
About a year ago I got a recommended video on YouTube for a Japanese pop song from 1984 – Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi. It was catchy so I dove a little deeper and learned about City Pop – the soundtrack of Japan’s late 70s and 80s (it’s also the basis of a lot of Vaporwave stuff from the recent past). A common companion to City Pop is the art of Hiroshi Nagai (@hiroshipenguinjoe) whose illustrations graced countless album covers of the time. I absolutely love his work, so I decided to try my hand at his style with a few illustrations of my own.