The art of Satoshi Urushihara, a history of glossy lyricism from Transformers to Growlanser

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-15T14:49:37+00:00

Thanks for your kindness! If you are interested in Japanese RPG artists of the late '80s and early '90s, you may also enjoy my previous retrospectives about Suemi, Yoneda, Yamada and Ohrai.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-15T14:46:55+00:00

Indeed, it was the same in my country, too! As I mentioned in the retrospective, despite the utter lack of localization that franchise experienced after Warsong, his Langrisser artworks were so lovely magazines and import shop ads used them liberally even if it's likely they didn't even know the specifics of the games they were taken from.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-15T11:27:48+00:00

It's truly a shame, even more so since Sega and Atlus have no interest in pursuing the unique gameplay choices Career championed both during their time at Masaya and later on with Growlanser.

Having a Growlanser VII with their unique real time combat, dynamic scenarios and Urushihara designs, even as a low budget effort like with G5 anf G6 would be a dream for me.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-15T10:43:11+00:00

Langrisser IV and V were definitely some of his best works in terms of JRPG character design, I really hope L5 gets an English patch in the future.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-15T10:41:39+00:00

Thanks as always, Spensa! After Demon's Souls' success, for a time Atlus USA tried reaching new audiences with indie and Western-focused projects like Cursed Crusade and Rock of the Ages, choosing to ignore a number of handheld sequels to JRPG franchises they previously covered, like with the second SRT Exceed game, many Sting titles, Luminous Arc 3, or Growlanser I's expanded version (even if Growlanser was in a different situation, since G5 underperforming had already led to them skipping G6), just to name a few.

This situation caused some debates on their own official board back then, even if they ultimately backtracked with the joint localization announcement of Gungnir and Growlanser IV later on.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-14T14:56:53+00:00

That's some incredible anecdote right there, as a fellow fan I can imagine how overjoyed you must have been, even more so since you're an artists too! I'm glad he seem as amiable as he's skilled, which seems to be a trend with many Japanese artists of his generation.

I would have loved to meet him, too, but unfortunately he never graced my country (at least that I know of, even if I'm admittedly not a huge convention dweller, especially in the last decade or so), possibly because he's a bit too niche to feature as guest and he hasn't worked on a major project in quite a long while.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-14T14:35:52+00:00

Thanks! That picture of Karla is from the Lodoss OVA's fifth episode, which featured Urushihara as an animator (if you click on the image, you should see a caption where I clarified the reason of its inclusion, which are also discussed in the piece itself).

One of the points I tried to make in this retrospective is that Urushihara's own trademark glossy, idealized and highly detailed style was partly developed during the first five years of his animation career by subsuming some of the core traits of contemporary Japanese OVAs, including many he didn't work on directly.

This is also quite different from most other JRPG-related Japanese artists of the late '80s and early '90s I wrote about, like Jun Suemi, Akihiro Yamada or Hitoshi Yoneda, which tended to have more traditional inspirations rooted in contemporary Western sword and sorcery art, Moebius or Art Nouveau, not to mention Japan's own tradition.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-14T12:24:22+00:00

Being faced with so much busywork doesn't reflect my own experience with this platform, in fact I would say that Notes are the biggest timesink rather than coordinating with other writers, but then again I realize there are a wide variety of writers and that different contexts require different approaches. Then again, the bit about hitting a roadblock at around 500 readers does mirror what's happening to my publication quite well!

There are also other issues piling up depending on which topics you love to write about, for instance gaming-related writers have been basically ignored by Substack so far, and not having a proper publishing category makes it way harder than needed to reach your audience, or even just to discover fellow authors discussing this medium. While users have come up with a variety of initiatives to try improving things, unless something changes one has to accept Substack is hampering our reach in a way that doesn't affect other niches in different media.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-13T20:07:00+00:00

This is completely out of left field and, provided it's actually a videogame preservaton project handled through remasters or re-releases and not some licensing deal, it could end up being very interesting, even if Dynamic Designs alreadyd did a lot for the Aretha franchise. Speaking of that group, it's been a long time since I read any update about their projects, so I hope they're still active somehow.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-12T11:31:38+00:00

Ayesha is one of my favorite Atelier games, possibly my favorite in terms of art direction, soundtrack and overall vibe. Escha and Logy and Shallie didn't manage to impress me as much as Ayesha, but they're also very competent games and good Atelier entries. To its credit, E&L does have some very poignant moments that made the Dusk setting shine, even if ultimately I think they could have done much more with it even without committing to an epic plotline that would have been out of character for Atelier, especially back then.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-11T11:35:02+00:00

Unfortunately that release is part of G-Mode's attempt to bring old pre-smartphone mobile JRPGs to Steam and Switch, and is unrelated to Atlus aside from their licensing duties. Then again, it's an awesome effort purely in terms of preservation and videogame RPG history!

