No really, Arina-sensei’s Shin­shi Doumei Cross Illus­tra­tions art­book just arrived recently, and I can’t stop look­ing at those eyes! I really enjoyed Shin­shi Doumei Cross (Shinkuro), enough to put it onto my top 5 manga list, even if #5 is a rather shaky spot. If any­thing, this art­book sent it even higher. The charm­ing poses, the finely shaded hair­styles, the ornately dec­o­rated clothes, the ele­gantly dec­o­rated back­grounds, every­thing in this book is absolutely gor­geous, stun­ning, enthralling… espe­cially the eyes, the eyes, the eyes—!

Eng­lish ver­sion art­book, with all two pages of text translated!

I give this book a 11/10. No really, I’ve never been so pleased by an art­book. Which is one of the rea­sons why I had to buy it even after down­load­ing all the high-quality image scans of the art­works, which, I should claim, is heaven for any pho­to­shop­per. The fact I loved ALL the char­ac­ters may have helped, of course. So did the fact there was vir­tu­ally no text in there — no game guides, no character/plot overviews, no prod­uct adver­tis­ing, nada! Only mag­nif­i­cently drawn works of art.

And it was only $13.59 (USD).

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P4 makes an epic card back…

On one hand, I didn’t expect this post for at least another week or so due to National Novel Writ­ing Month. On the other hand, I’ve given up on com­plet­ing 50,000 words on time, so I might as well fin­ish this.

Here’s the rest of the cards to the Major Arcana Moé Tarot project.

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Over the past two weeks my life’s free time had been almost entirely con­sumed by pho­to­shop, as the Tarot Project is finally com­ing together. I only have three things to say on the mat­ter — I’ve never taken pho­to­shop to be such seri­ous busi­ness before; I can finally say I’m more than just a noob to pho­to­shop thanks to the picto-editing skills I’ve acquired; and I haven’t felt so proud of my goods for a long time.

Progress:
[Deck] Char­ac­ter Selec­tion: Fin­ished
[Deck] Card Stock: Fin­ished
[Deck] Art Selec­tion: Fin­ished
[Deck] Card Assem­bly: 95%
[Blog] Back­ground Assem­bly: 0%
[Blog] Ban­ner Cre­ation: 0%

Before any­one asks “why all girls?”, it’s to cut down on the com­pe­ti­tion between char­ac­ter and more con­sis­tency in art style. Not to men­tion — the deck is cuter this way.

I might think about mak­ing a bishie/GAR deck later, maybe, if I feel like throw­ing away another week+ of free time.

No this isn’t part of my srs­bzns set, it’s just funny. Now outta the way for the real deal!

Deck would be fin­ished last week­end if I didn’t keep chang­ing my mind about the char­ac­ters, or two days ago if Com­pany of Heroes: TOV didn’t arrive and cause me to start wast­ing tons of time on it (epic game which requires a post later). But until then, take eleven…

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Like a nice cup of hot choco­late,
It might sting, but when you taste it,
It warms your heart.

In many ways, Shin­shi Doumei Cross (Shinkuro) is still like most Shoujo manga out there — a fairy tale esque story, loaded with plenty of roman­tic ide­al­ism and sea­soned by cliches. But after read­ing Shinkuro I finally real­ized why I, despite being a self-proclaimed real­ist, reads shoujo manga on a com­mon basis — to keep alive that young and naive part of my heart and soul, the one where ideals and dreams still flow freely; to pro­tect and shel­ter it from the harsh real­i­ties of society.

Shoujo manga was never about real­ism, espe­cially when it comes to the set­ting or char­ac­ter back­grounds. Psuedo-realism in char­ac­ter and plot devel­op­ment is enough. Besides, if you take all the ide­al­ism out, it sim­ply wouldn’t be shoujo manga any­more, since those ide­al­is­tic char­ac­ters and occur­rences is also the finest part of the genre. Yes, a few scenes may make you cringe, facepalm, or even yell out loud in bewil­der­ment or frus­tra­tion. But when­ever an arc fin­ishes, it always warms the heart and revi­tal­izes the spirit.

Shinkuro (and Arina-sensei) cap­i­tal­izes on the finer traits of shoujo manga in an exem­plary fashion.

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