Amin Abbas

DUBAI: Hiroshi Kanatani is a professional Japanese comic artist who works on Tokusatsu projects such as commissioned Godzilla illustrations for Toho Studios, contributed to Famous Monsters of Filmland, Monster Attack Team, and G-FAN magazine. Kanatani is also a respected member of the Japan Manga Association.

He recently worked with American comic artist Matt Frank on the new “DINOSAUR WAR IZENBORG” comic which was released in Japan in Dec. 2021.

Speaking exclusively to Arab News Japan, Kanatani shared his experience working with Frank, saying: “The two of us make a good team and he watched a lot of the ‘DINOSAUR WAR IZENBORG’ series episodes to understand the content of it well. In order to create the comic, we first discussed the direction & generally agreed that Matt will do the story.”

“I followed him smoothly without any objection. He also trusts me and I was in charge of Tokusatsu and enjoyed drawing dinosaurs in the comic. I believe that Matt also wants to draw them. His cover art and illustrations show this love for dinosaurs. We are also talking about rotating roles in the next project as I work on the story and characters & Matt does the Tokusatsu dinosaurs and mecha,” he added.

Kanatani explained that even though the process went smoothly, there were still some challenges. The distance between the work partners made things somewhat challenging as Frank was in the US and Kanatani was in Japan.

“But it was an interesting trial because we made one comic at the same time in two countries and we did it in a fairly short period of time,” he said.

Kanatani told Arab News Japan that he had already been a fan of ‘DINOSAUR WAR IZENBORG’ and was proud to share it with its fans in the Middle East.

The Japanese artist shared his inspiration for his work, saying: “I drew a lot of ‘Doraemon’ and kaiju art since I was a kid. From that time on, the profession I wanted to become was a manga artist. I also made a lot of stories then. I like comedies and mainstream stories. Though I also liked martial arts like Kung Fu, I have been sickly since I was born, so I chose an artistic profession. The start of my career is also with heroes and kaiju.”

Some of his favorite genres included Tokusatsu (Ultraman), science fiction (Star Trek) & Japanese-period drama Jidaigeki. His favorite manga series are: Doraemon, Dragon Ball, Urusei Yatsura, COBRA & JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Kanatani established his professional career five years ago. Countries like Hong Kong and the US showed a great response to his art.

“The first request I received was from Hong Kong, for an original hero cartoon production and monster illustrations. The magazine won an award,” he added.

The comic artist is currently working on projects like Tokusatsu Hero Manga ‘Electroid ZABORGER’ (Denjin ZABORGER), ‘Beast Warrior LIONMARU’ (Kaiketsu LIONMARU), ‘HYOMAN the Leopardman’ (HYOMAN) which will all be released in 2022 from Antarctic Press.