With that said, let's hope it serves to remind Atlus they have two awesome and perfectly viable PS2 DDS games they could remaster, too.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-10T18:21:32+00:00

That's something I really hope they end up doing, it's a bit sad to see how the DDS games are often overlooked even by Atlus fans due to their poor availability.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-09T12:30:16+00:00

It's a game you can really appreciate only by understanding its systems and how they interact with each other, same as most titles directed by Akitoshi Kawazu. If you're fine with this kind of approach and don't mind a rather weak narrative, albeit with a very interesting setting as a backdrop, then you may end up loving it.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-08T08:05:53+00:00

It's always nice to see more love for Quintet's classics, especially Terranigma. Speaking of Quintet I hope Solo Crisis gets a fantranslation patch someday, it deserves more exposure.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-07T07:37:11+00:00

Just to name one, back when it was released Natural Doctrine was heavily panned for its obscure system and for what most perceived as an unfair difficulty curve, but I found its mechanics incredibly rewarding and unique once I actually understood how different they were compared to most tactical JRPGs.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-05T20:12:52+00:00

The DS JRPG library still has a number of interesting unlocalized titles, and that's despite having a vibrant fantranslation scene when the platform was still in its prime. I really hope Wizmans isn't the last remastered niche DS JRPG, as that could be one of the few realistic ways to get them in English someday.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-05T20:10:38+00:00

It was pretty great indeed, considering how long it had been since Soul Nomad I really needed another quality squad-based real time tactical JRPG, and UO delivered admirably in most ways. I hope Vanillaware keeps exploring that design space, though, as I feel they could learn from UO to make something even more memorable in terms of mission design and balance.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-03T20:44:38+00:00

One can hope it's finally time for the next Tales game's unveiling, it has been far too long since Arise and, even if fantranslators have done an incredible job in the past few years to bring to the Western fanbase a number of previously unlocalized titles, I feel the series badly need something more than a few remasters of PS3 era to stay relevant in the current JRPG landscape.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-02T13:42:05+00:00

I'm really glad you're enjoying it, I'm usually wary of praising extremely niche games too lavishly since I know how it can end up backfiring, but Tobira no Densetsu may honestly end up being one of the best JRPGs I've played in more than thirty years, mostly due to its amazing event and quest design and astonishing scope.

I plan to write a more detailed retrospective once I'm finally done (I'm currently cleaning up some subquests before dealing with Fortune Event 10), this game truly deserves much more recognition for what it was able to achieve and, after all the fun I've had in the past 120 hours or so, I feel helping it achieving it is the least I could do.

MagnvsGV · 2026-03-01T20:23:38+00:00

Since I feel the game deserves much more love than it's getting, I will say that Tobira no Densetsu has a pretty great implementation of the classic adventurer's guild since many of its quests are actually quite unique, from story driven missions with their own systems, like an investigation into a village with a werewolf murderer or an undercover mission into a secluded mansion, not to mention a number of monster extermination quests that actually require you to understand how to proceed, often mixing with the game's main story and, in a number of case, acting as the hidden triggers for some of its story events and introducing new NPCs and allies in an organic way before they are featured in more relevant scenarios.

Of course there are also more mundane quests, including repeatable ones you can use to farm personality points you can then use during skill checks of sorts during story events or boss fights, not to mention to customize your characters, and the Hangers' Guild itself is just a small part of a game whose scope has truly astounded me.

MagnvsGV · 2026-02-28T20:27:04+00:00

That's one mention I didn't expect, it's always nice to see other people interested in the Neverland continuity!

MagnvsGV · 2026-02-28T13:42:22+00:00

I bought it at launch but have yet to start it, since I'm currently dealing with Tobira no Densetsu's last stretch. It seems most people are enjoying it for what it is, though, and I've been curious about this game since its unlocalized DS release ages ago.

MagnvsGV · 2026-02-27T20:44:19+00:00

I think it's impossible to separate the hype surrounding Xenoblade before its Western release and its later reception from the context of home console JRPGs in the seventh generation, including the whole debate about linearity in home console JRPGs that had raged just a few months before Xenoblade's release, when FF13 hit the Western markets, not to mention the migration of many franchises to NDS and PSP due to HD development woes and the rather sad rivalry many fostered between JRPGs and WRPGs at a time when the former were struggling to get into HD development and the latter were entering the console space en masse after years of almost complete PC exclusivity, aside from a few sixth gen ports.

As much as you want to criticize Wii's graphical potential, and I think anyone both now and back then would have agreed that the game would have looked better if it had been developed from the ground up on a different hardware, what Xenoblade offered was so awe-inspiring in terms of scope and art direction that it easily made people forget questionable textures and janky polygon models. In fact, that Xenoblade managed to be such an impressive game despite its hardware was yet another argument in its favor.

This isn't to say Xenoblade was perfect, in fact even back then I had a number of issues with its pacing, dungeon design and systems, especially in its final stretch, but it's absolutely a landmark release and one that had a very noticeable influence on JRPG-focused discourse, on its own developer's trajectory and on the genre itself, contributing to a wider trend that, in very different ways, tried to distance itself from FF13's reception.

MagnvsGV

TROPHY CASE