#kizamaru

Yay, Shingo Adachi Artworks book has arrived! Alas, sadly, 16 mere pages of Rockman art in a 300+ page book is a little disappointing. As is essentially half of that number being already previously available in other Rockman artbooks. There aren’t really any rare production pieces or concept works, as most of the book is devoted to full-color illustrations. A few pages containing his monochrome works from his other Ryuusei artbook, but nothing new. 

I love his art style regardless, and even if I’m not as familiar with the other series he’s worked on, there are a lot of other really nice pieces throughout the book. So still worth it, but just sad that so little of his Rockman works get any spotlight here. 

To show off a little today, here are some of the Ryuusei pieces. I will say that the colors in this artbook really vary. For some pages, the colors are bright and vibrant, others, something really feels off with the print. Definitely could be due to the files he had, but in these particular scans, the colors felt very muted. The reds especially looked so dull. So I had to kick up the saturation a bit as I touched them up.

The first is a clean crop of the new art used on the cover of this book, followed by a wedding-themed Subaru and Misora that I don’t recall ever seeing before. The text translation makes it sound like it was a gift for the wedding of someone on the Ryuusei production staff. 

Then a clean look at Tribe art, followed by general illustrations of Subaru and Rockman. He mentions that they ‘may have been intended for DVD or other merchandise packages,’ but unfortunately in Japan, the show was never released on DVD. And that was ‘very disappointing’ because he ‘wanted to draw them more and they were his favorite characters.’ Of course, one of them was actually used on a DVD, the Viz UK English version utilized the bottom right Rockman on its back cover. But yeah, another sad realization that those shows never got a complete DVD or Blu Ray set, Japanese-only or not.  Tomorrow, I‘ll show off a few of the EXE pieces.

Bonus postcard copy of the cover art, plus a few samples from the most recent Ryuusei anthology doujin, Galaxy Dream. The samples focus more on individual illustrations over the stories themselves, although I had to add Miyata’s hilarious 4-Koma page featuring Super Saiyan Subaru bringing his Noise Level over nine hundred!!! Kid is jacked!

It’s always sorta interesting to compare the differences between the American and Japanese game manuals, in the few cases where I own both versions. While most of the graphic design elements are similar, it’s fun to see the varying ways the layout, typography and images are presented.

In this case with the first Star Force/Ryuusei games, the full art for Geo’s friends gets a complete focus, where as they are just cropped headshots in the original Japanese version. Even more interesting when you consider those four art pieces never even made it into the OCW, so the US manual is just one of the few ways to see those pics in their full glory.

Yet when it comes to the Star Force forms, it’s reversed. The Japanese edition focused on the full-body transformation art, and to me, visually appears to focus on the gameplay and powers better. Yet the American manual crops the art, and only shows screencaps from the form of the title you’ve bought, as opposed to all three versions like the Japanese manual does. Makes the Japanese graphic work feel more compelling, while the American one seems a bit bland in comparison.

They seemed to condense info quite a bit for us English gamers, as the Japanese manual is about 9 pages longer than the American version. Cutting screencaps seemed to play a big part in that. What was a full 2-page spread about Transer menus, with corresponding images for each menu option in Japan, ends up being crunched to one image with mostly text on the bottom half of page 15 on the English version. Which takes up that space that could have showcased the other 2 Star Force forms.

@mnlcleanupcrew asked: A search of your blog suggests no, but would you happen to have any art of the two female teachers from the Star Force anime? Subaru's class teacher and the gym teacher that didn't notice the sick boy had claws larger than his head.

There can only be one true sensei that owns your heart...

Sadly, much like most of the adult ladies of the Star Force series, there really is next to nothing, especially official art. I have no settei of them, and skimmed to double check that there’s nothing in Adachi’s anime concept fanbook. Obviously, nothing in the OCW, Itagaki’s manga, or Takamisaski’s manga chapters, either.