Happy 32nd anniversary to the Seiken Densetsu series!

A set of Mana Series tracks will release as DLC for Theatrhythm Final Bar Line. Fun fact, this game was made by indies zero who just happen to be the same company behind Legend of Mana Card Duel.

The @ManaGame Pack Vol.1 launches for Theatrhythm Final Bar Line on June 28th with songs from Final Fantasy Adventure and Trials of Mana:

– Nuclear Fusion
– Battle 2
– In Search of the Sword of Mana
– Swivel
– Powell
– Meridian Child
– Sacrifice Part Three pic.twitter.com/QxyEBg5EoJ

— FINAL FANTASY (@FinalFantasy) June 26, 2023

In other news, there will also be a special exhibit of the late Hiroo Isono‘s artwork in Japan. Five of the original arts for the Mana Series will be shown off, awesome! That should be two artworks from Secret of Mana (characters before the tree and the night time image), two artworks from Trials of Mana (characters on the road to the tree and the world map), and one from Dawn of Mana (character before the tree). If you are wondering why the Children of Mana artwork is not included, that is because it was actually done by Nao Ikeda, who masterfully imitated the stipple style art.

#聖剣伝説2 や #聖剣伝説4 のパッケージビジュアルなどをご担当された磯野宏夫氏の企画展『磯野宏夫展　－生命(いのち)輝く森－』が7月1日(土)～8月20日(日)の期間、稲沢市荻須記念美術館にて開催されます。
シリーズの原画5点も展示されますので、この機会に是非お立ち寄りください！#聖剣伝説 pic.twitter.com/R7ouTIoMbG

— 聖剣伝説 -公式- (@Seiken_PR) June 28, 2023

Oh no! Sandra left a secret message, and we have to decode it to figure out what is going on!

Luckily, Li’l Cactus here has the key!

Hey, that’s not a key! That’s the silver pendant from the World of Mana campaign that Children of Mana and Dawn of Mana released under. 
The Mana Sword looks absolutely tarnished, though! It practically turned back into the Rusty Sword at this point.
Take better care of your stuff, Li’l Cactus!

Oh, you have a nice clean one too. That’s cool I guess.
But what does this have to do with Sandra’s note?

Oh, I see! According to the Art of Mana book, the Mana Sword is inscribed with text in the Fa’Diel language. It apparently says “There is love in Mana. There is Mana in love.” very interesting!
Let us take a closer look at that lettering.

Looks like it actually says “Love is in Mana, Mana is in Love”!
We can clearly see the letters A, I, and N repeated a few times within half the phrase. From there, we can make a few assumptions and the letters seem to fall into place nicely.
Say, I wonder if the letters match anything in Sandra’s letter?

We’re getting somewhere! Using what Boyd said, we know she was talking about the Flame of Hope and she must have signed her name, Sandra. Things start to fall into place again!

We’ve got it! How cool is it that they are still using that alphabet over 15 years later?
Keep your eyes open for more text in the anime (Li’l Cactus appears to be using it in the first episode, and Reverend Nouvelle’s book has a lot)!

Here are all the letters we know so far, for your convenience!

And here is Sandra’s note rewritten, just for good measure. Special thanks to Sevon for lending a steady hand for the writing in this post, my chickenscratch would have left us all wondering what was going on.

EDIT:

Mataxia over on The Mana Series Discord reminded me that this was covered in one of the older books! I probably saw this a long time ago, but forgot about it as I don’t have the book on hand anymore. Thanks Mataxia for the image!

Long time Seikens forum member, Kimiko, had a lot of luck figuring out Li’l Cactus’s diary from episode 1 in the comments below!

TODAY I HEARD A
STORY ABOUT TWO
LITTLE SORCERERS
TRYING TO BECOME
THE RULERS OF

Kimiko also found that Nouvelle’s book title appears to just be part of the common “Lorem Ipsum” filler text. I kind of expected that, but it’s good to have confirmation! Thanks Kimiko!

