Vanillaware is a game developer founded in 2002 by artist George Kamitani, who previously worked at Capcom and Atlus. The company was established as Puraguru until 2004, when it rebranded as Vanillaware.
Vanillaware's games are renowned for their extremely detailed 2D artwork. The company frequently works together with Basiscape for the soundtracks — in fact, thus far, every single released OST for a Vanillaware game has been effectively a vehicle for the newer artists of Basiscape.
Games by Vanillaware:
- Princess Crown (while part of Atlus)
- Fantasy Earth: The Ring of Dominion (handed over to Multiterm before release)
- GrimGrimoire
- Odin Sphere
- Kumatanchi
- Muramasa: The Demon Blade
- Grand Knights History
- Dragon's Crown
- 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
- Unicorn Overlord
Vanillaware and George Kamitani use the following tropes:
- Author Appeal: George Kamitani's art style tends to always encompass the following:
- There are musclebound characters of both genders, with the women being as beautiful as they are muscular. This also usually includes said characters having an emphasis on their legs and butts as opposed to any other area. Examples include Gwendolyn, Raijin, the Amazon and Amalia.
- Some of the more powerful characters (generally magic-oriented) tend to be well-endowed. Examples include Velvet, Queen Elfaria, Odettenote , Kongiku and almost all the female mooks in Muramasa, and the Sorceress.
- Any female monsters will almost always be attractive, along with any of the other Author Appeal tropes listed here. Examples include Kongiku and Yuzuhura, who are kitsune, the mermaids and snow women from the same game, and the harpies and vampires in Dragon's Crown.
- There's as much detail put into food as there is everything else. It's recommended not to be particularly hungry when playing a game that has a lot of food focus, such as Muramasa: The Demon Blade.
- In order to emphasize strength in the male characters, they tend to be drawn with huge meaty torsos placed atop small legs. Odin, the adult Oni enemies, the Fighter and the Dwarf, Morard, Gladiators and Feathershields? All examples of beefy guys.
- Creator-Driven Successor: Princess Crown —> Odin Sphere —> Muramasa. In fact, during development, the games were respectively referred to as Princess Crown 2 and Princess Crown 3. Dragon's Crown is instead a successor to Dungeons & Dragons: Tower Of Doom.
- Creator's Oddball: Vanillaware's catalog consists of action RPGs, tactical RPGs, real time strategies with RPG elements and...a game where you take care of anthropomorphic animal girls in a zoo.
- Food Porn: It's advised not to play the games headed by George Kamitani while hungry, as the food is always rendered in startling detail.
- Medieval European Fantasy: The setting for most of the games they've produced (for Muramasa, replace "European" with "Japanese"). 13 Sentinels marks the first time they've broken away from the "old era" fantasy setting to produce something that takes place in modern times, not counting Kumatanchi.
- Scenery Porn: To the point where many promotional images are the raw artwork for the backgrounds.
