Hunting the Elusive

OK, I can't believe I missed this news, but the Pale Cocoon OST has been released. This actually happened on 3 March, but I only just checked the Studio Rikka website today and picked up on this.  Selling for 1500 yen, ASIN B0039HI4DG, catalogue number DIREC-10, you can now get it from Amazon Japan! Personally, I will be getting mine from D-Rights, to help with the bundling on one of the deputies I am using. It has 10 tracks, but the BGMs do not have titles. Track 1 is the full size (!) of the ever popular 蒼い繭 (Aoi Tamago) insert song by little moa. Track 9 is the orgel version of Aoi Tamago. In the meantime, Eve no Jikan has progressed quite a bit. Most of you probably know it's gotten a theatrical version, there is a fanbook out for it, an Evlend set, a teacup, T-shirts etc.

So, at last I get around to covering NEKO WORKS, which is the circle name for sayori. A Chinese artist, I was first exposed to her by Merun of Claritism, and I must say her style is definitely striking. The fact that she has a predilection for complex clothing in the gothic style and all its associated variants, and very cute character designs to boot, is enough of a reason to actively follow her. In Neko Bible, sayori dresses her two original characters Chocola and Vanilla up in 13 different types of costumes, to our delight. Physically, Neko Bible is a large-format calendar with perforations along the top of each page for easy tear off (though who would want to?). [Release][PNG]

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Pistil was released by Kishida Mel on 31 December 2009, as part of Comiket 77. At 16 pages long, it provides a good view of the scope of Mel’s art, surprising me somewhat by the amount of fanservice present, since most of my previous exposure to this artist was via the Atelier Rorona art, which was pretty and very tame, something to be expected from a PS3 game of course. Anyone who thinks Kishida Mel does fluffy cute strictly-SFW stuff only, due to his style (which admittedly, looks rather innocent and sweet) should note that the contents of this post may be mildly NSFW, so secure your surroundings before venturing on. [Release][PNG]

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I actually missed this by around two weeks, but I note with passing interest that Hunting the Elusive is now five years old. On 20 February 2005, I decided to start a blog. Hosted on Blogspot, it was like any other venture by any other person out there, a trickle of content read by but a few. Unable to sustain even this trickle, the blog saw a last post on 9 September 2005. Hunting the Elusive back then was a very different creature to what it is today (content-wise, I mean; the interface has pretty much stayed the same due to laziness), so maybe if you wanted to nitpick, you would put the real start date in July 2006, when the blogging once again started with vengeance. Still, I will cite The Ship of Theseus in maintaining that this blog has been the same entity since that day five years ago.

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Riv is a Taiwanese artist who has made inroads into Japan, with stuff appearing in TechGian and doing things for Alcot and such, though like many other foreign artists, one can never be all that sure how much of his (assuming male status for writing purposes) doujin stuff actually makes it to Japan. That said, we should be pretty happy with what we have, and Hanakotoba is, I think, a great introduction to this artist. Please note that this post may be mildly NSFW, so be in a safe location before jumping in. [Release][PNG]

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Himorogi, by Yasuyuki, was released during Comic Market 77. It is a Touhou fanbook which is 32 pages long (though you will find the page count differs in the release, due to the elimination of a number of blank space pages). In this case, the very gorgeous cover art is an indication of what can be found within the book, which is pretty much made up of double page spreads of various Touhou characters, with great character designs and some gorgeous backgrounds. As you will see after the jump, especially critical to my reception of this book is the style of the artist, which has always been important in doujin art appreciation, but has taken on a new dimension of priority in this genre. [Release][PNG]

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So the Vocaloid Season Collection *Snow Songs* set came today (along with a bunch of books that I haven’t yet touched). I basically immediately opened it and started running around thinking of how to take photos of the thing. Eventually I settled on the ad hoc arrangement of using the top of my scanner, which is silver, with the clear plastic protective film still stuck on, and then putting some posters at the back for a white background. I had also just got back my flash unit which had broke during a shoot last week, so I had two flashes to play with for this shoot. [Gallery]

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A random acquisition, Cats Catalog? 2010 is by the artist かわく (kawaku). From what I can see, it is exactly what the title says it is, translating different types of cats into girl counterparts and compiling all that in a book. From this very premise, it is evident that kawaku is a big fan of cats. I mean, I have cats as pets, but I don’t know what species there are, much less the differentiating characteristics between them. To identify these traits and then create compelling character illustrations is actually quite a task. [Release] [PNG]

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Cities, like photographs, are four-dimensional. Cities, unlike photographs, change along the axis of Time, and they do not revert. Memories, stained by nostalgia, tinted by dreams and tempered by maturing thoughts, smooth out the grit, erase the dirt, and retains the sun’s rays where there were none. Places of the past now belong irrevocably in an era we cannot reach, only remaining as fragments in the form of unreliable memory and shakily-taken snapshots. A happier place, from a time when we, insulated by ignorance and childishness, had a small world made of candy and walks and toys. We cannot return.

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