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“Outside of Japan, especially in North America, Europe, and other Asian countries, the way younger females are portrayed is starting to change,” illustrator Mel Kishida, an artist known for his work on light novelsꦐ, anime, games, and the upcoming Blue Reflection: Second Light, tells me as part of a recent roundtable interview with ourselves, , and . “Attitudes are starting to change. With the first Blue Reflection we weren’t trying to be blatantly sexy, we just wanted the girls to show a little more character, like you’d take a second glance and your heart would flutter when you saw them.”
🍌Kishida-san began his career working on popular light novels and beloved anime like Hanasaku Iroha, working alongside a number of clients before landing his role as the character designer and illustrator for Gust’s Atelier series. For the past decade, his artistic talent has become synonymous with cute girls doing alchemy. While his work on Atelier continues, recent years have seen Kishida-san venture towards a more contemporary setting, albeit with a magical girl twist.
First launching in 2017, Blue Reflection is a JRPG set in the modern world where a bunch of normal high school girls find themselves transported to a magical realm. As you’d expect, this new environment comes with fabulous new outfits and mysterious new powers for them to play around with. Much like Persona or Fire Emblem, you need to balan💦ce this fantastical new life🌠 with the act of attending school, making friends, and progressing through the main story. It was a fun game, but nothing too special, with Kishida-san’s artistic flair being one of the most impressive aspects of the whole experience.
“For the first game I wasn’t just involved with the illustrations,” Kishida-san says. “I was there from the beginning of the development process, which ♚included the scenario, the [gameplay] systems, the music, everything. I was able to contribute a lot of ideas even if I haven’t been able to take part in as many meetings for the sequel. Despite that, I’ve been providing my ideas and thoughts to the team, and so many of the first game’s ideas have carried over and been given new life there as well.” Unfortunately Kishida-san was unable to cosplay and promote the game to fans for the upcoming sequel, largely due to the ongoing pandemic and other commitments that make public gatherings a little difficult. Even with all of these obstacles in place, however, his influence is everywhere in Blue Reflection: Second Light.
Like its predecessor, the sequel once again follows a group of young high school girls as they find themselves in a magical world they must learn to navigate and survive in. All of them have special powers and revealing outfits - because of course they do - and despeඣrately want to find a way home. The high school setting is a well worn archetype in games and anime, and Kishida-san believes there is a reason for both that and the constant use of school uniforms in the mediu𒀰m.
“I think anyone who has spent their school years in Japan will have memories that involve the school uniform,” he explains. “You might have had a crush on a girl or something like that, and it brings back a memory of being back in school when everyone was wearing them. This way I’m able to bring back thos🌱e memories and share common ones with a lot of people.
“I’m not really into school uniforms, or the students wearing them - there’s nothing about them I particularly find attractive. It’s really just the memories that are linked to them and the feeling of reliving what it was like to be in school. That’s where I find the attraction - it’s no🥀t so much the outfit itself, but what it represents.” Japan is a🌌 country with an awfully strict working culture, and to me it feels like Kishida-san is tapping into the freedom and creativity that accompanies school life, and how it represents some of the only years young people can be themselves and pursue interests that will stick with them forever. It’s poetic, and isn’t the first time I’ve seen the Japanese high school experience being romanticized in such a way.
However, this meaningful message of rౠepresenting nostalgia can also be mixed with fan service where younger characters are sexualized in a way that Western fans continue t🦋o find irksome. I’m a giant pansexual mess, so I appreciate cute and attractive characters, but at times a line must be drawn in the sand. Kishida-san believes things are changing for the better, and hopes to represent that evolving culture in his work.
“I think focusing on fan service and making it the main aspect [of games and anime] is really starting to change,” he tells me. “Not just myself, but the dev team are really feeling that. Compared to the first game, we’re taking a different approach in terms of showing how appealing these characters are without having to rely on fan service. For Blue Reflection and other titles I’ve worked on, I’m seeing a change in how things are being perceived🌊 and the attitudes towards them. If you asked me, ‘Well, you’ve drawn a lot of sexy illustrations’ I would have to say that it isn’t because I like or dislike them, it’s that I’m creating things that fans and consumers enjoy looking at.”
Kishida-san can see attitudes changing for the better, but I suppose he’s right - there is demand for characters and illustrations like this, so h▨e’d be foolish🎐 to ignore these requests and prevent himself from making a living. Games and anime from Japan can be some of the finest pieces of art in the modern world, yet they’re also dragged down by weird, gratuitous experiences that can often feel juvenile. Blue Reflection: Second Light thankfully doesn’t fall into that camp.
From what I’ve played, it’s a fun, approachable JRPG that improves upon everything its predecessor set out to achieve. It won’t be for everyone, with a deliberately girly aesthetic and tried-and-true turn-based mechanics, but it pursues a vision and seldom wavers frღom it. It’s not just Gust’s creative vision, but Kishida-san’s, and with the sequel, he is se💖t to achieve that for a second time.
Blue Reflection: Second Light is coming to PS4 and PC on November 9, 2021.
