【Illustrator】pako

pako is a pretty underrated illustrator that I also sometimes forget about, but his work is very nice and refined, plus he has an unmistakeable style, and whenever I see his stuff again I become very impressed again. He used to go by 宮沢波広 (MIYAZAWA Namihiro) and 葉上 (hagami), but he consistently uses the name pako now.

I first found out about him from his work on Shining Force EXA (Cyrille, from the image above, is a pretty popular character), and looked more into it when I heard he did the art for the Rental Magica light novels too. Surprisingly, he also did the artwork for the Chrono Crusade light novels, which is technically my first contact with his work, but I didn’t know it was him back then.

His style is really fluid, with all sorts of active poses and expressions, and can draw both pretty girls and manly men. It’s awesome. The easiest characteristic to confirm if it is really his illustration is his colouring style. Lots of muted colours and blended shading. Nothing is overly shiny, and most of it looks kind of matte instead, but it is in no way flat.

Blog: http://hsspako.blog32.fc2.com/
Old website: http://f58.aaa.livedoor.jp/~hcartoon/
Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=16008

【Visual Novel】月照～ツキノテラス～ / Moonshine

Finished this short (~2 hours), free, doujin VN some nights ago and it is really awesome. Even though some of the themes might make people go “Whaa?! That is not right!”, in the end it’s just a bittersweet love story, but without the overly deliberate mushy crap that most romance-themed things have. I really like this. Also, the art and music (theme song especially) are extremely good for a free game! There is also voice acting for the “female” lead. The translation was nice too. It’s written in a pretty simple language, but it’s really touching…even I think so. Please play it!

There is even an English translation from al|together, so nobody has an excuse. I plan to play it in its original form with extended scenarios when I can get it installed. /o\

Official Site: http://www.sakuramint.net/tsukiteras/tsuki_index.htm (JPN)
English translation site at al|together: http://altogether.insani.org/2008/4.html
Theme song at Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOnouItBOps

RE:Bakemonogatari 1

Click for ultra high-res version.

First time downloading an episode and watching it in full screen \o/ The result was gorgeous. Every frame was screencappable, seriously. I wonder how I will go back to streaming anime hahahaha.

Anyways, lovely lovely episode. The animation quality is extremely high and I couldn’t help but gawk at everything. There were a lot of still scenes but that really added to the mood. The way the characters were drawn were really faithful to VOFAN’s original depictions too. I dig! Really nice presentation style too. So artsy…As with SHAFT’s usual stuff they liked using lots of text to make it seem more epic, and being kind of a sucker for nice text I loved the touch.

Things that stood out:
- Awesome awesome cropping.
- “Creative” use of stationary. (ie. this scene)
- The ED song, ahahaha.

Will probably keep downloading for the eye candy but may or may not be blogging. Everyone else and their goat will blog it anyways right!

Bakemonogatari ED

Been literally been waiting 3 weeks or so to hear the song ever since they announced that ガゼル (gazelle), a super great alas retired 歌ってみた artist from niconico, was going to sing it!! Anyways, the song is written by ryo of supercell, and sang by nagi, gazelle’s new artist name. The title of the song is 君の知らない物語 (Your Strange Story).

Here’s the video with the ED.

What pisses me off the most is that nagi is not mentioned anywhere in the ED credits nor on the 君の知らない物語 single website except in the paragraph! All they go on about is ryo ryo ryo ryo ryo WHY. I mean, I guess he is the composer and all but what if someone is wondering who sang it?! It’s obviously not ryo who did the vocals as he is male!

Anyways, now it’s time to start counting down to the release of the single (August 12th) with lyrics and the full version \o/ Not exactly too fond of the song itself because it sounds like his other stuff, but the vocals…!!!!