Mermaids

(tags Disney, art, Pop)

Ariel sitting on the rock coming out of the sea did me in. Brushing her hair and winking at her prince. Disney's The Little Mermaid. I still don't have the DVD though. Perhaps I'm waiting for the Blu-ray?

From the blog of The Art (and random adventures) of Eric Tan, comes this stunning poster art. It was commissioned for the recent hardcover book The Art of the Disney Princess. (ISBN-13: 9781423123712)

This release reminds me of Pop-sensei picture book take on the original story, Pop Wonderland Ningyo Hime Little Mermaid (POP WONDERLAND にんぎょひめ, ISBN-13 978-4-591-10603-7) from last year. Unfortunately the retold story follows the original too closely and is depressing.

Moetan the animation?!?!

(tags anime, season 2007/07, Moetan, POP, illustrator)

Yes, Moetan the animation! (もえたん) I can't wait! Then again, I was not much into the story part, just the illustrations and figures (1, 2). Thanks to Mr. Alvin for the email.

POP is the character designer and illustrator for the original English-by-otaku book series (萌える英単語もえたん). Though prolific in the doujinshi scene as part of the Electromagnetic Wave group, POP is expanding into the mainstream. Recently I recall the push for illustrations aimed for kids, for example the calendar and fairy tale redux (POP WONDERLAND series ふしぎの国のアリス, 赤ずきん) books. Also POP is the sole reason I'm buying the mainstream anime Otogi Juushi Akazukin Fairy Musketeers (おとぎ銃士赤ずきん Fairy Musketeers). Yes the limited edition 12 page illustration and postcard tokuten makes all the difference.

The animation character designer will be Kohaku (?) Nishio (西尾公伯). He was involved in a number of recent animes such as To Heart 2 and Tokimeki Memorial Only Love, so I expect the same level of moe service here. Though there is a picture on the official animation site which is high quality, I can't help but think that the quality of the Moetan animation will drop. It just will, m'kay. I need to lower my expectations.

The voice actors are the same as from the doujin "Listening CD" cast, with Yukari "Yukarin" Tamura (田村ゆかり) headlining. I am actually getting tired of Yukarin. She needs to reprise her role as Sakura from Da Capo or Tomari from Kasimasi to get me to get excited about her again.

On a related tip, when is that Moetan the shooting game coming out? Its been 7 months now since I put in my pre-order.

(This IE 7.0 crashed eating my first post. Curse you IE! Then again using Firefox with this blogger makes italic tags look like <span style="italic"...> which is ugly in my opinion.)