Haruka and Chihaya from The IDOLM@STER. Click to enlarge.

シオミヤイルカ (SHIOMIYA Iruka) is a professional illustrator who also releases independant doujinshi. He is best known for illustrating the covers of the two 戦姫 (Senhime/Battle Princess) light novels, and also for contributing this ED sequence artwork of Senjougahara Hitagi from Bakemonogatari. However, most of his non-commercial artwork are of The IDOLM@STER characters. Shiomiya owns a Mystic Silver PSP, listens to NAKAJIMA Miyuki and The Carpenters while drawing, uses Photoshop CS4 with a Wacom Intuos 4 on a Mac, and his favourite movies lately are Roman Holiday and Ratatouille.

Shiomiya’s not-really-anime style is marked by realistic shading, and the themes of his artwork are usually non-fantastical. His characters all have large round (sometimes oval-ish) eyes, but they usually have plausible poses, hairstyles, and clothing. Faces are wonderfully expressive, with many different emotions. Hair is probably one of his strongest points, since it always looks like it has weight and actual strands. However, Shiomiya’s colouring style is what makes his artwork stand out. Shading is sharp and accurate, and even though uses a lot of different colours, they’re always skillfully coordinated and never clash. He also has a good grasp on lighting, and knows how to integrate his beautiful backgrounds with the characters in the setting. Incredibly, his rough drafts are almost equally awesome as his coloured artwork.

Website: http://www.geocities.jp/shiomid/ (Downloads of his artwork+sketches for each year are posted here)
Blog: http://yaplog.jp/shiomid/
Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=9769

Part two of the Illustrator Marathon. The next few posts will be in this category as well. The juvenile reason for this is because I want the Illustrator tag to surpass all other tags by a bigger margin. I don’t want the Music tag to” catch up”.

舞野咲 (MAINO Saki) from the cover of “不思議”取り扱います 付喪堂骨董店 (Tsukumodou Antique Shop) Volume 6.

タケシマサトシ (TAKESHI MASATOSHI) is the artist name of a Japanese illustrator best known for his artwork in 御堂彰彦 (ODO Akihiko)’s light novel series, “不思議”取り扱います 付喪堂骨董店 (“Fushigi” Tori atsukaimasu – Tsukumodou Kottouten/We handle “Curiosities” – Tsukumodou Antique Shop). He has also provided artwork for an H-game called 天ツ澪 (Amatsumiyo) as well as for Square Enix’s Eternal Wheel TCG, and did the mecha designs for a PS2 game called バルドバレットイクリブリアム (Baldr Bullet Equilibrium).

Takeshi Masatoshi’s style is sophisticated and slightly dark. He’s capable of drawing pretty and smart-looking girls and moderately frilly outfits, and seems to draws eyes in a pretty typical style. Although his characters look nice, I think the one thing that really drew me to his covers for Tsukumodou was how he set the mood of the picture. There were always different detailed backgrounds that accompanied the character, and this atmosphere is impeccable. Takeshi Masatoshi’s colouring style is lovely too, with mostly muted colours and gradated shading in the hair that reminds me a bit of pako’s artwork, and it’s nice how he can make even the folds in dull black clothes easily distinguishable. He sometimes also blends different slightly shades together when colouring a large area, which gives it a slight pearl-like sheen. He’s come a long way from the colouring techniques he used to use. Of course, he’s also capable of producing vibrant pictures as well as something totally different from his usual style.

Website: http://members.at.infoseek.co.jp/scene11/ (Unavailable)

Seems like I’ve been neglecting this category as of late…Sorry!

Artwork for an MMORPG called Bell Isle. Click to enlarge.

芳住和之 (YOSHIZUMI Kazuyuki) is a professional freelance illustrator best known for his work on the Mana Khemia video game series. He was also the original character designer and illustrator for the 宇宙をかける少女 (Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo/Sora Kake Girl) light novel, which was adapted into an anime. Yoshizumi was born in 1977, lives in Saitama Prefecture, his hobbies include taking photos of scenery with his Nikon D70 while taking a walk, and likes to make coffee. His favourite games are the Ogre Battle series and the Panzer Dragoon series, and his favourite artists are Frank Frazetta and Norman Rockwell. Yoshizumi has most recently contributed to the character designs for the 闘神伝 (Toshinden) Wii remake, which is probably my favourite work of his.

