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The art in Outlaw Star's ED is by Hicaru Tanaka who is something of a mystery on the internet - he barely exists online.

Because of this I did sleuthing and found a few things. I wanted to put it all in one place so the next person that tries to find stuff about this dude has what I've already found.

Who is Hicaru Tanaka? He's an illustrator from Tokyo who has apprently won the Hayakawa Award for science fiction art three times. He's been on the cover of S.F. Magazine (the most popular scifi literature magazine in Japan), and he did the art in the above ED for Outlaw Star.

On top of that he’s also painted box art for Star Trek and Aliens but I've been unable to find these online.

Here is the art from the Outlaw Star ED, it has literally nothing to do with the show itself. There's probably an artist's reason that they're all specific unique colours but I won't pretend to have a clue why:

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The following is "Tea Girl" and was used to promote a 2007 convention. It is also on the cover of this magazine: https://fanac.org/conpubs/Worldcon/Nippon%202007/Nippon%20PR%201.pdf

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This last one is from an archive of his website, which apparently no longer exists online. The only archived page is here: https://archive.md/i0ywc

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In case that page disappears at some point in the future (very likely), here is a screenshot of it:

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I like his work, I like the themes he has of combining traditions with scifi. It feels very grounded and human. Ok he's also guilty of awooga but I don't think any scifi artists aren't guilty of that.

This thread was a pain in the ass to make because of the rate limiting preventing me from uploading more than 6 images in an hour.

EDIT:

There are 3 known book covers here:

The first is Asimov's Pebble in the Sky. The second is called "The 81st Q War". The third is "10,000 Light Years From Home".

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    • Awoo [she/her]M
      ·
      2 months ago

      Yeah I think there's a bit more going on with him though. His style feels... Older? Like it's using stuff that is very traditional, merging it with anime, then also merging it with scifi itself. 3 time periods are being mixed together - the old traditional art techniques and style he's using, the modern in anime, and the future scifi.

      I don't know, something about his work grabs me and I'm really annoyed that I can't find more of his work online.

  • Awoo [she/her]M
    ·
    2 months ago

    Edit: There are 3 book covers by him too

    The first is Asimov's Pebble in the Sky. The second is called "The 81st Q War". The third is "10,000 Light Years From Home".

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