I’ve managed to get my hands on some of the rarely-seen art used in the making of Project A-ko 3 and 4! While production art from the first two films was commonly seen in anime magazines and artbooks, it seems the later films didn’t get the same level of coverage. I personally had never seen any of the behind-the-scenes stuff for these movies before these sheets came into my possession.
I bought this from Japan (naturally) based on seeing about eight images. I waited a long time for shipping before I was able to actually see what all I had, over 10 agonizing weeks! Overall it was worth the wait. The mecha designs are exhaustive and it’s great to see all the details of the A-ko Robo and alien fleet, but there are a lot of character designs I would have expected to see that are not present like B-ko in her black dress or C-ko’s mother. So while it isn’t a complete collection, it’s a respectable start.
There was much more material for Final than Cinderella Rhapsody, so I did the scans and cleanup for that movie first, but the rest are coming. And while a lot of the A-ko 3 material is photocopied key frames, there are designs from the best part of the movie, the opening pool scene. Check out the gallery!
Cheers