Yoshizumi’s style is of the anime style but with a fantasy twist. Most of his female character sport round eyes and uniquely designed costumes, and his male characters have narrow eyes and range from manly men to effeminate guys. Both genders seem to sport a lot of thick, shiny hair. The accessories, costumes and weapons he designs are astoundingly elaborate and elegant, and he always adds a lot of different, super-detailed motifs to them. Yoshizumi uses a lot of deep-coloured shading that makes everything look like it has substantial weight, and uses white spots to give things a touch of shine. His colouring usually uses moderate but varying shades of colour, and uses more vibrant colours for highlighting, but I think that his black and white artwork are most lovely. His overall style is pretty similar to Hyung-tae Kim’s.

Website: http://www12.big.jp/~s03tk/
Yoshizumi Kazuyuki at moe.imouto: http://moe.imouto.org/wiki/show?title=yoshizumi_kazuyuki

梅宮雛 (UMEMIYA Hina) is a relatively well-known niconico singer best known for her rendition of wowaka’s 裏表ラバーズ (Uraomote Lovers/Love & Lovers). Her titles always start with “人知れず”, which means “secretly”. (So the whole template title translates to something like “Tried to Sing in secret / Umemiya Hina”). As well, she gets other people on niconico to help her with mixing her songs. Also, Umemiya Hina is most likely not her real name.

Umemiya is capable of hitting extremely high notes without straining, wavering or straying from the note, and can sing in many different voices, though the usual one she uses is slightly cutesy but not at all annoying. Some of her “other voices” sound like Kagamine Len and even INOUE Marina. (See her rendition of Nanairo no NicoNico Douga). She also seems to have really good breath control since she can not only switch between voices quickly, but she can also keep singing a lot without gasping for breath (See her rendition of Uramote).

Essential Works:
1. 裏表ラバーズ (Uraomote Lovers/Love & Lovers) (niconico link) **Most Popular Work**
2. 炉心融解 (Roshin Yuukai/Meltdown) (niconico link)
3. いつもより泣き虫な空 (Itsumo Yori Nakimushi na Sora/A Sky Who’s Being More of a Crybaby Than Usual) (niconico link) **Recommended**

Niconico Profile: http://www.nicovideo.jp/user/10862349
Mylist: http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/10657771

Old news anime…

Click to enarlge. (Illust: 関口可奈味)

Title: CANAAN
Studio: P.A. Works
Original Scenario: 奈須きのこ (NASU Kinoko)
Character Designs: 武内崇（TAKEUCHI Takashi)
Episodes: 13
Genre: Seinen (Action)
Status: Completed, not licensed.
My Rating: 7.8/10

OOSAWA Maria is an aspiring camerawoman who travels to Shanghai with her co-worker, reporter MINORIKAWA Minoru, in hopes of getting a big scoop. While they’re on the job, they get caught up in terrorist-related activities which have to do with a lethal virus called the Ua virus and its victims. The anime is based on a bonus scenario written by NASU Kinoko for the game 428.

To be honest, I’ve never really read/seen any of Nasu’s works before (5 paragraphs of Tsukihime doesn’t count!), so I’m not sure if CANAAN is the regular, awesome Nasu affair, but CANAAN’s story was pretty great, in my opinion. I wanted to watch this for four reasons:

1. 428 got 40/40 from Famitsu.
2. Alphard reminded me of Revy from Black Lagoon, who is awesome, and is voiced by Sakamoto Maaya
3. The OP sequence’s ranking as interpreted by Baka-Raptor.
4. The ED theme was sung by Annabel, one of my favourite doujin artists.

