Koichi Ohata Is Getting A Lovely New Artbook Later This Month

The talented artist and director Koichi Ohata has a really great artbook on the way later this January.

Covering the bulk of his design work from Gunbuster to Genocyber and even Macross II, it’s likely his work on the somewhat infamous M.D. Geist that Western anime fans are most familiar with.

Ohata directed the anime, which is generally regarded as having rather poor animation quality. However, it does have a cheesy charm to its setting and is brutal enough to have certain anime fans get overly eager as to its action setpieces.

That said, Ohata’s design work for the anime is really well done, especially for Geist’s power armor at the end of the OVA.

The other major addition is Ohata’s work on Macross II. This is also partly contentious, as the original design of the VF-2SS was actually based on the VF-XS as designed by Zeta Gundam mecha designer Kazumi Fujita.

In addition to the VF-2SS, Ohata designed much of the other mecha in Macross II, so this collection of his work is definitely appreciated.

If you are not familiar with Ohata’s artwork, it has a sleek, often chitinous, organic feel. In many ways, Ohata’s style resembles the work of Yutaka Izubuchi, but this book will be very useful in showing just how varied his design work really is.

The book is titled Art of Battle: Koichi Ohata Robot Chronicles and will be released in Japan on January 25 for 4,180 yen (or around $26), and is available to pre-order from Amazon Japan.

Follow me on X, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and am currently featured in the Giant Robots exhibition currently touring Japan.