There’s less than a week left in the year, so let’s end the year with love, memories, and joy! Not mine, but someone else’s. From the pages of CAP! magazine comes Love Love Capcom Characters!
Hideki Ishikawa draws some of his favorite Capcom faces. Naturally, there’s some Rockman love in there too! So snuggle up and get comfy, and we’ll warm our hearts this chilly winter with the power of love! Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!
From CAP! vol 6:
CFC LOVE LOVE CAPCOM CHARACTERS
Our tearful FINAL EDITION!!
So then, here we are with our very first edition of this special corner. As you probably guessed from the title, (but just in case you didn’t!) this corner is dedicated to gathering some of my absolute favorite characters! And by the way, this is our first feature and also our last. All right, let’s go, yeah!
Vector & Gantetsu
The Triple Pheromones (as I like to call them)
Extremely popular with me are the vixenish trio of Ele and Luca from Star Gladiator 2, along with Lilith from Vampire Savior. With Lilith, I fell in love at first sight. She’s an idol for the seamy side of Capcom for sure…
Ele, Luka & Lilith
When I think Rockman, this duo is at the top! Tron from “Rockman DASH” and Roll from “Rockman.” I can’t believe these two are at 40 and below on the Ranking! Is it too much to dream of seeing them in the top 10!?
Trom & Roll
Firstly, sorry about the overlap on the scans. I’d have preferred to do these pages as one large image, but the combined size of the pages was larger than the surface area of my scanner. You’ll have to use your imagination to put ’em together!
EDIT: Or you can use this. Many thanks once again to Dr. C!
You’ll notice most of the characters (Vector, Gantetsu, Ele, Luca) are from Star Gladiator 2 (Plasma Sword) which had released in 1998 around the same time as this issue of CAP! And then there’s Lilith, one of Hideki’s favorite pettanko.
And then representing Rockman we have Roll and… Trom? Tron, Trom, Toron, or by any other name, she’s enchanting as ever. You can admire these images without the overlay below thanks to page 142 of the Mega Man Official Complete Works, and page 202 from the Capcom Design Works book.
That Ranking Hideki was talking about was the character popularity poll by fan art, featured in every issue of CAP! At the time of this feature, Roll was tied at #40 with Dhalsim on the cumulative ranking and Tron wasn’t even in the Top 70. After the article it did manage to boost both girls’ popularity in the short term, with Roll taking 7th place in the next issue, but she was quickly overtaken by the usual top placers. By CAP!‘s final 15th issue, Roll managed to take the 28th spot in the overall Top 30. Other Rockman characters placed highly as well, with Kobuns at number 17, Rockman X at 16, Zero at number 9 and finally classic Rockman himself towards the top at number 3, below his rivals Ryu and Chun Li, with whom he fiercely competed for literally the entirety of the contest’s run.
Feeling warmer yet? Now go, and enjoy the final days of 2010!
Not to sound like a broken record, but–so that’s where that art of Roll came from.
For those who’d like to see it all at once, here’s a quick picture stitch.
I must say, that fellow Vector’s head looks an awful lot like the final form of Albert…
@RAD: One of these days, I’ll put up something you haven’t seen before!
@Doc: Awesome, thank you! And I never noticed before, but you’re totally right!
Now I see why Roll has tiny boobs in his art.