There was a lot of progression each episode, and the sequence for how they revealed everything (from the initial individual encounters to the reasons behind the whole grand plan), was done really coherently, and the best thing was that after everything was revealed, they went back to the characters and developed them a little more so that at the end they didn’t seem shallow at all. There weren’t a lot of plotholes that I noticed either, and even the silly mascot helmets were explained. Unfortunately, I thought the actual concept itself was pretty over-the-top. A superstrong virus, world government leaders, fighter planes, synethesia to this extent…It’s good to try and incorporate some real world stuff into elaborate stories like these, but here it just seemed a little out of place, especially when the whole thing is centered around relatively unserious large-eyed characters.

I should also note that the animation was seriously impeccable. After seeing a certain slideshow anime, I forgot that anime was supposed to immerse the audience with animation, but CANAAN reminded me with every second I watched. GJ P.A. Works!

The characters were in general awesome, but with a large, important exception: Maria. Maria is absolutely useless. She cannot take pictures, she cannot fight, and her most outstanding skill seems to be getting kidnapped so people can get a certain character to fight with them. I really felt that she was just there to act as a plot device to develop other characters and trigger events, and other than that, she didn’t seem at all like a character. Her voice is also not sugoi. Other than Maria, though, the rest were almost more than awesome, and I could say that the entire main cast (except Maria) was above average in terms of likeability. Here’s my ranking:

1. Hakko - Mute, beautiful, slightly deadly woman who stole every scene she was in despite not talking. So awesome.
2. Alphard - More like 1.02, because she’s equivalent to Hakko in coolness, but she really didn’t have enough scenes in the series, and if she appeared more often, she’d be my absolute favourite. At first she reminded me of Revy from Black Lagoon (Tattoo, ponytail, shorts, nonexistent fashion sense), but she is more composed and slick. She’s also voiced by Sakamoto Maaya, whom we all love.
3. Canaan - So unemotional and strong she is awesome. Although it seems like she likes Maria in a really yuri way to most people, it seemed to me that she just loved Maria since Canaan doesn’t really have anybody else to love. Crazy fighting style and pretty eyes, too, but just how old is she anyways?
4. Liang Qi - Psycho, sadistic villian who would’ve been my top favourite if she fit in with the rest of the too-chill cast. She is very entertaining to watch, and her dialogue is so incredibly interesting, but is far too exaggerated and insane. I couldn’t believe she was voiced by Tanaka Rie. Must’ve been a mistake in the credits…or not.

Overall, CANAAN was a really satisfying series to watch, especially because the fights were so well choreographed and animated. Great characters and a coherent plot that doesn’t make you think TOO much makes this series above average, but the existence of Maria pulls it down a bit, and the themes are not life-changingly deep. (Actually, it is slightly shallow.) Recommended if you want a quick, beautiful action fix with an awesome cast.

Let’s try this again…The post about Vol.1 (which I suggest as a starting point) was done in a pretty terrible way, so I’m trying to improve on that. I’m sorry that I am an amateur. I’ll try to do improve on this next time. Hover over each image to see a caption, and click to enlarge.

This post consists of three (general) parts:
1. List of Works
2. Opinion
3. Packaging

Robot Vol.2 Cover. Click to enlarge. (Illust: Range Murata)

This is volume 2 of 10 volumes, 5 of which have been translated and distributed in North America. Vol.2 is published by Digital Manga Publishing.

List of Works + respective artists in Vol.2:
(by English translated titles and in order of appearance)

1. Dragon Fly Ch.2 – MAESHIMA Shigeki (22 page manga)
2. Ebony & Ivory Ch.2 – YASUDA Suzuhito (10 page manga)
3. There Goes Suzume Robo!! – Sabe (4 page manga)
4. Wasteland Ch.3 – YOSHITOSHI ABe (18 page manga)
5. Flowers – MAEDA Hirotaka (8 page manga)
6. Stars and Blue – Miggy (7 pages of themed illustrations)
7. Pez & Dekosuke – ASADA Hiroyuki (1 short comic and illustration fold-out)
8. “Velvet” Monochrome Version – TAJIMA Sho-U (1 spread illustration)
9. Sedouka Ch.2 – NAGASAWA Shin (10 page manga)
10. Delicious Adventures – YUG (4 page manga)
11. House of Fish – Teikoku Shounen (3 page manga, 1 spread illustration)
12. The Depths of November – MIURA Yasuto (8 page manga)
13. Eventyr -What The Diamond Discovered- – HACCAN (9 page story w/ inset illustrations)
14. The Oni Smiles When You Mention Next Year – NEKOI Mie (6 page manga)
15. Witch’s Stipulation – DOWMANSAYMAN (8 page manga)
16. Within The Mirror – SANBE Kei
17. [Untitled] – MURATA Range (2 illustrations; landing page and exit page)

