Lunar: Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari

The Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari Manga:

Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari (Vheen Airship Story or Tales of the Vheen Airship, "Vheen" being the Japanese version of "Vane") is a manga compilation of three stories about Ghaleon's past written and drawn by the very talented Akari Funato. I'd been trying to get this book for the longest time and highly recommend that you pick up a copy as well - Funato's art is beautiful.
Rehauled December 31, 2009, with the final versions of all three stories. Yeah, I know.

There are three stories all together:

• Kioku Suru Fuukei (The Scenery I Recall)
  A short, ten-page account of how Ghaleon first met Dyne/Dain. (Dain's a young kid - about 6-8 years old - and Ghaleon looks to be in his late teens-early twenties but is actually...well, considerably older than he looks, since he ages much more slowly than normal folk. He's about 100-110 here - if you follow the manga's chronology, he'd be 147 in TSS or 152 in SSS, depending on which continuity you'd like to use. The translation delivers the plot well enough, but the art and character expressions really give the story its nuance (and humor). We even get to see a little KungFu!Ghaleon here... (All right, it's more like Judo!Ghaleon - but, in any case, he and fruit-flinging, chicken-stealing young Dain are great.)

• Tamashii no Kokuhaku (Confession of the Soul)
  Dain - now grown to his late teens-early twenties - and Ghaleon - aged little physically - run across an airship (still running) trapped in a box canyon which Ghaleon identifies as belonging to the city of Vheen (he should know - he helped to build it, as described in Vheen Hikuusen story three). The pair teleport to Vheen to notify the guildmistress, only to find her gone - with only her deputy, the young Remilia Ausa (Lemia Ausa in the English games) available to help - and she seems recalcitrant to say just exactly is going on with the airship... (I must say at this junction that the young Ghaleon-Dain-Remilia trio is my favorite set of Lunar charas thus far (tied with the "Kokuhaku Suru Kioku" folks and the Strolling School cast, actually) - they have great chemistry, and they're much more likable and fleshed out than many of the more childish folk that inhabit other Lunar stories. I'd love to see more stories featuring them.)
  (Another side note: does anyone else think that this manga provides good evidence to at least suspect Dain of being Mia's father? I've always wondered about that myself - Dain (especially young Dain here) and Mia do bear a resemblance to each other, and Dain and Remilia seem poised to strike up something at the end of this story (and I don't need to say that it's obvious Dain's quite taken with her throughout the manga). Of course, if this were true, one would think it would figure in as a major plot point in Silver Star Story, but...ah, well.)

• Kokuhaku Suru Kioku (The Memories I Confess)
  Ghaleon is seventeen, and his older brother, Zain, has just died. Zain's great ambition was to construct a magic-powered airship in which to soar the skies and follow the birds, but he perished before he could complete it. Ghaleon decides to complete the ship without understanding exactly why he feels compelled to do so - he didn't have a good relationship with his brother and felt that Zain forsook him in favor of his dreams of birds and flight. Definitely the most solemn of the three stories, and the one most reliant on Funato's powerful imagery to relate its tale. (Note: except for Ghaleon, all of "Kokuhaku Suru Kioku"'s characters are original; I've thus created a li'l character guide to introduce the charas and give the reader who doesn't have the Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari manga itself an idea of what they look like. Translation: pics included.)

• Kei Shigema's Notes on Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari
  Kei Shigema, the man behind Lunar and Official Commentator for Every Damn Lunar Book Out Thereｩ, gives his thoughts on Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari, which, to be frank, aren't very deep - he likes many of the ideas Akari Funato brought to the series (he calls the tankoubon's stories "extra chapters" to the Lunar games and seems to consider them canonical), but at the same time rants on and on about how hard the gal was to work with and the rewrites he had to do (you can kinda see where Shigema's values and material was stuck in Funato's stories - for example, there's a bit of Lunar-esque moralizing at the end of the third story that seems tacked on and incongruous with Vheen Hikuusen's overall subtle, quiet approach to storytelling. Personally, I'm with Funato on this one, as she seems to have a better story sense of what's best in the material she's given to work with - anyone who thinks that the most intriguing aspect of the Lunar series and all the relationships within is Xenobia's love for Ghaleon (as Shigema states in the Newtype SSS production book) deserves a conk on the head to get his values straight).

• SSS Newtype 100% Artbook Interview with Akari Funato

  This quite short and not very informative interview has made me more determined than ever to translate Funato's own Vheen Hikuusen notes. Good grief, was the interviewer even interested in this woman's works or ideas at all?

• Akari Funato's (Formerly) Online Notes on "Tamashii no Kokuhaku" (and "Kioku Suru Fuukei")

  Translation of Akari Funato's own notes on the first two Vheen Hikuusen stories from the Himawari Lamp website (unfortunately, the corresponding pages've been taken down...). The mangaka herself talks about (and shows) what was cut from "Tamashii"'s original run in Shounen Ace magazine, her ideas about the magic race, how the plots of both stories originated, and a neat li'l extra note about the identity of one of "Fuukei"'s characters.

• Akari Funato's (Formerly) Online Notes on "Kokuhaku Suru Kioku"

  The other half of Funato-sensei's notes. Interesting notes about pre-production and magazine-to-tankoubon changes and a neat li'l "character relationship chart".

• Notes on Akari Funato's Production Sketches for "Kokuhaku Suru Kioku"

  Notes included with the "Kokuhaku Suru Kioku" production sketches Funato released in the Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari doujinshi (not the manga; this is a thin sketch doujin with a pale green cover) and her "LUNAR, Etc." .pdf. Also includes a tiny bit about her dougen for Mia's SSS introduction scene and her work on the illustrations for the EB novels.