April 4th, 2008
#56: the third battle of harbourton
I tried something different with the shading, to try to get a happy medium between how the first pre-chapter flashback looked and the current style, but I’m not terribly happy with the result, so I’ll probably go back to hard-edged shading for the rest of this scene.
Cpt. Fujiwara Kenzaburo’s sword is one of the hundreds of thousands churned out daily by Kyokan’s great industrial war machine. It’s not a particularly good sword.
April 5th, 2008 at 4:30 am
You use the sword as a focus away from the fact that the Kyokanans are using M-16 rifles and the hostiles (Chartannians?) are using some other kind of rifle. It might be an AK-47, but I am no expert on small arms. I was just rather shocked at seeing Kiyohara carrying a gun.
Come to think of it, this is the first time I’ve realized she’s left-handed, too.
Is the flower on her helmet a wisteria? hm, looks more like a rose ….
April 5th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Takako, and Silth before her, actually has a rich historical legacy of left-handedness: http://midlands.comicgenesis.com/d/20020410.html
You’re right about the guns. The Kyokanese guns are based (a little too heavily, now that I think about it) on M16s, and the Chartannian ones are rather more loosely based on the AK-47, although in the latter case I tried to avoid outright plagiarism of Mr. Mikhail Kalashnikov by not referring to actual photos. Since I know absolutely nothing about guns, perhaps relying on instinct to redesign them wasn’t the best plan in the world. :V
If you really want to know more about my gun-drawing methodology, here is how I draw M16s when I actually try to make them look like M16s, and not just M16ish.
The kamon on the Kyokanese helmets is a plum blossom. The plum blossom is of great symbolic importance in Kyokan, since its arrangement of petals is reminiscent of the points on a five-pointed star, the icon of democracy.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Why is he bringing a sword to the gunfight?
April 5th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Oh wait, Tamayo already answered that.
All in all a good page. I really like all those small details like bullet cartridges etc.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:31 am
The use of mass-fire tactics and sword leading officers in what is obviously a “modern” urban combat situation comes off as a little odd. Then again, so does using airships as troop transports into a live-fire area - although I suppose with enough of them well armed you could hope to take out any AA.
April 5th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Aha, and with a short search, I find that the [i]ume[/i] is a member of family [i]Rosaceae[/i] so my real guess was fairly close. I initially thought of “wisteria” of course because the officer’s name was Fujiwara, but … it just isn’t a wisteria blossom.
However — how does a pentagram symbolize democracy in Kyokan? (or should I take these random questions to the forum?)
April 5th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
The revolution which overthrew the old shogunate used the five-pointed star as their symbol to represent the Five Principles of the Revolution (Representative government, natural rights, fair trials, the consent of the governed, and the equality of all sapient beings).
Actually, that reminds me, I should make the Q&A thread again in the new forum.
May 5th, 2008 at 7:57 am
If you have a little free time, read this post:,