Opinion: This volume is probably one of my favourites out of the 5 volumes I got, because of the substantial amounts of content from all the artists I like the most, those artists being Maeshima Shigeki, Yoshitoshi ABe, Teikoku Shounen, and HACCAN. However, I personally thought that much of the other ones were a little less than stellar, especially Tajima’s black and white illustration and Sanbe’s manga. I also also still unable to like Miura’s odd style and story.

The biggest highlight for me is again HACCAN’s story. Again with a LOT of incredible and colourful artwork (More than in Vol.1, I think), but the most notable thing here is the story. I didn’t think that HACCAN could come up with a story that completely overwhelms his already awesome story in Vol.1, but he totally outdoes himself in Vol.2. It’s again set in the same fantasy world of Eventyr (though with no magic this time!), and talks about a blue sprite who lives in a brilliant blue diamond. The diamond is passed to different people through various situations, and at the end of a chain is a really really moving ending. It literally made me cry. It was incredible how sincere and pure the whole thing was. I’d buy this book just to read this, seriously. Please buy it so you can read it too. It’s not the same if you download it and read it on a monitor.

My second favourite thing in Vol.2 comes to a tie between Maeshima’s and Yoshitoshi’s continuations from Vol.2. They both wrote and drew a huge amount of entirely colour pages in this volume, and it was just amazing to see them be able to keep up with such consistency and quality in both artwork and story, despite having to do so much/ Yoshitoshi also revealed (in his afterword comments) that for this chapter, he used a doubly longer process (pencilling and inking by hand, then colouring by PC, instead of usually just pencilling by hand and colouring by PC), so the detail and finish in this chapter looked even more complete than usual. Maeshima also keeps up with the same high quality as in Vol.1, with some gorgeous artwork of Sara, the steamy hot protagonist, plus quite a bit of manly men fighting each other, which is fine too (I guess…) The (other?) best thing about both Maeshima and Yoshitoshi’s manga this volume was that a lot of plot-wise progression was made, so the story just totally made me want to read more. Super, super great job.

Next is Teikoku Shounen’s pseudo-manga and illustration spread, which, as you guessed it, is more than entirely wonderful. I love this guy so much. His little manga follows a waitress who works at the House of Fish and the places she sees, all of which are part of the spread illustration. After the manga is the illustration of the entire House of Fish, complete with all the tiny, miniscule details that Teikoku Shounen is master at detailing. I also don’t know why I ever had an impression that Teikoku Shounen wasn’t that good at drawing people, but his manga-thing smashes and completely annihilates the preconception I had before. That waitress is cute! Teikoku Shounen also says in the afterword that this is the most pictures he’s had to draw ever (at the time of publication at least). I guess this is also tied with my second favourite. Actually, you know what, they’re all my favourites.

Also, Maeda’s manga in this volume was quite gorgeous, and he was a new discovery for me. I don’t think I understood the ending of it at all, though. Asada’s “manga” this time was only a fold-out, but the serious-looking artwork is really, really beautiful, and I was very happy to see it since Asada usually draws in a more playful, less detailed style. I found that Miggy’s spread was nice too, and I’m starting to warm up to the artist’s unique style. Too bad the binding and alignment doesn’t do the image justice.

As for the works I could not attach myself to, the most prominent one was Tajima’s overly simple black and white spread. It shows a naked, smiling woman from the stomach up, and near her stomach is this unidentifiable object that I can’t define at all. I don’t get it, and why black and white! That’s terrible! The second one was Nekoi’s manga, with a silly story and really silly looking characters. I know that it’s nice as comic relief, but it just felt so…out of place for some reason, and I’m not too fond of the art/colouring style either.

