Sherlock Hound / Art of Holmes

 I have a soft spot for Sherlock Hound (名探偵ホームズ (Detective Holmes)).  It’s a lovely little series of exciting Victorian adventures, appealing canine character designs and beautiful background art… for 6 of its 26-episode run anyway.

Sherlock Hound was the last television series that Hayao Miyazaki worked on in the early 1980s.  He directed 6 good quality episodes before production was halted by Sherlock Holmes’ owners at Doyle estate, and by the time the issues were resolved Miyazaki had since moved on to making movies full time.  A gap of 20 episodes needed to be filled, and  so stepped up Kyosuke Mikuriya.  He was a promising director who’d previously been in charge of the well regarded Ulysses 31 but was sadly later fated to make crap like Legend of the Four/Dragon Kings.  The result was a varying bunch of episodes that by all measures do not hold up to the spark of the original run.

The Miyazaki episodes however were pretty well regarded at the time, with compiled versions being double billings with Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind and Laputa on the big screen.  Any and all printed material I’ve seen on the series has related specifically to Miyazaki’s work, and the artbook is no exception.  Sorry, but the rest of the series is largely ignored.

Despite being made before the studio even existed, Art of Holmes is published in same line as the regular Ghibli artbooks in Japan.  Hints at its troubled history are implied as all pre-production artwork depicts Sherlock as a floppy-eared hound, and not the tall cropped-eared character seen in the final work.   The rest of the cast evolve much more naturally inside the book (aside from Mrs. Hudson who spends a brief period as a human), but there is very little content on the final design of Sherlock.   This may come as a disappointment to those specifically wanting production artwork on Sherlock’s final design.

As a side note a similar instance occurs in the collected storyboards of Sherlock Hound.  The episode ‘A Small Client’ is sketched entirely with an unfamiliar long-eared protagonist, whereas the other 5 episodes have the familiar design.  Perhaps indicates the moment at which the alteration was made in the production?

Aside from that note this is a lovely artbook.  The book is divided into chapters labelled as Image Boards, Character Design, Backgrounds, Story and Animation Technique.  Pretty much everything is covered to some extent.  About half of the book’s content is dedicated to delicate watercolour sketches, with the rest used for either background studies or images from the final product.  There isn’t all that much text going on, so you get a lot of artwork within its sub-150 pages.  These days the book can prove a little difficult to find, so if the opportunity ever presents itself it’s very much recommended to fans of either the Hound or anyone into Miyazaki’s pre-Ghibli work.

Ni No Kuni - Wizard's Companian

For those who own a Playstation 3, Ni no Kuni is the game you need to be thinking of owning if you don’t have it already.  Co-produced between Level 5 (of Professor Layton fame) and Studio Ghibli (of Studio Ghibli fame), it’s something of a dream team solution in making an RPG that feels right to play and looks beautiful.  It’s a worthy addition to any gamer’s collection.  I’m not here to talk about the game though.  I’m here to talk about the book.

As the game progresses the main character is given a magical tome, the Wizard’s Companion Book, which contains over 300 pages of information about monsters, weapons and all other kinds of other info in the game.  You can browse through it for hours reading up on all the details of the game’s world, while collecting extra pages as the game proceeds.  The book is translated in its entirety within the game and as an additional bonus was included as a hardcopy with the limited ‘Wizard’s Edition’ of the game.  It’s a lovely little book, and well worth owning for those who want to enjoy the game as much as possible.  However things were a little tricky for some fans…

Only those who were particularly clued in, organised, or just plain rich were able to get the book as it was only made available at a premium price, and in quantities that meant it sold out on pre-orders alone.  Many people missed out and are now forced to squint at the book through their screens as opposed to being able to casually leaf through a real one.

I can’t help but feel someone missed a trick with this situation.  The game was heavily promoted from around 8 months before the game’s release, and fully successful in getting everyone interested and wanting to buy the game.  But once having successfully created near ravenous demand, why not try and fulfil it by supplying enough of your product?  The publisher consequently made less money than they could have done, while auction dealers now reap massive rewards as fans fight over the remnants.

As a final blow there is also a DS version of this game in Japan, unreleased in the west.  This game was reportedly deemed too financially prohibitive for release as the game is only playable with the book and could therefore only be sold as a bundle pack.  I guess throwing money at publishers is not enough proof that there is demand for this game at any price.  Sadly the DS boat has since sailed for pastures new (3D ones anyway), so I don’t see it happening now.

I don’t mean to moan as it’s a fantastic game.  Go buy it now and accept the compromise, it’s all you’re going to get.

Whisper of the Heart Art Book -「バロンのくれた物語」の物語

It’s no real secret that I’m a big fan of Ghibli, and any excuse to talk a bit about them makes my day. I love their work, and I especially love their artbooks in all their various shapes and sizes (I’m a sucker when it comes to pencils and watercolours). Alongside the recent Arrietty, the next few days will see the release of Whisper of the Heart on Blu-Ray. It’s a sublime film and if you haven’t already seen it I strongly encourage you all to seek it out. As for the artbook for the film, it’s a bit of a weird thing.

