most definitive collection of Murata's work so far. Range Murata is best known as a character designer for Last Exile and Blue Submarine no. 6 .

Genres: Art, Graphic Novels Comics

272 pages, Paperback

Published December 18, 2018

About the author

Range Murata (村田 蓮爾 Murata Renji, born October 2, 1968, in Osaka) is a Japanese artist and designer, known for his unique style combining Dieselpunk and Japanese anime elements. He is best known for his conceptual design work on anime series Last Exile and Blue Submarine No. 6.

He began his career in the early 1990s doing design work for video games, including having done the character designs for the 2003 PlayStation 2 game Spy Fiction.

He has published more than a dozen books of his work, some of the most notable being rule and futurhythm. He is also voted "Best Artist of the Year" 2006 in the Seiun Award.

Reviews

[bluekat · Rating 5 out of 5]

The artwork in this book is absolutely incredible. I can also say that the stories added a sense of context of the illustration book though I cannot say that is what kept me with this one. The most mind blowing takeaway from this art book is how many skillful illustrations there were. I think it's probably one of my favorite art book purchase to date.

[AK · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything Anna wrote is accurate. This is a beautiful artbook, complete with dust jacket and that clear protective sleeve that English-language versions of Japanese artbooks usually seem to lose. And the contents are fascinating. Range Murata has an amazing attention to detail that you might not pick up on if you've just seen some of the anime stuff he's worked on.

However, futurelog is also full of that kind of art brought up in the earlier review. There's nothing even close to explicit or pornographic in here, but some readers might be uncomfortable with the subject matter anyway. If you are, it may be better to pass on Range Murata's stuff completely, because that's just what you'll get with him most of the time.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a gorgeous artbook, not gonna lie. Not content with a boring dustjacket, it overlays that with a thick plastic secondary one for a bonus texture effect

if you know this man's work, you mostly know what to expect in here. Nearly 300 pages of THAT.
A few comics, tooons of images of cute girls, couple fandom arts like his Attack on Titan light novel covers, RWBY spread because reasons, all sorts of diselpunk Art Deco inspired details .... aaaaaaaaaaaaaand that extremely uncomfortable reminder how freakin loli-con he gets as much of the page count includes very young looking girls (his 90% aesthetic) being extremely scantily clad (couple illustrations have them outright 100% naked)

[John Ronald · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the character designer of such shows as Last Exile, Blue Submarine No. 6, and most recently Cop Craft. Excellent presentation of his work, but content note for sensitive readers as mentioned in the other reviews here.

[J A SPONG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous. Range Murata has been one of my favourite artists since Last Exile and this collection by Denpa Books is a stunning showcase of his work.

[Kaisery · Rating 5 out of 5]

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