I just also wanted to say that Murata’s contribution to this volume (in terms of artwork), was very, very minimal, with only two pages of in-book artwork plus the cover art. Sure, the pages he did draw are really aweome and cool (especially the exit page), but if you’re getting this book hoping for more Murata, well, I think it would be more wise to look at scans from the book instead if you just wanted that.

Packaging: Continues with the high production quality seen in Vol.1, complete with dust jacket, heavy card-like stock for the cover, and similar semi-glossy paper for the inner pages. Vol.2 was printed in Taiwan (instead of China), and the dust jacket illustration has a little more noise than Vol.1’s, but the quality is still very high. There is also a seperate piece of detachable paper on the back for advertising purposes, and two ads in the back of the book. Vol.2 is a little shorter and less wide than Vol.1 (Less wide by ~4.5mm, shorter by ~3mm). Vol.2 also uses a different binding type than Vol.1, and can’t open as wide. Spreads are close to being entirely aligned, but is not as perfect as Vol.1. Also missing are the tiny names on the inside of the cover. Overall, the packaging for Vol.2 is less stellar than Vol.1.

Here are some other pictures.

Artwork of the main characters from Zektbach's Blind Justice～Torn souls, Hurt Faiths ～. Click to enlarge.

高村真耶 (TAKAMURA Maya), also known as VJ MAYA, is a professional illustrator who also does video work, and is best known for her animated videos in Konami’s beatmania IIDX games, such as PVs for Zektbach’s Ristaccia and kors k’s smooooch・∀・. She resigned from Konami in 2008 and now works as a freelance illustrator, though she has recently made two videos for beatmania IIDX 17 SIRIUS. Takamura’s birthday is on March 30th and is a graduate of Osaka University of Arts.

Takamura’s artwork is of quite the anime/manga style, with many large eyed characters, undetailed faces, and beautiful, almost extravagant clothing designs. However, her artwork, even outside of the fantasy-themed Zektbach videos, seems to be influenced by things such as 17th century fashion(?), Middle Eastern costumes, and other western clothing in general (dresses, ribbons, jewelled hairpieces). Of course, Takamura is also capable of executing many other styles and themes skillfully as well, outside of the themes mentioned above. Her artwork is mainly drawn with impeccably clean black and white line art and then coloured in, and she usually shades parts of the hair and details with black lines as well, giving them a intricate and solid look. Her colouring style varies a lot depending on what kind of tone she is trying to achieve, but everything that she does colour is very colourful, vibrant, and extremely well-coordinated. She seems to like using bright, almost neon colours if she gets the chance, and her mastery of colour is made apparent by this as they are just bright enough that they don’t look garish or difficult to look at.

As for her videos, they are, to put it in one word, incomparable, especially for the heavily animated Zektbach videos. All animations were drawn by Takamura alone, and the fluidity of everything is incredible. I can’t even begin to imagine how many pictures she had to draw for each video (or even every few seconds) in order to show that kind of detailed motion. Composition of videos are perfect as well, with a lot of creative effects for both changing scenes and connecting objects. Despite being obviously 2D, videos like Turii ～Panta Rhei～ have animation that include panning and zooming, making the videos even more immersive. Takamura’s video work is probably the pinnacle of hand drawn PVs. Please watch them.

Essential Works – beatmania IIDX videos:
1. Ristaccia
2. smooooch・∀・
3. Turii ～Panta Rhei～ **Personal Favourite**

Website: http://maya.vc/ (Japanese)
Wikipedia Entry: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/高村真耶 (Japanese)
RemyWiki Entry: http://vjarmy.com/wiki/index.php/Maya_Takamura
Youtube Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9C16845C60947851

First time doing an artbook(?) review(??), please go easy on me. Also this post is really long. 1276 words of terribility.

Robot Vol.1 Cover. Click to enlarge.(Illust: Range Murata)

Robot Super Color Comic is a colour manga anthology series with 10 volumes in total and consists of illustrators and manga artists selected by Range Murata, who illustrates all the covers for the series. The first 3 volumes have been translated and published in English by Digital Manga Publishing, and volumes 4 and 5 have been published by Udon Entertainment.

