CLAMP no Kiseki is a celebration of CLAMP’s 15th anniversary. Each magazine in this 12 volume set contains artwork and information about a featured series, interviews, and a short full-color manga. The quality of the magazines was on par with any other artbook, and the cover art of each is unique. I love the high-contrast solid-color style!

Each volume also came with 3 beautiful chess piece figures with different characters. In the end you end up with more than a full set (White side has 2 queens and 3 bishops — Black side has 2 kings and 3 bishops). The pieces are as expected of CLAMP merchandise…very high quality. I’ll be honest, I really bought these sets just to get the pieces.

The disappointing things?
1. Every black Mokona and every white Mokona were the same. I wish they had been slightly different for each pawn piece.

2. My queen Sakura piece has a discolored base.

3. The display box and extra king Kero and Spinel pieces were not released in the USA…and I am not paying $300+ on eBay to get them.

4. No Kobato piece, even though it was featured in the last volume. The white bishop could have been her instead of Subaru since they also have Seishiro from Tokyo Babylon, and the fact that Akira’s piece is so similar.

5. The first 6 volumes came with a very nice box that matched the book. Starting at Vol.7, they started coming in stupid plastic cut-self-trying-to-open packaging. For something collectible like this you shouldn’t change the packaging half way through. DUMB.

In any case, if you can still get your hands on these, I would highly recommend them. They are a CLAMP collector’s dream. I am surprised they actually became available in the US (now for CLAMP in 3D Land, CLAMP in Cardland, and anything else they haven’t released here).

Anyway, here’s a picture of the pieces! I’ll also stick the cover art up on the gallery page since it’s just so nice.

The Art of Fushigi Yuugi contains 97 pages of beautiful color art, an interview with Yuu Watase, a short comic strip, and some background information on the world of Fushigi Yuugi. Each illustration has a note which says what the illustration is from. Many of them have been made specifically for the art book. One of them is a beautiful fold-out illustration featuring all of the main characters of both the Suzaku and Seiryu sides. There is also a character section showing early sketches of some of the main characters.

The book is very nice quality and is hardback. I own the English version, so I can’t say anything about the production quality of the Japanese one. I’m sure it’s just as nice…or nicer.

Here’s a couple beautiful illustrations from the book.

The Cardcaptor Sakura Memorial Book is more than just an art book. Along side the 71 color illustrations + comments, there is a concept artwork/sketch section, character highlights from the manga, a several page interview, and an index of some of the Cardcaptor Sakura merchandise that has been available. The book is very nice quality, but similar to the third illustration collection the art inside is a lot of the same type (i.e. artwork from the dvd covers). Still, a great book that every collector should add to their shelves.

Part three of the CCS Illustration is a little different than the first two. It features 86 more random illustrations, even a few of the more minor characters. Many of the images are of Sakura’s outfits, or are chibi-like illustrations. I was disappointed that there were still only a couple Sakura + Syaoran pics even in this one. I feel like the variation of the type of images in this one was also not very good. There was no poster, nor a manga extra in this book. However I still enjoy looking at it, and I think any collector of CCS items should definitely own all three of these books.

Part two of the CCS Illustration is much like the first collection. It features 78 illustrations from the second part of the series, so characters such as Eriol, Spinel, and Ruby appear in some images. There are also a couple nice Sakura + Syaoran illustrations. Just like the first book, there is another 16 page manga chapter, this time featuring Sakura and Syaoran, and a double sided poster.

One more part to go…

Part one of the CCS Illustration collection features 73 full color manga-style illustrations with an index including comments for each image. The book also has a 16 page exclusive manga chapter featuring Toya and Sakura. A small double sided poster is included as well. The pages are nice quality coated paper, except for the index and manga sections.

The illustrations are from the first part of the series, so you will only see characters from the Clow Card arc. Of course, most of the illustrations are of Sakura and Kero-chan, but there are some beautiful pieces for other characters as well.

