Edible art is kind of a thing these days, especially in Asia, where seemingly every dish is so artfully crafted and cute you couldn’t possibly eat it – especially when it takes the form of a cat poking out of your latte.

This admittedly somewhat wasteful art form may have reached its pinnacle with these mind-boggling works of makizushi magnificence.

The artist, Takayo Kiyota, says there’s a certain amount of guesswork that goes into the art, as she must envision what the cross-section of each sushi roll will look like as she rolls it. Roll it too hard, and the image gets warped. Too soft, and the whole thing falls apart.

Some of her work seems like it would take x-ray vision or clairvoyance to pull off properly, such as one roll depicting an embryo that gradually transforms into a fully developed baby.

On the other end of the spectrum, Kiyota does sometimes seem to squander her talents a little on sushi images of wieners, poo and boobies, but you know. Japan.

▼ First, some of the more low–brow works:

Now, some of her classier works:

▼ We see what she did there.

▼ Considering this is made entirely out of colored rice, we’d say it’s a pretty good approximation of the real deal.

▼ D’ahhhhhhh, kitties!

▼ It really is amazing how little one slice changes from the next.

▼ There’s even the obligatory Apple product appearance.

▼ The mascot from NicoNico Douga, Japan’s YouTube.

Source: Kotaku

Images: Takaya Kiyota blog