Today Sega revealed a few samples from the artbook that will be included in the limited edition of Project Sakura Wars, and they’re rather interesting.
The samples were published via Twitter [source 1, 2] showing beautiful art for both the new game and the previous chapters of the series. The artbook will come with 72 pages full of content.
In particular, we get to see designs by character designer (and Bleach creator) Tite Kubo, his long-time colleague Masashi Kudo (who helped in translating Kubo-sensei’s art into animation), and mecha designer Mika Akitaka. If you’re not familiar with Akitaka-sensei, he worked on extremely relevant anime like Gundam ZZ , Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory , Martian Successor Nadesico, and Galaxy Fraulein Yuna.
Interestingly, among Akitaka-sensei’s designs we see a sketch for a “prototype” mecha that Sakura will likely pilot later in the game. It appeared in an earlier trailer, but now we can get a clearer look at its design.
At the beginning of Project Sakura taisen she’s the only one in the new Floral Revue to pilot an outdated Koubu Type-3 for reasons that have not been revealed yet, while the rest of the team pilots the newer Mugen-type.
Apparently our heroine will get an upgrade at some point.
On top of this, we also learn that in December Project Sakura Wars will have a collaboration with Sega’s online mech game Border Break. No further details have been announced just yet.
If you’d like to learn more about Project Sakura Wars, you can enjoy the previous batch of screenshots focusing on romance, another reveal with two new characters and videos, the beautiful anime opening cutscene, a music video dedicated to Sakura, one featuring Hatsuho one focusing on Elise, one showcasing Lancelot, one featuring Anastasia Palma, another starring Huang Yui, one showing Claris, more trailers, the latest gameplay, latest gallery of screenshots, another gallery, the previous gameplay reveal, another one, and an earlier gallery of screenshots and art.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Sakura Wars series, you should take a look at my dedicated article explaining what it’s all about.
The game will launch in Japan exclusively for PS4 on December 12, and in the west in 2020.
A demo will come on November 21.