Sora no Kikou ~The sky of the longing for memories~

Early this autumn, my friend from Japan brought me back several items, the one presented in this entry is Sora no Kikou ~The sky of the longing for memories~, featuring digital backgrounds by the studio CoMix Wave. The book is a 175 page softcover, the majority of which are images, which I find uncommon for most fanbooks. The pages are smaller than your standard letter/A4 meaning the images are a small, and knowing the level of detail in Makoto Shinkai’s work I think these images could be spectacularly crisp even if enlarged 4× the size. Inside you will find hundreds of backgrounds from Byousoku 5 Centimeter (5 Centimetres per Second), Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho (The Place Promised in Our Early Days), Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star), and a TV advertisement for the newspaper “Shinano Mainichi Shumbun”.

In addition to the backgrounds, there is a section about the software and technique behind CoMix Wave’s animation, which based on my very limited Japanese seems to talk about the key features of the software they use at various stages of production. There is also a lengthy (Japanese) interview with Makoto and other key members of his studio.

Aside from the special sections, all the work presented are direct cutscenes from the animation or the background renderings, minimizing the presence of any characters. Unlike my Clannad or Spirited Away artbooks, there are no sketches, hand paintings, storyboards or other evidence of development. Nevertheless, it is still a beautiful resource for fans of animation and digital artwork, it is simply amazing how much vividness and emotion Makoto can put in a drawing of a pencil and eraser or a high-rise construction crane.

Again, I don’t want to damage the book’s spine nor do I have a worthy scanner, so I have uploaded another photo-gallery. Apologies for the inconsistent images, I was struggling to find a good method of holding the book open. For your convenience, a batch download is available (just the images below, not the entire book):

• Sora no Kikou ~The sky of the longing for memories~ Photos (7.75 MB RAR archive)

Hardcover, 244 pages.

My second artbook review will be for Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away. This book was a nice grab from amazon.ca, $25 shipping included (I added it to my friend’s order so she could get the free shipping quota). Compared to my Clannad Visual Fan Book it’s not as in-depth, but there are a lot of early development sketches, rough line art and unedited watercolour backgrounds which I was really looking forwards to, especially for a production from Mr. Hayao Miyazaki. There’s a certain beauty that is expressed through draft-quality hand-drawn watercolour paintings, I expect Ponyo on a Cliff is following through with that logic.Because this book is in English I can understand all of the captions, however there isn’t nearly as much text as the Clannad Visual Fan Book.

“Most people panic and collapse while shouting, “It can’t be true.” Those people will be erased or eaten up in the situation in which Chihiro finds herself. In fact, Chihiro’s being strong enough not to be eaten up is just what makes her a heroine. She is a heroine not because she is beautiful or because she possesses a unique mind. This is the key characteristic of this work.”

Unfortunately my scanner can’t handle this book so I can only give photographs of the pages. There are high-quality scans of individual images out there but I wanted to show it with all the context. If you like, you can download the entire collection of images shown below (only the images below, not the entire book)

• Spirited Away Artbook Photos (54.59 MB RAR archive)

Yeah, working in retail is busy, especially before the Christmas season. I finally got back into the animanga business after the New Year. Good timing for the arrival of my Clannad book!

The first page of the book is a delicious Kyou Fujibayashi conveniently locked in the gym equipment storage room.

This softcover artbook has 144 full-colour pages. The first 38 pages is a gallery of images of Nagisa, Kyou, Ryou, Kotomi, Tomoyo and Fuuko, these are the scans you frequently see on high-resolution wallpaper and scan imageboards like konachan.com and moe.imouto.org. As beautiful as these illustrations are, they arn’t the reason I get these artbooks, since these images are readily available for download from the aforementioned sites.

The following 34 pages are character bios and gestures. There’s a lot of Japanese text here, a lot more than I had anticipated. I’ll have to get my friend to translate it for me or teach me Japanese. The only information I can get out of it are facts that have to do with numbers, like bust/hip/waist measurements, birthdays, etc, but the sketches and miscellaneous illustrations are the main reason I get artbooks, since it gives a bit of insight into the design and development process of the series.

There’s a surprising amount of detail put into the character design, it is to be expected for a character-based show to have highly detailed characters but I didn’t know they would go to the point of making separate illustrations for Tomoya’s wristwatch, Nagisa’s shoe, etc.

All the supporting characters are accounted for and there’s also a section that goes step-by-step through each of the main characters’ stories. Again there’s a ton of text here and I wish I could tell you what all this text is explaining. They numbered each episode by character episode and by airing episode. For example, episode 10 is the 3rd part of Nagisa’s and Kotomi’s arc, the 4th part of Kyou/Ryou’s arc, the 2nd part of Tomoyo’s arc. I’m not really sure how this would be of use, but I might find it interesting when I start playing the game (which will be when After Story finishes airing.)

The Story section of the book is 56 pages long and covers the season on a per-episode basis. There are storyboards for the major parts of each episode. I find it amazing how the producers can show so much emotion in the characters from such simple sketches.

A small part of this section details the architecture used in the animation. As architecture student, it was this section that made me decide to purchase the fanbook (I glanced at scans I found online) as there are very detailed hand-drawn perspective illustrations of the school, the houses, and the rooms in the world of Clannad.

The last 16 pages is a staff and cast interview, unfortunately this is almost all text so again I can’t give any details here. But there are nice portrait photos of the main cast.

中原麻衣 Mai Nakahara (left, Nagisa Furukawa) and 野中藍 Ai Nonaka (right, Fuuko Ibuki)

At the very end there’s a small gallery of official collectible goods, like postcards, cell phone dangly-things, calendars, and other small miscellaneous accessories. I think the little card that comes slipped in the middle of my book is an order card, but since I don’t live in Japan it doesn’t really do me much good.

Another artbook review should be coming soon!