Title: Atelier: Artworks of Arland ~ Rorona & Totori & Meruru ~
Publisher: Udon Entertainment
Series: Atelier Series – Alchemists of Arland Trilogy
Format: Softcover
Pages: 256
Release Date: Out Now
Special Thanks: Udon Entertainment for providing me with a review copy of this title to cover.
Official Blurb
The ATELIER series has become a favorite of many Japanese RPG enthusiasts with its unique mix of alchemy and action set in a vibrant and magical fantasy world. ATELIER: ARTWORKS OF ARLAND collects the wonderful artwork behind the Arland trilogy – ATELIER RORONA, ATELIER TOTORI, and ATELIER MERURU. Included are the spectacular character designs of Mel Kishida, plus promotional art, pin-ups, rough sketches, character profiles, and more.
For better or for worse, the Alchemists of Arland video game trilogy has now ended. While Gust have no currently announced plans to return to the Republic of Arland which the Atelier series had made its home since the jump to the Playstation 3, the company have moved onto their next set of titles which include Ayesha and Escha & Logy. That being said, the shift was not the end of the releases for the original Playstation 3 trilogy. While not the first artbook for the franchise released by the company, international artbook publisher Udon Entertainment have recently released Atelier: Artworks of Arland to store shelves for the very first time.
This new encompasses artwork, characters and other goodies from Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland, Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland and finally Atelier Meruru: The Adventurer of Arland, and coming at 256 pages in length does have quite a bit to offer.
Content
Atelier: Artworks of Arland is split up into six separate sections which are further divided into what game that particular set of pages reflect. These chapters include: Visual Artwork (Illustration der Figuren), Character Artwork (Charakter der Figuren), Event Artwork (Szenen mit den Figuren) and finally Other Artwork (Andre Figuren). This release would fulfill the criteria for me to call it a design compendium, as while there is artwork, it also introduces a number of comments on the character designs both pre-final and final product – although just how extensive they are is up for debate.
The first chapter is just as the title hints, approximately 32 pages of artwork sourced from all three games. The artwork selection is pretty good and does range in variety from those used on the cover artworks of all three games to those that have been used on promotional materials of the game. The placement of each image is uniform, with most taking up an entire if not majority of a page. In addition, as all the images are portrait in dimensions there are no double-page spreads. In an additional interlude to the chapter, they also show off some rough sketches of a couple of visuals and how they changed from the final releases (Eg. Rorona main visual and Totori package artwork).
To be honest, the second chapter which focuses on the character artwork left me slightly disappointed in comparison to other design compendium releases I have covered in the past (For ease of access –HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE). This chapter does fulfill the criteria for the artwork component – including concept artwork, different facial expression shots and of course the final design of the character over double-page spreads. However, and this may just be nitpicking and no means a deal-breaker, but it seems to fall a little bit short in terms of offering something more in regards to the actual design process.
They offer only a few annotations that I would have liked to have seen more of while details of the design process or characters would have also been nice but evidently due to space constraints where not present. Of course, this is just my opinion and did pique my interest. But still, there are many more characters in the trilogy than any of the aforementioned books, so I think for what they had to work with they still did reasonably well.
The third and easily the largest chapter of the book is for the event artwork, which simply showcases the many CG artwork scenes used throughout the game – both for general and character-specific events. While I have yet to compare to my games to see if all the artwork is included, the compilation can be described as very expansive. Most pages are just images alone, while a few of the scenes are treated to draft and rough sketch images (Funnily artwork of the female characters at a hot springs gets this attention but not a similar image with the male cast). As an interlude to this chapter they highlight some additional drafts and alternate versions of CG artwork from the game.
The final chapter, and in my opinion the most interesting focuses upon the other artwork for the game – which pretty much comes down to the design process that went into the characters from complete appearance changes to simple colour variations. Fortunately, annotations of the designs in here fared a bit better, with individual designs singled out to be featured with them. As an interlude to this chapter there is also a swimsuit gallery.
While to fully get all the detail of the trilogy, 256 pages would still not be enough. However working with the length they had I think they did a great job at producing this artbook. The localization which was conducted by Udon Entertainment was also solid.
Layout
With the Kingdom of Arland being a land that makes use of magic and alchemy they have decided to carry across a parchment theme though all the pages. While aside from a few visual features here and there the actual artwork and designs themselves don’t make much use of this theme, but it was nicer than a 256 page book consisting of a plain white background.
As mentioned above, much of the visual artwork have been incorporated onto individual pages while the event artwork from the games which are landscape have been placed on their side, which while requiring the reader to tilt the book to view, does give you the greatest image size possible for the book’s dimensions which I feel was a better decision than cramming two onto a page. The remainder of the book, most of the time everything has been spaced out well with nothing coming across too cluttered in a bid to save page space.
Overall, from what I have been provided the fonts they used were clear and legible, and generally the artwork sizing and placement of the images were sufficient.
Final Word
While this does not cover either Atelier Totori Plus or Atelier Meruru Plus for the Playstation Vita, this latest release by Udon Entertainment might fall short in some areas, but shouldn’t disappoint if you are a fan of the franchise and after a book filled with artwork from the Alchemists of Arland Trilogy.
