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| Today's and upcoming. |
The unfortunately-named Katawa Shoujo, by 4LS, is a project that is particularly dear to me, as a bystander at least: I followed the people behind it since shortly after the very first thread on 4chan in 2006something, and religiously read and posted on their developer blog as the project came veeeeerryyy sloooowly to fruition. Was the result the best OELVN? probably not, but a very close second (best one, in my opinion, is still Ori, Ochi, Onoe). The plot still follows Japanese school romance VN tropes way too closely for satisfaction, the music is subpar, and the art department ranges from very amateurish to actually pretty decent.
Regarding this last point, one of the many offshoots from Katawa Shoujo is a series of artwork collections, coming out more or less twice a year for Comiket, featuring illustrations related to the visual novel, by the project's own artists as well as guests. At least ten have come out by now, and they go out fast; a testament to 4LS's rabid fanbase, considering you either get them by proxy, or by trip to Japan. I've been wanting to own at least one for a long time, and so I finally snagged a copy of the CM84 offering, titled Imperfect Spectrum. Lucky for you, 4LS also made this available as a digital download - for once, you can actually take a look at the thing I'm reviewing!
Very flimsy, only 16 pages or so, but in full color, and all illustrations are full-page too. Project artists such as Weee, Moekki, and Mike Inel stand side by side with guest artists like Monica Ray or Ambi07. Almost all illustrations are pin ups, with some group scenes and some comedy sketches thrown in for good measure.
The result? a mixed bag. The ones who really shine are, in my opinion but also not surprisingly, those who actually worked on the artistic aspect of Katawa Shoujo: Doomfest and Mike Inel in particular, manage to create illustrations that, from a visual composition and coloring point of view, redeem the rather bland subject matter. Most other contributions are nothing more than cute illustrations crafted by fans for fans (most of them also appear on the Shimmie, Katawa Shoujo's online fan art dump), with a special hell reserved for trolls (Monica Ray and Climatic, really?).
In the end, nothing special as a collection of artworks per se, but a nice piece of memorabilia for those who, like me, have seen 4LS's project grow from a 4chan thread trolling poor Raita, into a pretty good amateur production.
