thetalesoftheworld

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About Mutsumi Inomata's contribution to the Tales of series

One of the things I'm going to miss most about Mutsumi Inomata (who tragically passed earlier this year) and her contributions to the Tales of series is how she more often than not gave us unique and colourful dark-skinned main characters, something other designers barely ever did.

Take, for example, the other darker-skinned characters drawn by Kosuke Fujishima, like Rondoline or Raven; they are so few that they pale in comparison — quite literally. Meanwhile, even in smaller projects and spin-offs like Tales of Breaker (Berger) or Tales of Eternia Online (Loretta and Lenny), Inomata always made sure to include skin tone diversity in the designs she proposed.

This thought came to mind after yet another debate on Genshin Impact's lack of darker-skinned characters in in-game regions based on real-world regions inhabited by people of colour. It's a reminder of how important representation is in gaming and how Mutsumi Inomata's work in the Tales of series set a standard twenty years ago that many still strive to achieve today.

So to the people who claim that East Asian game companies are just "not preoccupied with inclusion and wokeness" like Western game companies are — maybe they actually were before you decided it was a problem? Still, it's both funny and tragic to see that Tales of games had more skin tone diversity one or two decades before the rightful push for more representation became a mainstream subject matter.

This aspect of her designs is just one of the many things that made Mutsumi Inomata the iconic and talented character designer she was. Her legacy lives on through her dedication to providing unique characters, and the beautifully crafted characters and worlds she left behind.

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Tales of Eternia Online - Artworks for the main characters

As a Tales of fan who loves Tales of Eternia and has always dreamed of playing a Tales series MMORPG someday, I’ve always been intrigued by Tales of Eternia Online. The game shut down after only a year of service, and most of its original story content remains unknown to the West and newer fans worldwide, me included -- well, at least until today. I decided to go on a little treasure hunt for official artwork and information about the game’s original characters as the only information available on Aselia (before I updated the article) was the game cover, and the faceless names of two of the main characters, Loretta and Lenny.

Cover artwork for Tales of Eternia Online (テイルズ オブ エターニア オンライン) by Mutsumi Inomata, featuring (from left to right, top to bottom) Cyrille, Anne, Mimi, Hugues, and Celia

Fortunately, one of the first things I came across in my search for original character art were official trading card games with the romanized names of the characters, which allowed me to put a face on the names I already knew, a name on the faces I already knew, and discover new characters I had never heard about.

I then had to go down a rabbit hole of old, wonky japanese gaming blog articles and collect as many HQ-ish artworks of these characters as possible (and also their japanese name), so here we go :

Loretta (ロレッタ)

Lenny (レニィ)

According to the official TOEO website, Loretta and Lenny are the main characters for the main story quest, while the 10 other are the main characters for events and side quests. This post is only to showcase artworks, so if you want to know more about these characters (age, backstory, etc), check the TOEO Aselia page in the next few days as I’ll start creating individual character pages for all of them.

Anne Montfort (アンヌ・モンフォール)

Auguste Corneille (オーギュスト・コルネイユ)

Celia Bocuse (セリア・ボキューズ)

Cyrille Sfeen (シリル・スフィーン)

Fernand Carré (フェルナン・カレ)

Hugues Martin (ユーグ・マルタン)

Mimi Petit (ミミ・プティ)

Monique Auvin (モニク・オーヴァン)

Nadine Bachelet (ナディーヌ・バシュレ)

Simon Pascal (シモン・パスカル)

It’s honestly frustrating that these characters, along with Tales of Mobile (Warheit, Commons, Breaker) original characters, will probably never see the light of day again in any way when they all would be a good fit for Asteria or the Rays.

That’s it for the artworks! I will be working on posting whatever I can on Aselia so that more Tales of fans get to know about Tales of Eternia Online and its original characters. 

As a bonus, here’s the opening from Tales of Eternia Online, which features some of these characters as they were drawn on their official artworks, except for Mimi who for some reason has blue hair here, and Celia whose haircut resembles Mutsumi Inomata’s cover design more than her official artwork.

Bonus 2: Preview of the character portrait/skit creation system, which I wish they had used in Tales of the World : Radiant Mythology to make the game even more immersive and customizable. Still waiting on a modern Tales of game with full character creation like this.