I could be wrong, but after hours of hunting through places such as Ebay and Amazon Japan, I couldn’t actually find an artbook specifically for Whisper of the Heart. None of the film’s depiction of Japanese suburbia exists in book form or even character sketches of the main cast were available to me (if there is such a book please let me know!). The volume I was able to come up with though focuses solely on the Baron – the cat figurine that features briefly in the film. This book is dedicated entirely to around 5 minutes of the entire film in miniscule details, so fans of the Baron who want to check out his origins will get a kick out of this book. I’ve taken a couple of photos but please forgive the blur:

What you get inside are watercoloured and pencilled storyboards for the Baron’s sequences, about 20 pages of content, with the rest presenting an extensive look at the fantasy backgrounds. The reproduction is lush, but anyone originally after any content even vaguely relating to its parent film might be a little disappointed at this somewhat slender 96-page offering. I’m proud to have it on my shelf as it opens a window to something that passes so fleetingly in the main film (and I’m a fan of the Baron too which helps), but these books don’t exactly come cheap so it’s always good to give a heads up to anyone who might be tempted so they know what to expect.

Sadly Whisper of the Heart turned out to be the only film directed by Yoshifumi Kondo before passing away. For those interested in his work I recommend checking out his artbook ふとふり返ると―近藤喜文画文集, perhaps even more so than the Whisper of the Heart book.

Naturally as a non-Japanese reader I can’t tell you much about the book’s real intentions, but inside is page upon page of delicate drawings made with coloured pencils. Everyday scenes or people riding bikes, getting caught in the rain or just having fun are depicted. It has about 100 pages and is a sturdy hardback. While it has no actual relation to Whisper of the Heart at all, the vibe of the gentle nondramatic instances of life this is really worth checking out as a spiritual accompaniment to the film.

Laputa - Castle in the Sky Complete Storyboards / 天空の城ラピュタ スタジオジブリ絵コンテ全集

With a full run already out on DVD, it’s now the turn of Blu-Ray to work its way through the Ghibli library. Hi-def masters have been slowly emerging from Japan, and gradually making their way to western territories. The films are as good as ever and the picture quality is amazing, in fact I’d be surprised if you weren’t considering buying them if you didn’t own them already.

One particular item that got my attention on these releases was the storyboards that are found in most of the extras menus. They are small sketches made in preparation of making the film dictating motion, camera angle and overall flow of the work. The DVDs provided an alternate angle option to view the storyboards in real time over the actual film, while the Blu-Rays generally have a ‘picture-in-picture’ method where a corner given over to them and both run in tandem. In both cases a quick-fire use of a pause button is required otherwise it’s a case of blink and you’ll miss it for many of the drawings. The Blu-Ray release of My Neighbours the Yamadas runs things a little differently as the storyboards are scanned in separately for a 300+ page browsing trawl. But there is an alternative to staring at the screen all day…

For those crazy or hardcore enough to want to check out the storyboards properly, Ghibli has printed virtually their entire output over in Japan. All of the Ghibli films and a good chunk of both Hayo Miyazaki’s and Isao Takahata’s older output are also available. They’re a little pricy, but considering these are normally between 400-600 pages, with Laputa here weighing in at a particularly shelf-busting 700 pages, you get an insane amount of content per book. Drawn by Miyazaki in the planning stages, each page contains five panels which are fully annotated depicting motion, camera movement and staging. Naturally as the books remain untranslated some of the nitty gritty film-making details are lost, but the pictures are clear and instantly recognisable from the final product and give a good sense of how the scenes are developed.

I really enjoy browsing this book as it’s remarkable to see a complex composition or mannerism being portrayed in just a few scant lines. It just proves to me that a good artist doesn’t need to be superbly detailed in their work, or even necessarily all that neat, just the ability to depict your idea with clarity in quite inspiring in a world of relentless pixel-perfect CG.

If you have a particular favourite Ghibli film where you absolutely love to pore over every detail that you can find, then it’s definitely worth treating yourself to one of these books. For hardened Ghibli obsessives then, but so worth it…

The Journey of Shuna / シュナの旅

How can you write about a book you can’t read? It seems like a fool’s errand, but I’m going to try anyway!

The Journey of Shuna is one of the few manga written by Ghibli film director Hayao Miyazaki. His works are in high demand, but for some reason Journey of Shuna has never been published in English, and frankly I’ve no idea why. Maybe the story’s rubbish or something, but it’s not really something I can comment on.

What I can talk about however is how beautiful this thing is. It’s around 150 pages and small in size (think Lone Wolf and Cub small) with all the hand drawn and watercoloured artwork being printed in full colour. Yes: Colour! This isn’t your average black and white manga, but more an illustrated novel with few speech bubbles with a narration running over the artwork. There’s a low panel count per page count, mostly 2 or 3 if not a full spread, so you really get to see Mayazaki in his element. Story be damned - this is top notch stuff!

Originally published in 1983, this is pre-Ghibli Miyazaki. A time when the Nausicaa manga had only been partly serialized in Animage and the movie was still in the works. The style echoes not only Nausicaa, but the later Princess Mononoke making it especially interesting to see how his recurring elements interchange between works. Everyone knows what happened once the Nausicaa movie came out and then Ghibli subsequently starting up, but much of what Miyazaki and his associates were making before then isn’t really talked about, at least not in English speaking territories. But it should be.

If you see this writing as just an elaborate way to say ‘this book has pretty pictures’… then you’d be right. Over 25 years on and the book’s still in print in Japan. It isn’t bank-breakingly expensive and is easier to find online that you’d expect. Miyazaki and Ghibli completists need this, as for anyone who appreciates a bit of honest old-school illustration.