We’ve got some nice new images up in the Dawn of Mana Gallery!

You can check out new Character Art, Monster Art, and Scenery Art.

There are a lot of fun images in here, like Needlebirds sleeping by poking their beaks into the ground, weapons for a few of the main characters, and some beautiful images of landscapes.

I found all these images in a zip file on an old hard drive, I think they’re dated to around 2012 or so. I have no idea where they came from, but it seems they may have been ripped directly from the game.

Sheexy tipped me off on this one after finding an auction on Yahoo.co.jp, and after a quick search, it turns out that an official album is on the way from the hands of Kenji Ito.

Re:Birth/聖剣伝説 伊藤賢治アレンジアルバム, will be hitting stores on October the 19th to celebrate 20 years of Seiken Densetsu, and will consist of a series of tracks originally composed by Kenji Ito, arranged by… Kenji Ito. It will apparently cover a variety of styles, and although the full track list has not been released yet, it will include the following:

Rising Sun (No, really, ya think?)
Mana’s Mission (SD1)
In Search of the Holy Sword (SD1)
Final Battle (SD1)
The Fool’s Dance (SD4)
The Endless Dream (SD4)

It will be available for the price of 2,500 yen from Amazon.co.jp and The Square Enix e-Store. A sample is available here of the track that includes, are we at all surprised, Rising Sun.

The CD will also be included in the Box Set due to hit stores around the same time for 21,000 yen.

It seems that I am on fire today. Dawn of Mana is brought back online too. I think I should take a break for today. Adding pages and go through them is tedious.

My updating streak isn’t completely dead, it’s just on life support at the moment.

I went ahead and added two new sections to the Merchandise Section.
Now you can see all the Dawn of Mana and general World of Mana merchandise that is out there for you to collect.

All that is left is for me to add in Sword of Mana and Legend of Mana, which is going to be a lot of fun because those two games have the most merchandise associated with them. Especially LoM, that update is gonna take a good month by itself to complete.

Pictures of the 8 elemental spirits from Dawn of Mana, as seen in game, have been added to our Gallery, thanks to their contribution by Anise on the boards. Thanks once again.

I decided to do something a little different for today’s Mana Music Monday update.
Here for your enjoyment is the staff roll for Dawn of Mana. Don’t worry if you haven’t played the game yet, there aren’t any spoilers in the video just awesome visuals and music.

The two tracks featured here are “The Endless Dream” and “A Legend Forever” by Kenji Ito. These are two of my favorite tracks from the series. “A Legend Forever” dates back to the good old days of Final Fantasy Adventure. “The Endless Dream” stems from “Tale of the Distant Sun” from Children of Mana. It reminds me of a mix between “Rising Sun” and “A Legend Forever” and the vocals harken back to the arranged version of “Mission of Mana” from the Seiken Densetsu – Let Thoughts Ride on Knowledge album.

Anyways, just sit back and enjoy the fun visuals while following the elementals around.
Yarn and felt never looked so awesome.

[MEDIA=68]

If you missed all the names you can check them out on the Dawn of Mana Staff Roll page that Kassidy made a while back.

Head over to the Dawn of Mana Soundtrack Page and you’ll find that I’ve gone through and added where each of the tracks can be found in the game.

Right now it is a little bit rough, so I’ll go back and fix a few things I am sure. There are just so many tracks in this game!

Most of the cutscene music tracks are giving me trouble because I watched them the first time I played through, and I haven’t been watching them since then because the story is just too painful to put up with again.
At least the gameplay is fun.

Ever wanted to know who the Kenji Ito’s Piano Tuner from Yamaha was while he was contributing to the Dawn of Mana soundtrack? Yes, even Masanori Hanaoka is listed in the Dawn of Mana Staff Roll, which is now available here at Seikens.

Also, the Secret of Mana Staff Roll has been updated with the German version staff.