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Mika from Tales of Breaker

My second attempt at imitating the Tales of sprite/skit portrait style. Mika (ミカ ; Michelle Weltex ; ミッシェル・ウェルテクス) is the main character from Tales of Breaker (テイルズ オブ ブレイカー) - (arguably) the first Tales of female protagonist, long before Milla Maxwell and Velvet Crowe even existed. I'm bummed that there is an entire game out there that we'll never get to play, and that the Tales of series tends to act like Tales of Mobile entries never existed. They could release them all as a Switch collection tbh but since we don't even get ports/remasters (let alone remakes) it's highly unlikely... it's like they don't even want new players to play the older titles. Lowkey want to start drawing skit portraits for forgotten Tales of characters that will probably never be added to Tales of the Rays and therefore will never get an official skit portrait. Widdershin from TotW:RM might be next!

Feel free to use the artwork for personal projects/edits/etc (credit to Ajeb or AjebFLY is highly appreciated), or repost as such (with credit to Ajeb or AjebFLY) -- no commercial use though.

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As a Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology superfan who doesn’t understand a word of Japanese and can’t share behind-the-scenes anecdotes of the game(s), the least I can do is scan & post high quality images from the official guide book and fan bible that I have either never seen or only seen in very low quality on the internet. Hope the other two or three TotW:RM fans out there will be happy to see these! Absolutely adore the cute Kanonno/Mormo drawings and Mormo’s early design.

Already started uploading the pictures on the Aselia fandom/wikia pages of some of the characters.

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Looking for Pasca Kanonno’s face

As a Tales of fan, one of my favourite things about the series is its variety of art styles yet consistency within these art styles. Sorey’s cell-shaded face is faithful to Kōsuke Fujishima’s original art style, and each new official art depicting Sorey shows him having the exact same features that make him recognisable. The same goes for Velvet, for example, whose anime-style depictions highlight Mutsumi Inomata’s original design while always being consistent in terms of eye shape, colour palette and shading style, more or less.

There are some exceptions, of course, but most characters in the series have their own 2D cell-shaded anime-style face either in the game in which they first appeared or in spin-off & crossover games. 

One exception to this rule is my favourite Tales of character, Pasca Kanonno, the (unfortunately non-playable) heroine of the PSP game Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology. Not only does her face change with each official artwork, some elements of her design also differ from one drawing to another.

The main reason her face keeps changing, in my opinion, is because she has never had the same face to begin with.

Her official artwork by Minoru Iwamoto looks nothing like the skit images used in TotW:RM in terms of art style and even in the colour palette used.

The skit images themselves don’t really make Pasca Kanonno look like a Tales of character: the eye shape and the iris/pupil shading are very basic and simplistic, making her look a little too generic and soulless for the series.

In the game’s opening, Kanonno once again changes art styles. She still looks like the official artwork, even if less bubbly-looking, but her haircut, eyeshape, colour palette and expressions look once again different from Kanonno’s skit faces in the game. 

On the game cover, Kanonno looks once again different from her in-game skit faces and her depiction in the opening, and even though she looks very similar to the official artwork, she still looks like she was drawn by someone else.

None of these 2D depictions are bad, of course, but the lack of consistency from the beginning has given birth to a long tradition of constantly drawing Pasca Kanonno differently in official artworks.

Somebody somewhere probably noticed the discrepancy between Kanonno’s original skit image and her design, and that’s how we got extremely close to finally having a face for Pasca Kanonno in Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 3.

Pasca was redrawn and given specific features that distanced her from the two other Kanonnos while looking like both her official artwork and original skit face. She also finally looked like she belonged in a Tales of game, and had a Mystic Arte image that re-used the exact same colours and looked consistent in art style. The only problem here is the fact that her grey dress is supposed to stop just above the orange lace bow and not around her neck, but because of how close to perfection these artworks are, I never really minded. This should have been, in my opinion, how she should have been drawn from then on. Unfortunately, until very recently, no official artwork of Pasca Kanonno looked as close to the idea of a consistent, Tales-like official face as these did.

I divided official artworks of Pasca Kanonno in her original costume into three different categories:

- THE BAD ONES

Bad depictions of Pasca Kanonno usually involve weirdly/poorly-drawn eyes, an eyeshape/haircut that’s inconsistent compared to other official artworks, or a general art-style that doesn’t really radiate Tales of energy. They aren’t bad drawings per se, they just look more like fan art than official artworks.

