Comiket 78 & Itoh Ben - Itoh Ben's SQUARE ENIX Fantasm -Preview- - Nattoli's blog

January 6th, 2011, 8:01PM by nat | 10 comments

I grabbed Itoh Ben's SQUARE ENIX Fantasm -Preview- knowing full well that his 'previews' tend to be a re-hash of previous books, and anything new gets re-printed in the non-preview version of the doujinshi. Knowing all that, my motivation was the price tag of ￥294 on Toranoana which is an amazingly small amount to pay for anything really.

This A4-sized, staple-bound book is 16 pages counting the covers and full color. And as I'd anticipated, it contains several repeated illustrations. The Final Fantasy XII works included were printed before in Itoh Ben's winter 2006 release G3 [Phase-1], though that book was a smaller format, B5-size with textured pages. I much prefer the opening FFXII illustration as an A4-sized two-page spread, which really showcases the amazing details of the piece.

There are three illustrations for Final Fantasy Tactics, though one of them is from Tactics Advance. These were some of the illustrations from SQUARE ENIX Fantasm -Preview- that I hadn't seen before, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have been from a volume I missed. Again, Itoh Ben takes advantage of the A4 pages to create a poster-like spread for one of the more detailed illustrations.

The other SQUARE ENIX titled included outside of the Final Fantasy series was Vagrant Story with two illustrations---one of which I've seen in Itoh Ben's doujinshi as far back as 2005. I'm not sure what to make of the inclusion of so many old illustrations--they hadn't been updated or anything like that. But seeing that the non-preview version of SQUARE ENIX Fantasm released at Comiket 79 includes 14 guest artists, there just might not have been a lot of material to include in SQUARE ENIX Fantasm -Preview-.

Title: SQUARE ENIX Fantasm -Preview-
タイトル: SQUARE ENIX Fantasm -Preview-
Pages: 16 (including covers)
Release date: 8/15/2010
Buy: eBay, Yahoo! Japan Auctions

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Tsu

13 years, 10 months ago

kisuki.net

if you hadn't linked the Toranoana page, I wouldn't have believed ￥294 could buy anything ._.

Lonigus

13 years, 10 months ago

Well yeah, but depends also from where you buy the item... -_-"

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Anonymous

13 years, 10 months ago

This is really beautiful!

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Kei

13 years, 10 months ago

I saw this over on the C79 preview at Hunting the Elusive. When I checked his homepage out and looked through his past stuff I started to wonder.

Is this the guy that does all the concept art for many of Squenix's past Final Fantasy games and some of the Front Mission stuff too? Because so much of it looks spot on stylistic wise.

nat

13 years, 10 months ago

nattoli.net

Just to clarify, this isn't the C79 one, it's the C78 although the covers are similar. The C79 one has more characters and monsters on it though.

I've totally thought he's actually Itou Ryoma (伊藤龍馬), especially since there would be overlap in the pen name for Itou Ben (伊藤ベン) but I've never seen confirmation for it. It does seem too coincidental, but maybe he doesn't want to be known for the racy hentai stuff he also puts out. Also, the name similarities could just be admiration. But you're right, the styles match so perfectly it's hard to believe he's just a fan.

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Jenn

13 years, 10 months ago

lupus-fabula.blogspot.com/

Okay, I have been wondering this for the LONGEST time but I suppose this is the best time to ask.

ALL of the artwork featured in his doujin are his own right? I only ask because he has two very different styles in the books. One is a loli style and the other is a much more detailed fantasy style (first image).

I was always left confused and not very satisfied (I like the detailed images but not the loli ones) when I bought his book a couple of times.

Thanks

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nat

13 years, 10 months ago

nattoli.net

All of the art work in SQUARE ENIX Fantasm -Preview- is his own. But a lot of his other collections are heavy on the guest illustrations, so depending what books you have, it could be guest art.

But he definitely does have a simpler style (like this?) that he often illustrates in. It would probably feel more satisfying if his detailed works weren't so amazing by comparison ^^;