Something Other Than Spiky Hair – Pixiv Fantasia
Posted: April 25, 2009 Filed under: D&D, Fluff/Inspiration, Other Hobby, RPG 20 Comments »Anime is pretty much my second-largest hobby and has a decent influence on my imagination. Let’s talk about it, because its influence over me is extremely misunderstood, given most people think about anime artwork in significantly different ways than I do. I bet you think – schoolgirls, blue hair, katanas, robots, the cover to Big Eyes Small Mouth (which I hate, by the way).
As an anime fan into RPGs (and oh dear God, blogging about it, on a network about RPGs!) I am practically trying to dance a waltz in the middle of a minefield. It’s no secret that a sizeable chunk of the D&D hobby believes me (me as in an anime fan, though Wyatt fits too I think) to be a cancer that helped destroy their golden days.
This doesn’t stop me from doing the occasional post about anime stuff though.
We all have things that pop into mind when we think of fantasy roleplaying artwork (IE D&D artwork, I don’t talk about anything but that here).
Classic artists such as Jeff Dee or Erol Otus; more contemporary artists like Wayne Reynolds or William O’Connor.
I tend to think about guys with incomprehensible online handles. I guess I’m from the imageboard generation or something.
Pixiv is a japanese site, kind of like deviantart, where artists can post artworks for the wider world to look at, download, comment on, put in their favorites lists, whatever. However, it’s not really public, because you need to register a free account to be able to browse anything.
On safebooru, you can find a collection of stuff from Pixiv that you can browse without needing registration (and in English). It usually includes the best stuff, so I prefer it to using my actual Pixiv account (which I can only barely understand.) All safeboouru pages link to the original artist, so even if you have a Pixiv account you stand to profit from going local. (What.)
This post is about Pixiv Fantasia, a collaborative world-building group of Pixiv artists, who develop a collected body of fantasy work through their pixiv-submitted artworks. Worlds, scenary, backstory, monsters and heroes, quite akin to what we dream about over here as opposed to the stereotypical notion that anime is all about robots, schoolgirls and katanas.
A lot of people are doing collaborative worldbuilding on the RPG Blogger’s Network, so I thought, despite my limited ability (IE I don’t want to browse through livejournals picking up scraps of information that may or may not be true about an exclusively-japanese collaborative worldbuilding event I cannot accurately document in any other way) I would turn people on to this.
Even if we can’t grasp the story or the characters – the thousands of characters, seeing as any artist can submit something, and there are even artists allying their characters and so on within the world, advancing the story through more drawings, comics and whatnot – we can look at the images and maybe see something they hadn’t before. I know I’ve already surprised one or two people with images from Fantasia (I think it was this one and this one) who had never really seen what Japanese anime-style artists think and imagine as fantasy. Whether you look down on anime or not, I think it is worth browsing for a moment.
Or you can just flame me, I’m used to it by now.
As said before, you can catch the artworks on safebooru. Navigating in Pixiv is difficult, because there have actually been 3 Pixiv Fantasia “rounds” by now. Safebooru users, I’ve found, tend to be pretty discriminate in picking the highest-quality stuff. So for greater accessibility, I went with linking safebooru instead of Pixiv. If anybody wants a Pixiv account, I can try to help you through the registration and I can link you to the pertinent areas of Pixiv discussed here. It’s really not necessary though.
through this affiliate link, for any item, and some of the sale will be used to support this blog.
And no, I will never get tired of my deceptive URLs. I am a URL compulsive liar.
also, deviantArt doesn’t necessarily suck THAT bad. I mean, I’m on there and I seem to get on allright
http://exiledtranquility.deviantart.com/
Thanks for the hookup, Wyatt.
I didn’t mean to insinuate that deviantart is really bad, I was merely joking. I browse deviantart from time to time myself. It’s how I found the guy who did the artwork for Wakfu, so it can’t be bad at all!
I know Wyatt, I was totally putting words in your mouth cuz you didn’t say anything like that at all.
I just wanted to create drama, and shamelessly plug my own dA page.
Does danbooru have some delicious unsafe pixiv? Would it be worth going there?
Also, I’ll step up and say deviant art is bad.
You can replace the safe in safebooru with dan on any page to get completely unfiltered content, so yes, deliciously unsafe.
Oh, deviantart. I had a good 5 years or so on there before I got tired of all the dArama.
The look of japanese comic art and D&D illustration is a lot closer if you limit the media and historical influence (for example, brush & ink…medieval Europe). In this regard, BERSERK could be straight out of Heavy Metal, The Lady of Pharis could sit on a shelf next to classic Prince Valiant. Folks who desire that pulp D&D look probably have trouble sifting through the enormous volume of fantasy anime/manga art that has piled up over the decades. Even I have to search the old zines now and then *pats shelf of 100+ Newtypes*
I personally don’t quite like pulp D&D art, which is why the bright colors and heroic styles typically present in the pixiv fantasia works attract me. I do very much agree about the example of Berserk though. It really bucks trend when it comes to anime styles and it serves its universe and themes very well.
