Yasushi Suzuki is an incredible illustrator who’s contributed to an assortment of books, magazines, box covers, and manga. He has also been involved in the game industry, creating some designs for several games including the Treasure developed shooters Radiant Silvergun, Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, and Ikaruga. He’s also contributed to some RPGs such as Romancing SaGa (2005), Oninaki, the Xenoblade series, and the recent horror dungeon crawler, Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi. A mix of Classical European and Japanese styles, his work is incredibly immaculate, flowing, and beautiful. He is often playing with direction, background/foreground, and movement. A lot of Suzuki’s art uses an off-white colors, almost ivory or Antique White, giving his pieces a dreamlike feel.
I own a couple books on Suzuki-San, but I wanted to share my favorite one, Twilight. Released in 2017, Twilight is a collection of various works by the master. While all of this art books are magnificent, I like this one in particular because it contains pieces from some of my favorite games he’s worked on. While I could sit here and just show you the entire book, as it is all breathtaking, I wanted to highlight the games and pieces that made me a fan of Suzuki-San so many years ago. I highly recommend purchasing a copy of this book, as it’s not too expensive.
Sin & Punishment: Star Successor – 罪と罰 ～宇宙の後継者～ (2009)
One of my all-time favorite games, Star Successor was the follow up to the underrated N64 classic, Sin & Punishment. When designing the backpacks that help the main characters fly, Suzuki-San says that the color of those backpacks and cables were inspired by the Nintendo Wii console. “When I’m stuck for design ideas, I’ve used the hardware as a motif a few times in the past”. Surprisingly enough, Suzuki-San was present for the voice dubbing of the game. The protagonist, Isa, was voiced by Yoshimasa Hosoya (My Hero Academia, Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer). He asked Hosoya-San to do some “crazy things”, but he performed them perfectly, according to Suzuki-San.
Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner
After leaving Treasure, Suzuki-San was asked to create some illustrations for the second installment of the Zone of the Enders series, The 2nd Runner. These illustrations were used for the box art of the Kotobukiya Non-scale Plastic model kits. He stated that drawing Jehuty at first was extremely difficult, due to the character design being rounded and most of the constituent surfaces being angled. While Yasushi had no involvement with the actual development of the game, The 2nd Runner is apparently on of his favorite games, citing the controls as great!
Ikaruga
Much has already been said about the classic shoot ’em up. While the game is undisputably a work of art, the artwork Suzuki-San created for the game is legendary. The prints featured in this book are mostly for the plastic model kit boxes. The amount of detail and thought put into the functionality of each ship shows his dedication to the craft. He takes weight and velocity, among other factors, into consideration. The designs do not resemble the typical structure of a spacecraft that we are accustomed to. Suzuki-San has made something that resembles a bird, a tank, and a jet. I highly recommend finding high resolution images of these pieces online and taking the time to soak them in.
Ikaruga Vinyl Art Prints
As a bonus, I wanted to share my copies of the artwork that comes with the official vinyl soundtrack (Distributed by Data DIscs). Each copy of the soundtrack comes with four beautiful 12×12 prints. I really appreciate them including these and whish more distributors would do this.
Bloodstained Philosophy 