#if they're going to milk hakuouki till end of days at least have the standard art

[nollatooru]

I usually don't want to diss the new(er) Hakuouki art, especially since it's been like 10 years since Kazuki Yone hasn't been the main artist. For the appreciation see this stunning visual for the new OVA Kazuki Yone has done:

(Just wanted to put it here instead of between the pictures I’m actually talking about. And this is super pretty)

There have been pretty pictures for Hakuouki even after the original artist left, but however year by year there just seems to be more and more.. plasticy, odd pics too. I'm not a fan of that but usually I don't particularly have a problem with it either. But this picture for the new Hakuouki OVA ending theme, it just looks.. rushed.

It kinda bothered me the first time I saw it but lately it's been a lot on the OVA songs on youtube and I have had to see it much more, and now it really bothers me. I don't want to blame the artists in any way, and given that this was for the OVA and not for a new game it's understandable that the quality isn't on the same standard as for the game CGs, but there's just so much wrong going on. The guys look really bad copies of their actual appearance (see the beautiful visual Kazuki Yone did, you can really see it on Harada and Okita).

And it has some really rookie mistakes like on the guys' heads and Hijikata's asymmetric jaw. I mean I'm not a professional artist but minus the coloring I'd say this was fan art. So I ended up playing around with older CGs, just kinda trying to see what the picture could have looked like if it had the effort and time it needed(and the original artist).

This is what I ended up with, I had to change Okita’s whole hair because I couldn’t help but feel like he looked like Iba if I didn’t. Now I’m not saying I “fixed” the ending theme cover, nor I’m claiming this is somehow better. I just did this for fun, to see how cool the pic could have been. And I'm mildly scoffing at the decreasing quality on Hakuouki's offical art.