the Seikens Board

I'm hoping someone can help me out here (and I hope this is in the right forum). I'm interested in buying a couple of Legend of Mana books, either the Making of Mana artbook or the Ultimania guide book. Problem is, I'm not sure which to get or even what sort of content they have, since I've never been able to find scans of them online.

I'm mainly looking for artwork, especially bonus stuff that you can't find in the game itself such as concept art, the character design process, etc. High-quality images of the background environments of the various worlds would be great too. If the Making of Mana artbook just has the standard illustrations of all of the characters/items in the game (like many game artbooks tend to), then it isn't really what I'm looking for since I can just look at those in the game itself via the encyclopedias.

I've never had an Ultimania book but I guess they're sort of like glorified strategy guides? I'm not sure if that would have a lot of bonus artwork in it or not, but I'd also be interested in more information about the world itself, character backgrounds, and basically anything extra that might be cool to know. (For the record, no I don't know Japanese, but I've been studying it for a while and I plan to have at least a decent understanding of it in time.)

Yeah...hopefully some of you guys own these and can help me decide. I'd really appreciate it!

Sorry, our merchandise section is dead right now and I haven't finished up the content through to Legend of Mana yet, but I can help you out here I hope. I'll even attach some photos I took so you can see the difference in the books.

The Making of Mana book is the one to go to for art. It's got all the characters, items and artifacts in it, however there isn't any art of the monsters or produce (if I remember correctly). It's also got pictures of all the other merchandise that came out with the game as well as two chapters from two manga in the back (could be wrong about the number of chapters, I don't have the book on me) It's a pretty decent sized book too, one of the larger Mana books I have.

The Ultimania guide is a huge thick strategy guide with lots of words. It's got monster sprites in it and character art, but at a smaller scale. I'm also pretty sure only this guide has the produce in it. What is neat is that it has full color maps of all the levels, they're painfully small though. There are two very small sketches in this book that you could call concept art, they are really tiny though.

Unfortunately there isn't really a book that has art like you want (that I know of). If you want an LoM art book the Making of Mana book is as close as it gets.

Anyway I'll attach some photos from each book onto this post.

Hope this helps!

I agree with Sheexy. I have both The Making of Mana and the Ultimania book and I'd go for The Making of Mana for art. That's what I use when I'm doing any Legend of Mana artwork. The ultimania is nice, even though I understand nothing written, but if you're not picky, it can help a lot too in the art area. Just have a magnifying glass with you to see more details in a smaller size. C: