Mutsumi Sasaki is another one of those popular eroge artists that you’ve probably noticed at one point or another. He’s been in the industry for quite some time, designing characters for the Memories Off franchise (the anime adaptations were mediocre, but that’s another story), and, more recently, titles like Chaos;Head and Myself;Yourself. Putting the inappropriate use of semicolons aside, neither of the aforementioned shows struck me as anything spectacular, but one of my favourite aspects of them was the character designs. Why? The answer should be obvious. I love Mutsumi Sasaki, and while he might not be my absolute favourite artist, his work always holds some sort of mysterious control over me. Est is his most recent professional artbook, and suffice to say, I wasn’t disappointed.
Like with all of my artbook reviews, the scans are mine and are not meant to be professional in quality. And since I can’t for the life of me figure out how to use WP-Highslide, you’ll have to expand them the old fashioned way.
Many of the images in the book were from Memories Off, which is understandable considering it’s a long running franchise. The recent Myself;Yourself also got quite a bit of figurative screen time.
Some of the pictures look quite a bit older than others, presumably because Memories Off started a decade ago.
I first got this book before I knew who Ushio was. Funny how things work.
That backpack looks like it has wings on it. Hmm…
You really can’t go wrong with Santa costumes, though I always wonder where the tradition started from.
She must have had an interesting Bad End.
Good old fashioned moe.
As you can tell, Mutsumi Sasaki’s style is entirely bishoujo. His characters look more mature than some moe artists like Noizi Ito and Goto P, and they fit in well with the standard dating sim look. It’s no wonder that shows like Myself;Yourself look totally normal when placed beside any other visual novel adaptation – and that can be a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective.
My take on it is that the man is a good artist. It’s the simplest and most effective way of saying it. His designs fit the industry standard, yes, but they also look great, and they were the highlight of the trainwreck adaptation of Chaos;Head (though the animation quality did quite a number to them anyway).
On top of that, we have the fact that Est is a great collection of some of his best work, and it’s one of the two options that overseas shoppers have, short of searching for doujins on Yahoo Japan. If you’re a fan of his work it’s obviously a must-buy, but really, I also recommend it for any self-proclaimed bishoujo fan, lest your badge of twisted pride be taken away by the gods of all things 2D and delicious.
In other words, it’s worth it.
Name: Mutsumi Sasaki Art Works Est
Purchase From: beNippon, Anime Castle
Scans/Reviews: Moe Moe Rabu
~ ETERNAL
つづく