Although it’s billed as a colour comic book, it’s more accurate to describe it as an artbook due to the focus on art and also for how it’s “packaged”: it’s printed in an oversized book format with thick, heavy paper and a jacket around the actual book. Despite being printed in China (Not that I have anything against China), this localized release is high quality, especially in terms of printing and material, and most likely does justice to the original Japanese release. This first volume weighs in at more than 700 grams, with 164 pages in total.

A list of comics in the book by their corresponding artist is listed below, by their English translated titles and in order of appearance:

1. Groundpass Drive – MURATA Range (4 themed illustrations)
2. Picnic – NARUCO Hanaharu (8 page manga)
3. Pez & Hot Strawberry – ASADA Hiroyuki (11 page manga)
4. Angels at the Planetarium – TAJIMA Sho-U (12 page B&W manga + 1 illustration)
5. Carogna – ITOU Mami (4 page manga)
6. Wasteland – YOSHITOSHI ABe (8 page manga)
7. There Goes Suzume Robo!! – Sabe (4 page manga)
8. Hemohemo – Yug (6 page manga)
9. Oputon – OKAMA (4 page manga)
10. Dragon Fly – MAESHIMA Shigeki (12 page manga)
11. Dream of the Empty Cage – Miggy (4 themed illustartions)
12. Biting Summer Play – MIURA Yasuto (8 page manga)
13. Sedouka – NAGASAWA Shin (8 page manga)
14. Ebony & Ivory – YASUDA Suzuhito (8 page manga)
15. Primary Color Book – HAKUA Ugetsu (4 illustrations)
16. Eventyr – HACCAN (11 page story w/ inset illustrations)
17. Dragon’s Heaven – KOBAYASHI Makoto (4 page manga)
18. Angels – KINUTANI Yu (8 page manga)
19. Clash!-Revenge of Hunk Kung Fu vs Ugly Kung Fu-Find a Groom! – NEKOI Mie (8 page manga)
20. Moonlight – SANBE Kei (8 page manga)

Opinion: Awesome anthology. More than half of the stories in this are to my liking, and for the ones I really liked, I really, really liked. Since all the artists featured in the book were given free reign to do whatever they wanted, the result was that everything was creative and experimental, which is something I love.

My favourite story was definitely HACCAN’s “Eventyr”, though. Thank you to HACCAN for exceeding all of my expectations. Not only are the illustrations beautiful and colourful, the story is one of the most (truly!) innocent ones I’ve read in a long time. The gist is that in a fantasy world, the only two surviving witches left in the world decide to go out into the human world for the first time, and to their joy, they’re accepted and praised by the humans, who used to fear and hate witches. However, something happens and the humans hate them again. The witches are portrayed as a pair of bright-eyed, curious youths (a boy and a girl), and one could really feel the innocent and sincere tone of the whole story, further emphasized by the artwork because they’re smiling in 98% of them! Best thing ever!

To be honest, I was only really wanting to see what HACCAN came up with, but I was also really impressed by Naruco Hanaharu’s “Picnic”, Asada Hiroyuki’s “Pez & Hot Strawberry”, Itou Mami’s “Carogna”, Maeshima Shigeki’s “Dragon Fly”, and Yasuda Suzuhito’s “Ebony & Ivory”. “Picnic” in particular I found especially incredible, with a great short story and superb artwork, and I didn’t like “Pez & Hot Strawberry”’s artwork at first, but the story is heartwarming and sincere. Even though “Carogna” is grotesque and disturbing, the (very short) story is so impressionable that I can’t help liking (and remembering) it, and the protagonist in “Dragon Fly” is so slick and cool I couldn’t help comparing her to the female characters in No More Heroes, which is a very good thing in my book. “Ebony & Ivory” surprised me with its creativity and bold artwork too, despite not really being a fan of Yasuda, and is easily one of the best manga in the book. OKAMA’s “Oputon” is worth a mention too, because it is perverted and slightly cute at the same time. There goes my impression of beds. If you were waiting for me to mention the godly Yoshitoshi ABe, I can only say that I wasn’t really able to make an opinion on his contribution, because it was far too short to say much, and that opinion will probably form when I see the contination of the comic in Vol.2. Cool and nice Yoshitoshi art as usual, but since it’s a comic, it’s far from being as polished as his standalone illustrations.

