“Video Games Are Art”: An Interview With Yoshitaka Amano

The career of Yoshitaka Amano, the Japanese artist who is well-known for his art in the franchise, spans over 50 years, long before his work on Square Enix’s (formerly Square) popular gaming series. Amano’s work started off in the anime industry and has since reached far beyond, extending to games, graphic novels, comic books, and even music. Amano is wildly popular as an artist, having even illustrated the cover of .

Amano is also an award-winning artist, having gained more prestige following his collaboration with Neil Gaiman on, which is considered one of the very best storylines. To celebrate his long and successful career, the artist is holding an art exhibit in São Paulo, Brazil called Yoshitaka Amano — “Além da Fantasia” (Beyond Fantasy, in English). There, had an opportunity to talk to Amano about his decades-long career and his immense contributions to the gaming industry.

Screen Rant: Do you see video games as a form of art themselves? Do you, for instance, see similarities between yourself as an artist and developers at studios?

Yoshitaka Amano: Yes, in my perception, games are art. Of course, there is traditional art, but art always comes in the form of novelty. As such, whatever is new can transform itself into art. What becomes art is not for me to decide, because I believe it is going to happen in the future. Someone is going to look back and say “ ” I do, however, create everything [in the games industry] as if it were art. But it is not for me to determine this, it is the future.

Have you ever considered dabbling with game development in any form, considering how close and how long you’ve worked with these teams?

Yoshitaka Amano: To be honest, game development itself, no. However, inside my work, I like to create a cosmovision, a worldview, a universe. So I believe a work of mine that has a story, that has music, that has this type of worldview, is something that I always like to get involved with. For me, games are not the final product, they are