Original illustration given to circles who are retiring from ComiComi
VOFAN is a professional illustrator from Taiwan who is best known for his character designs and illustrations for the Bakemonogatari light novel. Although he is an illustrator, right now he wishes to become a professional photographer. VOFAN is about 29 years old, likes OKAMA’s works, and used to like drawing mechs before he saw Doukyuusei 2‘s artwork and started drawing girls. He knows Mandarin and English, and has reading knowledge of Japanese.
VOFAN’s style is immediately recognizable because of his unique colouring. He uses mostly pastel colours with barely any outlines at all, and uses only different shades of a colour to denote depth and different objects. He is also known for his soft and natural lighting in his pictures, and his compositions are a little akin to photographs, with clean cropping, lots of background, and interesting perspectives.
Senjogahara Hitagi from Bakemonogatari, drawn to celebrate the novel getting an anime adaptation
As if I don’t already have enough posts about this CD’s title song. Anyways, I finally received my copy of the CD today after preordering it last month.
Album cover (illust: 三輪士郎)
The version I got was the first press edition with an extra DVD and a sticker that you can put on your cap. The CD comes with 5 tracks, three of which have vocals and two are instrumentals.
CD Track List:
01. 君の知らない物語 (Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari)
02. LOVE & ROLL
03. theme of “CENCOROLL” instrumental track
04. 君の知らない物語 (Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari) -TV Edit-
05. 君の知らない物語 (Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari) -Instrumental-
All the songs are composed by ryo of supercell, and the vocals are done by nagi. nagi is basically the reason I bought this CD at all because her voice is too great. My favourite track is probably the title track even though it sounded kind of generic to me at first, but the lyrics are great. LOVE & ROLL, the main vocal theme for CENCOROLL, is a very welcome change from ryo’s usual style, and I love the main melody, but it seems to repeat a lot and makes the song sound a little long. Nevertheless, still a good song that I like, and it has interesting lyrics as well.
The cover illustration is done by MIWA Shirow and the sticker illustrations were done by redjuice. I was kind of disappointed with the sticker because I actually thought that there would be 8 stickers, one for each illustration. But alas, it was only one sticker with 8 cropped pictures on it.
The package design was done by wooserdesign, which is good and clean. I’m not used to buying singles, but I was a tiny bit disappointed that there weren’t any liner notes from the staff/vocalist. (Or are liner notes for albums only?) The paper insert (not a booklet) is only one piece of folded glossy paper with the cover illustration, credits, lyrics, and back cover, with a two-sided advertisement insert inside promoting Bakemonogatari DVD vol.1 and CENCOROLL. The CD case is pretty high quality, though, and isn’t exactly the ultra-fragile jewel cases I’m used to seeing.
The DVD I haven’t watched yet since it’s Region 2, but I watched the videos from it on the web.
DVD Track List:
– 「君の知らない物語」 (Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari) MUSIC VIDEO
– 「君の知らない物語」 (Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari) CM SPOT
The LIVE ACTION PV is a terrible disappointment since I was really hoping for something animated or at least related to Bakemonogatari in some way. It’s basically a juvenile story about a high school love triangle. The CM spot video is really short and reuses footage from episode 1 of Bakemonogatari.
All in all, I’m not exactly regretting that I got the first press edition, but since the DVD bonus was mediocre, I recommend getting the regular edition, even though the one (big) sticker is pretty cool. I’m happy that I got the CD at all since CDs with nagi’s vocals are so hard to find, so jumping on this mass-produced single is a good opportunity if you are either a supercell or nagi fan. I don’t really think that there’s much here for Bakemonogatari fans unless they really like the song or really want to collect the sticker.
君の知らない物語 (Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari), the Bakemonogatari ED, has its full version leaked. On nicovideo it has received an overwhelming response, giving it the daily #4 ranking of all videos. I guess ryo and nagi are awesome like that.
恋は戦争 (Koi wa Sensou), the popular song by ryo, is being remixed by notable composers like bakerm kz, and ゆうゆ (yuuyu), and being compiled into a CD as an omake for 三輪士郎 (Miwa Shirow)’s Comiket76 Vocaloid Visual Works release.
よっぺい (yoppei)’s new song is 七色のニコニコ動画 (Nanairo no Niconico Douga). It is #2 on the daily rankings, but I think Cagayake!GIRLS and Meltdown were better.
REDALiCE‘s Comiket76 album will be a Touhou Project Arrange album. It has a song guest composed by kz and the album illustration was done by 晩杯あきら (Banpai Akira).
Game
光の四戦士－ファイナルファンタジー外伝 (Hikari no 4 Senshi – Final Fantasy Gaiden) has its characters page up. For some reason Unita reminds me of Sailor Jupiter, which is a good thing. Yoshida Akihiko is seriously the best. Profile translations available at Mognet Central.
polymetrica 
