Looker illustrations
The Looker illustrations are a series of 7 one-panel humorous illustrations by Yoshitoshi ABe. They were drawn to accompany Chiaki J. Konaka's articles in Looker magazine. Two of them were never published in Looker magazine, but all seven of them can be seen in the original edition of Omnipresence. Most of them contain text by Abe (signed あ or アベ).
Looker was a monthly anime magazine launched in August 1998 with the October issue. It ceased publication after only 8 issues. [1]
List of Looker illustrations
| No. | Looker issue | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 98/09 | Lain Iwakura squats in front of a goldfish-scooping tank wearing a bear-print kimono. Text reads "Goldfish... scary." | |
| B | 98/11 | Title: "Birth! No-good experiments." | Lain sits at her old NAVI and sneezes, "Hekuchin!" The NAVI responds, "So your name is Hekuchin?"
A note from ABe reads: "If I had drawn something like this from the start... I shudder at the thought." |
| C | 98/12 | Alice Mizuki teases a cat with her scarf. Lain stands in the far background, peeking out from behind a utility pole.
Abe: "In the world of Lain, Alice represents the so-called "life as usual." I believe that in order to portray the unusual, Alice's relative normalcy was essential. In pictures, unaffected spontaneity is the hardest thing to portray. | |
| D | 99/01 | Title: "Lain's manners lecture"
Greyn peeks around a door. Alice holds a pointer, indicating a poster that reads, "Properly atozeki!" A note from ABe reads: "I heard that atozeki is the term in Kumamoto dialect for when you remember to close a door after opening it. Amazing. Do people in Kumamoto never shut their doors?" | |
| E | 99/05 | Lain in her bear suit with the hood down looks at the viewer and waves. Text reads "Thanks for everything -Abe" "See you later" | |
| F | Unpublished | Title: "This thing called fear"
Lain reaches for a roach motel with a pair of chopsticks. The roach motel reads "Serial Motel." The roaches are saying "Lain... Lain..." and one of them is saying, "my leg tore off." Lain is saying, "something's moving..." Text in the background says, "they're in there they're in there they're in there [etc]... in droves." (That last part is a pun because if you say iru iru enough times it will begin to sound like rui rui.) | |
| G | Unpublished | Alice is in the foreground looking at the viewer. In the background is Greyn peeking out from behind a UFO, saying "Alice~." Abe writes something similar to his note in C. |