The translations are alright: Everything makes sense and they even wrote some accented dialogue to make it seem more uh, cultural, but the bolded words seem jarring and odd at times. It’s like, “Why this word?” Also, The typesetting leaves a bit to be desired, and the most terrible example would be in Miggy’s “Biting Summer Play”. Dark-coloured font with a white shadow doesn’t exactly have high visibility, and especially not when it’s placed over stuff like dark-coloured hair or cluttered desks with lots of objects on them. I also wanted to punch a typesetter or two when I saw the font used in HACCAN’s lovely story (which happened to be my favourite), where they used a fantasy-style font intended for headings and accents, and not for whole paragraphs. Thanks guys, you just made it that much harder to reread something I want to reread over and over again. What is wrong with using normal serifs for paragraphs, anyways?! But however angry I sounded about the type, it’s definitely not a decision breaker.

On another note, I cannot be more pleased by how well they treated this book. The thick paper, the crisp and fine printing, the matte jacket, the large format, and best of all, the weight of the book. It just screams HQ. How can anyone go back to pixels after holding this kind of thing in their hands?! And especially after seeing such poor excuses for artbooks by overseas publishers (Read: Tokyopop) in a few bookstores, it’s a big surprise that DMP was able to stick so close to the original. GJ! I should also add that this volume has NO annoying publisher ads (usu. in the back of the book and stuff) whatsoever.

In conclusion, get this book if you don’t mind seeing lots of variety (with some being of questionable quality), like stuff in English that stays true to their JPN counterparts, love heavy paper, and/or want to find new artists to love. HACCAN fans should also not miss out, because his awesome works are pretty rare, but to get an entire anthology book for a single artist is never a very good choice. Please don’t get this book only because you like Range Murata, since he has a total of 4 illustrations in this book, which is way too insubstantial to be a reason for purchase.

My goodness that was long. Don’t tell me you read all of that, but if you did, have some (30) pictures as a way of saying thanks. Be warned that there are a LOT of them, and that they’re crappily arranged. I’ll try harder next time. Click on each to enlarge.

Contents shown (In order): Groundpass Drive – Murata Range, Picnic – Naruco Hanaharu, Pez & Hot Strawberry – Asada Hiroyuki, Angels at the Planetarium – Tajima Sho-U, Wasteland – Yoshitoshi ABe (2), Dragon Fly – Maeshima Shigeki, Ebony & Ivory – Yasuda Suzuhito, Primary Color Book – HAKUA Ugetsu, Eventyr – HACCAN (2), Illustrator Comments.

Found out about this slightly overlooked manga thanks to Enthousiaste on Twitter. Thank you!

NITORI Shuuichi (short-haired boy), who is the protagonist, and his elementary school friend CHIBA Saori (black-haired girl). (Illust: 志村貴子)

Title: 放浪息子 (Hourou Musuko/Transient Son)
Author: 志村貴子 (SHIMURA Takako)
Volumes: 9+ (78 chapters at the time of posting)
Genre: Seinen (Drama, Slice of Life, Gender Bender)
Status: Ongoing, scanlated by Kotonoha (Ch.1-34) and anonymous (35+)
My Rating: 7.7/10

Fifth-grader NITORI Shuuichi is a very girly boy, and his friend TAKATSUKI Yoshino happens to be a very boyish girl. Nitori wishes he was born a girl, and Takatsuki wishes she was born as a boy. They soon find out about each others’ odd wishes, and throughout the course of growing up together, they’re made to question their genuine wishes of becoming the opposite gender.

