Akihiro Kimura is hardly a bad artist. His style leans toward the big eyes and fluffed hairspikes that many associate with typical 1990s anime, but he’s solid and varied in his subjects. He’s drawn Dirty Pair tributes, Darkstalkers collages, Cyborg 009 splashes, and manga like Psycho Trader Chinami and a Super Robot Wars spin-off. Before all of that, however, Kimura provided character designs, cover art, and various design work for Right Stuff games. You’ll see his touch in Alshark, Fang of Alnam, Fiend Hunter, and the perpetually underappreciated Emerald Dragon.
Above is Kimura’s cover for Fang of Alnam, a talky RPG for the PC Engine, and I think it brings a nice touch to the typical cluster of fantasy heroes. Even if it put Toei’s red hair against Kenbu’s reddish outfit, Kimura's group is a notch above the usual RPG art of the PC Engine era.
Unfortunately, Kimura and Right Stuff fell victim to an airbrushing malady. And it happened at the worst time for the company. Like far too many prolific developers of the early 1990s, Right Stuff struggled to adapt to the PlayStation days. Emerald Dragon, their biggest success, was apparently off-limits for sequels or remakes, so Right Stuff went with Fang of Alnam. The original RPG became a visual novel on the PlayStation, and a sequel called Wing of Alnam followed in 1997. The title sounds better as Wings of Alnam, but Wing is what the spine says and Wing is what I gotta use. Them's the rules.
Wing of Alnam went darker all around. Its world is a bleak wasteland still reeling from a disaster 50,000 years distant, and all of the characters are polished and bronzed and shaded heavily. This pervades the box art, where the cast becomes a hideous jumble of pointy hair and pointless belt buckles and ugly faces and glowing, glinting confusion.
And what’s on the back of the game’s double-sized case?
Why, it’s a nice big shot of protagonist Kusumida…sprouting fangs and sobbing. This is likely tied to the totem animals that the characters possessed in Fang of Alnam, but it’s a really strange way to sell an RPG, or a “Dramatic Anime RPG,” as the text pitches it. That means big goopy tears and gaping bestial maws!
Right Stuff wouldn’t get another chance. Wing of Alnam rapidly vanished into the flood of RPGs released in the wake of Final Fantasy VII, and Right Stuff went bankrupt in 1999. Kimura and many of his fellow staffers (including composer Tenpei Sato) moved on to other projects, but no Right Stuff games would emerge elsewhere. One can’t blame that on Wing of Alnam’s cover, but…eh, it sure didn’t help.
Next: Lucky Wonder Boy.