Anime just has a huge influence on the last few generations and I think that those from the golden age don’t get it. The best metaphor I can think of is when hip hop became mainstream and the majority of america immediately claimed that it was destroying the american way of life.
People are always afraid of cultural change. It’s always the fear of being forgotten. Losing the old ways and being replaced by new ones. It’s a foolish fear though. You just got to go with the flow and keep doing what you’re doing,
My favorite post on anime and D&D (aside from my own, because I am an egomaniac) is one of Grognardia’s James Maliszewski’s posts. I make a point not to link to “old school” blogs often (if ever) because I don’t wish to give them “new school” traffic that’d disagree with them or attempt to stir the pot over there, since I don’t appreciate the same happening here (except in flamebait posts where I totally ask for it, which this is not one of), so you could search for it yourself if you are interested. Comes up on google fairly easily.
I don’t necessarily think that a fear aspect, or a “not getting it aspect”, is all there is to the rejection of such influences (varied as they are, non-tabletop games for example, and even things like TCGs, are also targets of hatred among some of the RPG hobby). Sure, some people just have a “damn kids” attitude about it but that’s like saying all the new blood in the hobby makes a point to piss on Gary Gygax’s grave every day.
I think a good bit of it is an intellectual rejection of such influences as inferior to predecessors. The hobby is one that was greatly influenced by novels and “literature” which some consider a higher culture than that which people such as myself “partake in” (said as if I were exclusively watching cartoons so as to preclude the possibility I might be cultured in other ways, as is usually believed.) So taking the hardest line elitist view possible, pulp fantasy comes first, then anything in a novel with words on it and no pictures, then older films, and anime is possibly last thing on earth there.
So in short somebody who wants to play this is a mouthbreathing uncultured young’un ruining everything compared to the guy playing this.
This is deliberately pushing things to an extreme, but I think it’s a more justifiable extreme than “fear of change.”
But anyway, I didn’t really want an anime vs whatever argument. Anime (a subset of it anyway) is what sparks my imagination, and those who don’t like that are welcome to disregard me as a lunatic and anything I say as worthless. Anyone looked at the pretty pictures yet?
I suspect I’m going to lose several hours to sifting through this stuff, but thanks for posting it all the same. :3
I always found the hostility some people have towards “anime” style stuff kind of baffling, but it’s definitely out there. I was talking to Jake Richmond via e-mail the other day (and I may get him to join me for a podcast to discuss the topic), and he noted that he gets a lot of inspiration from anime and whatnot, but he’s found anime fans to be far more receptive to what he’s tried to create (Panty Explosion, Classroom Deathmatch, Yeld, The Year We All Died, etc.) than gamers.
I’ve also found anime fans to be far more receptive of my Spirits of Eden work. While at first I tried to sort of distance myself from that I have since just decided, not to embrace it really (because it isn’t all that SoE is about), but to do whatever the dick I want and not care where the idea came from or what it looks like as long as I feel it fits. Those who are interested will be interested, and I patently cannot attract those who just write off SoE and me as “anime shit.”
I’ve always been strangely seduced by Mr. Richmond’s work, especially Classroom Deathmatch, but I’ve never played them nor even looked at them beyond the initial page. Deep inside me there lives a skeptic that does not even wish to bother. Maid: RPG has clobbered Mr. Skeptic, but he is still very much alive, just on life-support.
I think you have to be fair and admit that anime can be downright scary. I guess, no more downright scary as Lovecraft writing about otherworldly negro eggs that would host the essences of non-euclidian entities who want to destroy all humanity, but scary in a way that’s utterly unfamiliar.
Also, I think hip hop and rap has done incredibly detrimental things to the American way of life.
Anime can be, but not all of it is. I won’t claim it’s without flaw (in fact loads of it is terrible), but rather that it has merit.
“Also, I think hip hop and rap has done incredibly detrimental things to the American way of life.”
@andrew: that’s because your an ass and always will be. grow up.
I listen to hip hop and don’t agree with Andrew on that score (as it is more an artificial and hollow form of hip and rap that has defined the culture which I believe he is referring to), but lets not take this out of proportion, as this isn’t really the thread to discuss that or insult each other over it.
Strangely enough, a thin red string was tied between RPGs and recent anime. The Tower of Druaga begins with a spoof episode that only a gamer could truly appreciate. In fact, the entire series is an ascending mega-dungeon crawl.
If only I could read the Japanese Dragon magazine…
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