Kat (NeroNero)

Review Details

The client provided a page by page script with general poses and a basic flow between them as well as all the dialog. The artist handled panel layout, flow, and camera direction with some minor feedback from client.

Note: I’ll be using he/his interchangeably with NeroNero

General Impressions

Gravity Daze originated as an original video game on PS Vita and after another game, a short manga, and an original animation, this IP has seen some really cool stories across different media. So it’s only natural that the next logical step is to dive into doujin, and NeroNero was the perfect artist to bring this idea to life.

Getting started, it’s clear to see that NeroNero has brought a clean and beautiful art style to this story with a remarkable attention to detail. The first page alone gives a clear indication of how strong his background and character art can be [Ex. 01]. The detail of the environment immediately brings you into the world and gives you a clear picture of where the story takes place. For those already familiar with the games, this first page really feels like it’s from an official manga and you can immediately recognize Kat’s home as well as her iconic look as the heroine is teased before her full reveal the following page.

As you do continue through the pages, the environment art remains pretty strong, but as one would expect with this kind of story, the focus does need to turn elsewhere. You begin to see the nuances of the character art as you keep reading as each page brings our characters to life with new poses and expressions that feel exciting and overall, really well rendered. I’ll touch more on the characters in the next section but, in general, they were drawn cleanly and consistently with no major fluctuations in body shape or size between pages [Ex. 02]. However, sometimes the characters and backgrounds could feel a little conflicted with some panels being a little too busy.

Lastly, before getting into more detail, I found that NeroNero did a fantastic job interpreting the script with his decisions on panel layout, poses, and camera all being well made. This combined with each sketch having been clean and detailed, I didn’t have to make any major suggestions to any of the pages before finalizing. I think his direction really helped bring out the best in the script.

Characters

The stars of this story are Kat and Syd, and it’s great to see both of them well rendered and accurate to their original designs. NeroNero’s own style does show through, mostly through their facial expressions, and it’s great to see his take on the characters as their shenanigans start to heat up.

Looking at Kat’s design, it’s great to see NeroNero handle her outfit so well. The gold detailing makes things a little more complicated and I was impressed to see it done so well [Ex. 03]. His use of shading to give the gold a more metallic texture compared to the fabric or her skin really adds detail and sells the unique design. And while the clothing doesn’t stick around too long, the gold details on Kat’s legs and arms don’t get removed and continue to give Kat’s character more visual flair than if she were just completely naked.

Beyond just her outfit, Kat’s design remains quite accurate to the original with her skin tone and hair faithfully replicated creating good contrast. Her slim and modest figure is represented well with, generally, slightly larger thighs that point towards her proclivity to kick rather than punch during combat. And lastly, her face and expressions are matched pretty well, with only some slightly more stylized expressions pushing through, especially in the beginning.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I found the consistency to be great with Kat’s character art being well drawn in each of her various positions. However, there are also a few times where things get a little inconsistent. On page 6, for example, we see a little strangeness in the length of Kat’s fingers as well as the proportions of her vagina compared to the rest of her body [Ex. 04]. These little things are few and far between though, and the overall quality remains high.

In a similar vein, Syd’s design remains fairly consistent and is also quite accurate to the source material. Those with a discerning eye may say that his design follows that of the second game moreso than the first, and you would be right. The second game’s Syd was used as reference for the design and that comes through quite well in the story. Like Kat, his skin tone and hair are matched to the original and while his outfit isn’t as complicated, it’s still well rendered and detailed.

Both of the characters share a good number of impressive facial expressions that range the gamut from concern to mischievous to goofy to horny. Each expression is well drawn they mostly never feel stale or too similar between pages, with perhaps a few facial expressions only being similar towards the end of the story when the sexual action picks up more.

One last thing I want to mention is I found that NeroNero made an interesting choice when it came to the characters' shading. While the clothing makes use of shading to represent shadows, the characters themselves rarely seem to cast shadows with clear shading only seen in a few cases. [Ex. 05, 06]. The skin textures remains relatively flat despite clothing being shaded throughout the story, with only a few lines or hatching to show some definition. It doesn’t detract much from the final result and at first I didn’t really notice. However, something felt a little off about the depth of the characters and it took me a moment to realize that the shadows from the clothing seem to just disappear they reach the skin.

