BlazBlue Material Collection

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I started playing BlazBlue with my husband back in July. At first, I was completely awesome. And then my learning curve flattened out and he started to win more than I did. I hear the best way is to specialize with one character, but I can never keep interested in a game that way.

I normally don’t purchase game art books, but I make exceptions when it’s one I like to play. It’s full color, and 144 pages.

Most of the art doesn’t look official, but it is. There were just a lot of artists doing promotional work for the game. We start off with the standard stuff, the art from the game boxes and booklets.

Then the book features the art from the CDs and tele-cards. Tele-cards are hilariously overpriced calling cards that usually have an exclusive illustration. So, most people buy them for the art work, not the phone calls. You could have picked up a Rachel x Noel tele-card depending on what store you bought your game from.

Next we have more illustrations from promotional art. The art in this section really varies from picture to picture because most are drawn by different artists. My only qualm with this section is the size of the illustrations. It’s harder to appreciate really detailed illustrations in such a small size. But some of these illustrations were just small to start out with. This book is slightly larger than A4 in width.

The next section is “Character.” This takes up the majority of the book. Each playable character includes a profile image, additional poses, concept art, CG scenes, and a brand new character illustration. There’s also a page of back story.

I wanted better presentation of the CG scenes from the game, but they’re small scale illustrations, too. Another cool thing that’s available on their profile pages is the design for the weapon symbol.

I’m not a Tager fan, but he has the best original portrait in this book.

I really enjoyed the early concept art for the characters. V-13 started off looking nothing like she looks in the game. She would fit more into the Guilty Gear scene with that design. In fact, most of the characters looked like they belonged in Guilty Gear with their initial designs.