Looking for Pasca Kanonno’s face
As a Tales of fan, one of my favourite things about the series is its variety of art styles yet consistency within these art styles. Sorey’s cell-shaded face is faithful to Kōsuke Fujishima’s original art style, and each new official art depicting Sorey shows him having the exact same features that make him recognisable. The same goes for Velvet, for example, whose anime-style depictions highlight Mutsumi Inomata’s original design while always being consistent in terms of eye shape, colour palette and shading style, more or less.
There are some exceptions, of course, but most characters in the series have their own 2D cell-shaded anime-style face either in the game in which they first appeared or in spin-off & crossover games.
One exception to this rule is my favourite Tales of character, Pasca Kanonno, the (unfortunately non-playable) heroine of the PSP game Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology. Not only does her face change with each official artwork, some elements of her design also differ from one drawing to another.
The main reason her face keeps changing, in my opinion, is because she has never had the same face to begin with.
Her official artwork by Minoru Iwamoto looks nothing like the skit images used in TotW:RM in terms of art style and even in the colour palette used.
The skit images themselves don’t really make Pasca Kanonno look like a Tales of character: the eye shape and the iris/pupil shading are very basic and simplistic, making her look a little too generic and soulless for the series.
In the game’s opening, Kanonno once again changes art styles. She still looks like the official artwork, even if less bubbly-looking, but her haircut, eyeshape, colour palette and expressions look once again different from Kanonno’s skit faces in the game.
On the game cover, Kanonno looks once again different from her in-game skit faces and her depiction in the opening, and even though she looks very similar to the official artwork, she still looks like she was drawn by someone else.
None of these 2D depictions are bad, of course, but the lack of consistency from the beginning has given birth to a long tradition of constantly drawing Pasca Kanonno differently in official artworks.
Somebody somewhere probably noticed the discrepancy between Kanonno’s original skit image and her design, and that’s how we got extremely close to finally having a face for Pasca Kanonno in Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 3.
Pasca was redrawn and given specific features that distanced her from the two other Kanonnos while looking like both her official artwork and original skit face. She also finally looked like she belonged in a Tales of game, and had a Mystic Arte image that re-used the exact same colours and looked consistent in art style. The only problem here is the fact that her grey dress is supposed to stop just above the orange lace bow and not around her neck, but because of how close to perfection these artworks are, I never really minded. This should have been, in my opinion, how she should have been drawn from then on. Unfortunately, until very recently, no official artwork of Pasca Kanonno looked as close to the idea of a consistent, Tales-like official face as these did.
I divided official artworks of Pasca Kanonno in her original costume into three different categories:
Bad depictions of Pasca Kanonno usually involve weirdly/poorly-drawn eyes, an eyeshape/haircut that’s inconsistent compared to other official artworks, or a general art-style that doesn’t really radiate Tales of energy. They aren’t bad drawings per se, they just look more like fan art than official artworks.
“Okay” depictions of Pasca Kanonno are drawn in a style that is “Tales of”-like, and look like they could be used as a status image for the character, but there’s still something off. Either the eyes are too different from the TotW:RM3 official artworks, or the flower on her head is too small/big/lacks the orange center, or I’m just looking for whatever reason not to say they’re good enough. They were good enough while we didn’t have better artworks, but lack something now that we’ve got better depictions.
- THE ALMOST PERFECT ONES
Tales of the Rays introduced Pasca Kanonno’s first official dialogue/skit image, and even though it was extremely faithful to the character’s design, and resembled the TotW:RM3 skit face, there’s something about her eyes and haircut that make her seem different from the RM3 artworks. The same comments can be made about Pasca’s latest 5* Asteria depiction. They both could have had a tiny white space between the iris and the top line of the eye to make her look more like the original design, the cover artwork and the ToTW:RM3 skit face, and therefore more alive. The hair also seems a bit flat in comparison.
These ones I can’t really explain what exactly it is that makes them perfect but I’ll try. For the 6* Asteria picture, it’s almost everything. The pose, the colours, the eye shape, the shading, the face, the expression, and so on. It could totally replace the TotW:RM3 mystic arte image that’s slightly incorrect design-wise (even though I love it). If I were to add something, it would be a line below the eye to mirror the TotW:RM3 eye style but other than that, it is everything I’ve been waiting for for the past 12 years or so. This picture should replace the Rays awakened image, and should be used in all future spin-off/crossover games imo.
The other one used for 25th anniversary merchandise & promotional material could totally replace any Pasca Kanonno status image. It has everything good about the Tales of the Rays skit image while adding some elements present in the TotW:RM3 one such as the hair style that truly made her appear more unique.
So there have been attempts in the past few years (ever since Pasca was released in Rays) to give Pasca a signature face and staying consistent, and so far, I’m rather satisfied. Even though the Rays skit image is good enough as it is, I believe it should have stayed even more faithful to the TotW:RM3 skit face in terms of eye and hair shape. Slight changes could have made these skit images an official reference in terms of design rather than just the first close-to-perfection depiction of Pasca Kanonno since RM3.
I edited Kanonno’s skit images to look more faithful to the RM3 design and I’m honestly bummed at the missed opportunity. Seeing how they drew her bangs almost identically, it’s clear they had the RM3 image as reference, so it’s a shame they didn’t keep the hair and eye shape exactly the same as well. But then again, as she doesn’t have an official, consistent face design, it’s up to personal preference to determine what’s a good and what’s a bad design.
I feel bad for the people who prefer the RM1 skit image but I’m personally glad they distanced themselves from it after release and never went back.
Can’t wait to see more Pasca Kanonno official artworks in the future. Hoping for a TotW:RM trilogy remaster or remake but it’ll probably never happen, sadly.
