I truly believe that he can bring the aesthetic of Amano's work into the 20th century, even though we can all agree that Amano's illustrations are timeless in his own right.  Nomura has only brought us diluted Shonen designs with an abundance of zippers which is only getting stale. I also believe that his designs will suite the design FF world if it takes influences from feudal Japan which will be awesome.

Accomplished Mangaka with works included Slam Dunk (Considered the best sports Manga/anime of all time!), Vagabond and his talent has also extended to the gaming character designs offering his talents to mistwalker for Lost Odyssesy. This is only a flavour of what he has to offer.

Does anyone agree? Who else do you think can take the helm.

Takehiko Inoue is God...He could do whatever he wants! :)

P.S. Slam Dunk best Manga and Anime EVER!!!

Inoue's watercolors are absolutely GORGEOUS. After seeing his style in LO I would like to see him do more videogame work.

I love nomura and amano... either of those. but the why the hell would they use takehiko over Amano?  And I don't really see how takehiko's work is anything like amano's.

If I had to throw a random person out there I'd pick yoshitoshi abe... who drew my avatar,.. from Haibane Renmei. I wish he'd do a game like ghibli is.

However, personally I prefer any of the 3 currently working on FF, Yoshida, Nomura, and Amano over, takehiko

Cause Takehiko is awesome, I think his work relates more with Amano that Nomura has, I just saying he can elevate that formula more so than Nomura, am not hating on Nomura I loved his design in FF 10, but I think it's time for a change which I think Inoue can fill.

I have to admit that the art style of a Takehiko Inoue-drawn Final Fantasy would be pretty freaking amazing

Well, yes I'd agree, because nomura isn't really anything like Amano's. Other than the monsters  Nomura d id a long time ago which fit with amano's thing's... which were probably based on amano monster designs anyways (not sure about this).

I'd prefer... amano out of the 3 for the next one... because he hasn't had an HD videogames... or even last gen videogame as far as I know... while I already saw takehiko's in LO >_> and the game looked fine... and I liked seth :D

How can anyone deny this, imagine him having his own take on FF6 characters, I would pay good bucks to see him draw that!

Yeah, I'd be all for it.

Just don't let him write the script or the game would be 400 hours long.

(that is a joke about the pacing in Vagabond, natch)

Hmmm having Amano doing HD game would be a dream, but I can see the shift the company is taking which isn't great diluted story, with diluted character designs with that I think he is going to stick with Nomura.