Despite being based on the theme of transgenderism, this manga felt more to me like a regular life drama/growing up story than anything else. We have a relatively large, memorable, and diverse cast, and the character interactions are usually developed through childhood classmates or crushes, which makes the manga pretty easy to relate to. There’s also a lot of internal agonizing about personal issues and friendship problems too. The instances of actually showing them doing something kind of controversial things (cross-dressing, befriending a transvestite) are pretty few and far between, and mostly come off as trivial or even not-as-ordinary child’s play. I do enjoy seeing the issue addressed, and to do it this subtly makes it seem more realistic and accessible, but on the other hand, it just seems so insignificant at times. I’ll admit that it made me very curious about non-fiction Japanese crossdressers, though.

As for the cast of characters, they are all unique and impressionable, but I wholly failed to develop any real attachment to any of them, even after reading 78 chapters. I also found myself hating about 80% of all the characters in the manga (especially the secondary classmate characters, who are almost all absolutely detestable.), and if I didn’t hate a character, I was indifferent to them, save for two or three. The only character who I can say I actually like seeing was the gorgeous CHIBA Saori, whom I despised at first, but after seeing some much-needed character development (and fashion), she became my favourite. Having a slightly despotic and weird personality helps as well. A close second is Yuki, who steals almost every scene she appears in, and a distant third is Takatsuki, who looks awesome, but lacks a definable personality for the most part.

The artwork looks exactly like it’s from a children’s storybook, with round faces and eyes on all the characters (even for the teenagers and adults!), lots of white space and clean lines, as well as a watercolour-like colouring style for the covers. (Those familiar with Shimura’s other work, like Aoi Hana/Sweet Blue Flowers, would not be surprised about this.) The art is incredibly fitting and impeccable, and Shimura’s lovely fashion sense along with the simple but recognizable character designs also makes (mostly) everyone look attractive and recognizable.

Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hōrō_Musuko
Scanlation at Onemanga: http://www.onemanga.com/Hourou_Musuko/

I swear I’m not obsessed with this series.

Does that look like the face of a terrible mastermind to you!!

Another superb episode titled “Rumours” that follows chapter 4 of the manga exactly, with select modified scenes from Chapter 5 and about two anime-original scenes. Unlike the last episode, episode 4’s tone was quite heavy, with only three or four humourous scenes, but being the high quality shoujo that Kimi ni Todoke is, it’s not overly dramatic or silly at all, and is pretty easy to relate to. The internal agonies of the four main characters here are slightly heartwrenching(?), and the episode might make one break out in a few tears if one is highly sensitive to the plights of our dear characters. If I remember correctly, the manga version of this arc drove me insane with grief or whatever it was for a few minutes.

Gist(?) of the episode: Continuing from Episode 3, the drama being brought up here is that Sawako is supposedly spreading rumours about Sano and Yoshida, and that she’s also a terrible mastermind who commands Kazehaya with Sano and Yoshida backing her up. Obviously that’s not the case, and Sano and Yoshida don’t believe the rumours, but the two start to have their doubts after seeing a few things that test their confidence in the matter. Sano and Yoshida ask Sawako what she thinks of them, she half-replies that she “doesn’t like them, but…”, and the two just cut her off and assume that Sawako really doesn’t like them. Sawako notices that her friends look down, and after hearing the rumours about how she herself is supposedly making Sano, Yoshida, and Kazehaya miserable, she decides that the best action to take is to avoid her three friends so she doesn’t hurt them anymore. This avoidance technique makes the three sad and worsens the situation.

Production I.G. is so Incredibly Great that it looks nice even in crapres.

The next episode is called 決意 (Ketsui/Decision), which has the same title as Chapter 6 in the manga. Ketsui also happens to be the title of a very good shmup by CAVE, but that has nothing to do with this series (Unfortunately!).

On another note, the Kimi ni Todoke DS game (育てる思い/Sodateru Omoi/Nurturing Feelings) came out last week! I haven’t played it, but it basically puts you in Sawako’s shoes as you go through all the manga scenarios, with a few original scenes written especially for the game. The limited first press edition version comes with a cellphone strap with a Sawako charm on the end that changes colour depending on how much light it gets. (Termed as a UV strap)