Fate/EXTRA Perfect Guide

With pages like GameFAQs or the thousand of wikis, a guidebook for a videogame is unnecessary, so most of them are more an artbook rather than a guidebook, featuring character art, endings, rough sketches...
Sadly, Fate/EXTRA Perfect Guide is a guidebook in the more strict sense.

I expected a gallery section with early design and sketches, or at least the screenshots of each Servant when they explain their lives, but this guidebook doesn't include any "Gallery" section, all the screen shots are in thumbnail format and most of the characters portraits are the same that appears in the user's manual.

The first part shows the characters with a brief explanation for each.

The stats page for each of the 3 playable Servants.

Most of the guide is like this: a "what to do" list, a map, and the info about the regular enemies.

The "exciting" page to the right is all the info available in the guidebook about the final boss.

The last part, called "Extra", is the in-game info about each Servant... without including their real names or they backgrounds.

Fate Unlimited Blade Works Blu-ray

I didn't had the time to see the Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works movie yet, but I'll review the limited Blu-ray contents:

The limited edition contains (in order from the photo):

- A box drawn by Takeuchi Takashi.
- A folder containing a bromide and two film cuts.
- A color 20 pages mini-artbook.
- The blu-ray.
- A 160 pages mini genga artbook.
-Two alternate jackets drawn by Ishihara Megumi (the Rin one) and Yamanaka Kotetsu (the Saber one).

The folder containing a bromide of Saber & Rin and the two film cuts. The film cuts are two non-consecutive film frames. I got two pretty cool ones:

Rin in the rooftop...

...and a close up of Archer.

The color mini artbook is a collection of pictures that appeared in several media (mostly magazines) to promote the movie.

Pictures that appeared at Animedia, Hobby Japan and Megami Magazine.

I find Archer pose in the bottom left picture kinda disturbing...

The genga artbook contains key animation drawings for the movie.

Despite the small format (is the same size of a blu-ray case), is considerably thick being 160 pages long.

EDIT:
Finally I watched the movie.

As extras it includes several variations of the trailers, and as expected no subtitles.
Maybe is because the first blu-ray that I watched was the gorgeous Evangelion 2.22, but I found the quality of the image average most of the time...

Except for some key scenes, the animation is only one step above a regular anime quality, and the the pace is so fast and leaves so much information behind that makes me think that this movie is incompressible as a stand alone without the background info from the VN.

The fighting scenes are fast paced and visually appealing, but if you watch closely most of the animation is sub-par... if you compare the picture above of Rin fighting (that is not by any means the worst quality) with the scene of Saber above, they seem like completely different movies.

Amazon.jp loot

Just received:

• Evangelion 2.0 Complete Records Collection
• Type-Moon Ace 5
• Annin Dofu Illustrations Brilliant Idol
• Fate/Extra Perfect Guidebook
• Movie Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works Limited Blu-ray
• Kara no Kyoukai Boukyaku Rokuon E-Conte Shuu

Reviews coming soon.

1/7 Saber Triumphant Excalibur by Good Smile Company

After being delayed for two month, yesterday I got 1/7 Saber Triumphant Excalibur by Good Smile Company.

The sculpt is by Tokunaga Hironuki, that also did Max Factory's Hoshii Miki and Kotobukiya's Kurusugawa Serika, and did a great job with the dynamic jump in mid-air.

The only point attached to the base is that small metallic piece, I hope it will be able to support the weight of the entire figure in the long run....

Back view.

This Saber is a companion figure of the previously released Saber Lily by Good Smile Company and the upcoming Saber Alter, since they share the same slightly unusual scale and dynamic poses. In terms of details, I think this one is superior than Saber Lily.

Face close up. It ended a bit different than the prototype, but is still pretty good looking.

It also includes a second Excalibur with Invisible Air.

The sword was done in translucent plastic to give the effect of "invisible".

Valkyria Chronicles Development Artworks

The other book that I purchased at beNippon was Valkyria Chronicles Development Artworks, a massive 400 page artbook released last January.

The gorgeous cover illustration, featuring most of the Squad 7 members, covers all the dust jacket. The full picture can be found here.

The amount of data included is incredible. Every minimum detail is heavily explained with tons of visual data in an almost obsessive fashion... last time I saw such love in a videogame artbook was in Xenogears Perfect Works.

The book is divided in several sections: story, characters, weapons, military affairs & natural history, geography, illustrations, pre-production material and interviews.

Story explains the game plot chapter by chapter. Includes a map for each mission and the two plot related DLC are also briefly included.

In the characters section, every main character include a few pages of character bios with pictures and settings.

After the character data, there's a section of design works, with rough sketches and the great artwork of RAITA.

Some characters includes pictures from earlier pre-production stages, like Alicia...

...or Selveria, that was originally short haired.

At a point in the inital pre-production stages, Alicia was a loli.

Sadly, the non-plot related characters are included only with a brief sentence for each.


The weapons section includes an entry for each type of tank and machines. Some details are really amazing, like how to read the tank license plates info, that in the case of the Edelweiss is somewhat different because it was custom made.


Military affairs section consist mostly in entries for the weapons and uniforms. In the picture, early Imperial soldiers designs, heavily influenced in Nausicaä, carrying some weapons that were later re-used for Valkyria Chronicles 2.


Geography includes settings for the locations.

The comparatively short illustration section includes all the artwork used in advertisements and magazines.

And the last part of the book explains the initial pre-production stage of the game, when was called Gallian Panzers.

Character designs from the time: Welkin, Alicia (called Alma at that point) and a kind looking Captain Varrot.

Initially, the discriminated race was the "beast people" instead of the Darcsen. In the right part of the picture, a shockingly young Rosie and Faldio.

Overall, this artbook is really a must have for any Valkyria Chornicles fan.

Fate/complete material II - Character material.

Two weeks ago, I received a package from beNippon, but because of my new job and Valkyria Chronicles 2, until now I didn't had time to do a review... anyways, the first one is Fate/complete material II - Character material., published by Enterbrain a couple of months ago.


Fate/complete material was supposed to be the ultimate information source for Fate/stay night universe, divided in 3 volumes: art & CG, character art & locations, and settings & encyclopedia.

The first volume, Art material. was released in 2008 and was a disappointment because was only a printed version of the gallery mode from the original game, without Réalta Nua, Zero nor Hollow Ataraxia.

The second volume is this, Character material. and is also exclusively focused in the main game and not the spin-off, but this time there are several unpublished rough sketches and some of the comments by Takeuchi and Nasu are new information.


The first part includes a brief summary of each character with a collection of several character cuts:

Medousa instead of Medusa, Altria instead of Arturia... I wonder why they don't hire someone who actually knows English to do the romanizations.

Each character also includes comments by both Takeuchi and Nasu, adding some insight to the character and for some of them there is actually new information. For example, Rider mark in the forehead is a snake.

The second part introduces every weapon with a short description:

Kanshou and Bakuya and the "over edge" mode.

The most interesting part for me is the rough sketches gallery. Some of those already appeared in Fate/side material:

Saber initial settings.

Rin initial settings. With the hair in front of the ears and that uniform, she's like Azaka.

More Rin.

Rider original setting was a short haired girl. The design was later re-used for Ayako.

Unused setting for Kotomine's wife, that looks like Caren Ortensia (is her mother, after all).

Unused event graphics.

Some of the unused event graphics were later included in Réalta Nua, like the duel between Saber and Assassin, while others are forever lost, like an H scene with the maids in the scrapped Illya route.