Flow & Camera

The overall flow of this doujin feels good with the action perhaps starting a little fast. The problems with story pacing however, fall on me, the script writer, for trying to fit things into 15 pages. Even so, I think NeroNero was able to make it feel better paced than how it looked on paper. His division of page space and how he directs the characters in the panels help make the content flow fairly well with only some minor continuity problems sneaking through.

Continuing with flow, there’s a couple good uses of closeup panels to follow continuing action [Ex. 07] or to give cutouts of the characters' expressions for more detail. This gives the reader some breathing space and helps to separate larger jumps in position or camera angle. We do see more wide and medium shots as the sexual action picks up which results in less use of cutouts for expressions or closeups, but overall I find this style to work. The continued wide shots keep the characters’ positions clear and helps accentuate the dynamic poses NeroNero has beautifully drawn with full body shots always being appreciated as a personal preference.

As mentioned, the camera is generally positioned slightly farther from the characters for medium/wide shots and it does a great job at capturing the action on screen. But, we do get some dynamic shots sprinkled in that show NeroNero’s ability to draw the body at pretty cool angles that rely on a lot of foreshortening and different use of perspective. Page 11 has a great example of this with the camera placed at Kat's head looking down along her body [Ex. 08]. I think NeroNero did a good job keeping the body proportions feeling natural despite the difficulty of this angle.

With this being a Gravity Rush doujin, there were also a few panels that needed some more complicated scene composing as, naturally, Kat’s gravity powers would come into play. A couple pages of the story take place as the characters float up before descending back down to the bed. NeroNero was able to handle these pages fairly well, but as I mentioned in the beginning this is also where a couple panels can be a bit too busy. While the characters are floating, the background art can be a little disproportionate to where the characters are in the room, which make the panel feel a little more confusing [Ex. 09]. This combined with somewhat detailed style of background art can make the characters’ silhouettes harder to discern which, in turn, makes the eye not sure where to focus. Once the characters are on the bed though, things are a lot better as the plain, white bed gives the characters’ lines a less complicated background to fight against and makes things feel a lot cleaner.

Sexual Content

With a total of 15 pages, this story has about three pages of foreplay and eight pages of sexual content. The foreplay is mostly just fellatio [Ex. 07] sandwiched between some hand-job panels. With a focus on mainly one kind of foreplay even the somewhat fast pacing doesn’t feel too egregious, but in the end there’s only male foreplay before moving on to the insertion scene.

The sexual content kicks off with a standing insertion and things move pretty fast from there. The very next page, gravity powers kick off and the characters start floating up. This makes the standing position move to cowgirl, then back to missionary before descending back down to the bed and moving into a side position. This is all to say, there’s some variety of positions here, but with a clear focus on missionary as the story reaches a climax in that position.

As mentioned earlier, the expressions throughout the story are all fantastic and don’t feel too repetitive with just some final pages being a little similar. They do a great job showing both the intensity and sensual nature of the story and really brings everything together. As more of a personal preference, I appreciate that NeroNero didn’t get too exaggerated in the sexual scenes and kept the expressions sensual and intense without going overboard.

I also want to call out the quality of some of the panels, with NeroNero nailing the pose, expression, and kinetic energy of the characters. The side position on page 11 [Ex. 10] is a great example of everything coming together with Kat’s expression, pose, and energy all feeling synergistic and the little details such as Kat's hair falling over her face are well thought out and show good compositional choices.

Additionally, the held missionary position on page 13 [Ex. 11] gives another great example of the kinetic energy that NeroNero can convey and it adds a sense of excitement, which is well utilized with all the panels on that page as they build towards the climax on the following page. And speaking of the climax, the story hits its peak on page 14 with a beautifully rendered, full page image with a top-down view capturing the scene while some smaller side panels give closeups.

Finally, the last page of the story does have a little post-coital content with a pull-out panel and a few more panels to wrap up the story

Final Thoughts

I believe that NeroNero did a fantastic job translating a simple script into an incredible doujin. His clean art, great eye for detail with character design, and high quality background art all make for a complete experience. There are a few places that where the backgrounds and characters clashed, and the character vs. clothes shading was a little strange, but It still felt premium, and despite those few awkward panels the overall quality remained high. I think there's a lot of potential still untapped and I look forward to any more of his work.