Popular video games are no stranger to having their stories shoehorned into mediocre film adaptations (and vice versa), or their characters being plastered onto posters and embarrassing t-shirts and then molded into action figures.  Video games, like any other entertainment industry, is a business industry after all. 

Capcom’s critically acclaimed Okami, however, like the source material it was drawn from, doesn’t fit quite so easily into the standard mass marketing outlets, making it particularly tough for the company to express to the average consumer exactly what it is that makes it so special.  But it seems that Capcom has come up with a rather clever, as well as appropriate, channel for sharing the game’s finer features with a wider audience:

A picture book.

The art and story is being penned by manga artist Awairo, who is also responsible for the Final Fantasy XI comic series, FFXI Inori no Kaze (Wind Prayer), currently running in the Enterbrain published, Comic Vana’Tsu (a play on words between FFXI world, Vana’diel, and the company’s popular weekly game enthusiast publication, Famitsu).

The book, Okami Emonogatari: Maigo Sagasi to Omatsuri Sawagi (Okami Picture Story: Search for the Lost Child and the Festival Commotion), is a 36 page adventure described as a “heartful short story,” which stars the game’s characters, Amaterasu, Issun, Ushiwaka, and others as they search for Sazanka’s little sister, Tsubaki.

Your PlayStation 2 might not be working by the time you’ve got little tikes on your knee, resulting in a young life void of experiencing a truly fine creation.  A book on the other hand, providing that you can avoid natural disaster or incompetent moving companies, should last for life.  Sounds like a good investment to me.

It’s just too bad that, as of now, the product is only being published in Japanese.  Maybe when the DS game releases, however . . .   

The book is scheduled to release in Japan on December 21st for 893 JPY (about $10 US).