Not much else to say…there are two more parts to the collection, and all are simply stunning.

So, welcome to my new blog. Here you’ll find things related to anime, manga, and games. At first you will see a lot of similar items all at once due to the fact that I am posting about things I have already seen/done. Later on you’ll see some more variety as I watch, read, and buy new things.

I won’t generally be doing episode by episode reviews, mainly because I usually watch or read things all at once. But if I am blown away by a specific episode/chapter I will. Otherwise, I’ll be doing first impressions and end-of-season reviews. I find these more helpful when trying to find new things to watch.

I hope you enjoy!

P.S. All accounts that were registered previously have now been wiped. Also, all previous posts are now gone, except the two posts about art theft found in the Archive category.

What have we here? [Link to post on the fRO forums.]

Well, they missed listing Izlude and Niflheim…but it contains the same cities. I have checked the data files, and it does in fact contain those cities as well.

I decided to infiltrate fRO and see it in game for myself.

As you can see, everything is the same as mine, right down to the flags in Prontera. Not only that…look what else I found on the library roof!

Oh my…they must have missed that! They claim Private Servers are evil…yet they take stuff from us. There is no doubt in my mind they just did not see it on the textures.

Speaking of defending work…that holly pin is on a sheet of 100% original pixel arts that I have a copyright certificate for. If it ends up on iRO (International/American version), they may get a nice cease and desist letter from me. If they put it in their cash shop…oh you better believe I’ll be wanting some royalties.

Keep in mind I couldn’t care less that they USE these things. We release them free for use. There is no difference in them using the files than a private server doing so. But Gravity claims to make their content (except for content submitted in contests). They also often put the headgears in their cash shops, meaning they are selling our work. If they would offer them through a free quest instead, and left credit for the actual artists, there would be no issue.

Theft is a big issue in the private server world, unfortunately. I have seen many servers who have ripped my server’s exclusive content and claimed they made it, edited it to their liking, sold it, etc. Fortunately, all these people tend to be little kids who have no lives.

But what happens when the thievery is coming from a company? LevelUp! Games is the company licensed to run the official Ragnarok Online server of the Philippines. To me they always seemed like a private server turned official by paying a butt-load of cash. Their site is very unprofessional looking compared to the other countries. Anyway, that’s not important. Let’s stop the rambling.

Philippines Ragnarok Online has blatantly stolen from private artists! Please, look at this image:

The bottom row shows the original sprites made by private artists. They have been around since before I started sprite art, over 3 years ago. These “official” sprites have only been added this year.

Yes, there are differences, but not near enough. The cat is fully ripped off. They animated the headgear but the art is not theirs. The dark helmet with wings, only the wings have been changed. The bunny hat, well the ears are different, but there was a custom version that looked exactly like the official one (I was just not able to get an image). But even so if you look at the hat, ribbon, and flower, they are the same pixels. The horns, again I was unable to get a picture of the original custom sprite, but was able to get an image of the NPC wearing the horns.

Gravity has been known to use private servers for ideas. Many of their sprite ideas are quite similar to custom sprites that have been out for many years. I praise them for that. There is nothing better than going to your fan base, including those who are illegally running your game, and getting ideas (practically suggestions) from them. But this is absurd! I do not blame Gravity. They may have no idea this has happened. I would be interested to hear their story, though.

Now, if they had had permission from the artists, and given them the credit for the art, it would not be a problem. Maybe even pay the artist for their hard work, because now they are selling them in their online shop! http://levelupgames.ph/newhgear/newhgear.html

None of these works of art are mine. If they had taken my original work (not my edits of their work, but my original stuff) I would certainly be contacting them. I wouldn’t mind them using it, but I’d want some kinda of compensation you know ;p But I think it would be awesome to see my work in the official version of such a popular game!

But what do you do when a company is blatantly stealing from artists?? How can you sue someone who you have been illegally running a copy of their game? Even many members of the official server have recognized those as private sprites!