- THE OKAY ONES

“Okay” depictions of Pasca Kanonno are drawn in a style that is “Tales of”-like, and look like they could be used as a status image for the character, but there’s still something off. Either the eyes are too different from the TotW:RM3 official artworks, or the flower on her head is too small/big/lacks the orange center, or I’m just looking for whatever reason not to say they’re good enough. They were good enough while we didn’t have better artworks, but lack something now that we’ve got better depictions.

- THE ALMOST PERFECT ONES

Tales of the Rays introduced Pasca Kanonno’s first official dialogue/skit image, and even though it was extremely faithful to the character’s design, and resembled the TotW:RM3 skit face, there’s something about her eyes and haircut that make her seem different from the RM3 artworks. The same comments can be made about Pasca’s latest 5* Asteria depiction. They both could have had a tiny white space between the iris and the top line of the eye to make her look more like the original design, the cover artwork and the ToTW:RM3 skit face, and therefore more alive. The hair also seems a bit flat in comparison.

- THE PERFECT ONES

These ones I can’t really explain what exactly it is that makes them perfect but I’ll try. For the 6* Asteria picture, it’s almost everything. The pose, the colours, the eye shape, the shading, the face, the expression, and so on. It could totally replace the TotW:RM3 mystic arte image that’s slightly incorrect design-wise (even though I love it). If I were to add something, it would be a line below the eye to mirror the TotW:RM3 eye style but other than that, it is everything I’ve been waiting for for the past 12 years or so. This picture should replace the Rays awakened image, and should be used in all future spin-off/crossover games imo.

The other one used for 25th anniversary merchandise & promotional material could totally replace any Pasca Kanonno status image. It has everything good about the Tales of the Rays skit image while adding some elements present in the TotW:RM3 one such as the hair style that truly made her appear more unique.

So there have been attempts in the past few years (ever since Pasca was released in Rays) to give Pasca a signature face and staying consistent, and so far, I’m rather satisfied. Even though the Rays skit image is good enough as it is, I believe it should have stayed even more faithful to the TotW:RM3 skit face in terms of eye and hair shape. Slight changes could have made these skit images an official reference in terms of design rather than just the first close-to-perfection depiction of Pasca Kanonno since RM3. 

I edited Kanonno’s skit images to look more faithful to the RM3 design and I’m honestly bummed at the missed opportunity. Seeing how they drew her bangs almost identically, it’s clear they had the RM3 image as reference, so it’s a shame they didn’t keep the hair and eye shape exactly the same as well. But then again, as she doesn’t have an official, consistent face design, it’s up to personal preference to determine what’s a good and what’s a bad design.

I feel bad for the people who prefer the RM1 skit image but I’m personally glad they distanced themselves from it after release and never went back.

Can’t wait to see more Pasca Kanonno official artworks in the future. Hoping for a TotW:RM trilogy remaster or remake but it’ll probably never happen, sadly.

[thetalesoftheworld]

so here's what's inside the Tales of The World : Radiant Mythology (1) Original Soundtrack album ! no I'll never get over my love for this game

[thetalesoftheworld]

Bless ToRays’ Arc 3 OP for including a reference to Edna’s girls only tea parties and what Guy does in them.

For reference, Guy serves as their waiter and plaything (which I surmise to mean they’re free to pick on him). Edna’s tea parties have been around since Arc 1 and have been referenced in various events and skits. Though labeled as “girls only”, people like Jade have been known to participate as well.

In any case, it seems that the tea party is working out for Guy! He didn’t run a mile when Edna poked him suddenly, nor did he drop his sandwich. Quite some impressive progress there in reducing his phobia’s debilitating effects, and was really nice to see in the opening.

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Tales of the World mirrage scenes from Tales of the Rays

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I’m so sorry, I haven’t properly thanked you yetーthank you for being alive.

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and this had to be a turn-based mobile title... smh @ bamco it deserved better

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We deserve a sequel with Mikleo/Epileo as a main character while his boyfriend is asleep we still need more of the Zestiria/Berseria continuity!!! 

List of favourite characters in no particular order: 140/???

Mikleo

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Best End

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[FLIES INTO THE SUN SCREAMING]

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FURTHER PROOF THAT ROSALI IS CANON AF

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ufotable be like

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Rokurou X Stormhowl: the new OTP.