An extremely distracting horse forced Koei Tecmo to crop a game’s box art before release, artist says: ‘People’s eyes were drawn to the horse rather than the character’

For the professional artist, sacrifice is a constant companion. Their work—however beautiful—has to fit a client’s needs or a project’s scope. Concept art of an octopus boss might not make it in-game if it’s too expensive to animate. The sickest knight design you’ve ever seen might get tossed because the creative director decided to move in a more sci-fi direction.

Or, in the case of Japanese light novel illustrator and character designer Mel Kishida, the horses you draw might just be too mesmerizing.

Spotted by Automaton, Kishida—whose character design work has appeared throughout the Arland Atelier series—posted on X this week to share the full box art illustration he delivered for 2019’s Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland. It features the titular anime girl, Lulua, standing by a horse-drawn cart, with another character peering out of the cart as it’s being pulled down a country road.

It’s an image of idyllic fantasy, seemingly matching the Atelier brief (which I’m led to understand is a generally lighthearted affair about slice-of-life alchemy). But if you seek the game out on Steam, the Nintendo shop, and elsewhere, you’ll notice the illustration’s been heavily cropped in all its final listings and packaging. And according to Kishida, it’s all the horse’s fault.

“I was told the horse was cut out of the picture,” Kishida said via machine translation, “because people’s eyes were drawn to the horse rather than the character.”

Evidently, Atelier publisher Koei Tecmo thought Kishida’s horse-drawing talents were too potent—and I can’t say I disagree. That horse has a powerful aura. It’s possessed of a regal bearing, a stern and steady gaze, and what appear to be a set of sturdy fetlocks.

In short, that horse is a star. I don’t intend to insult Kishida’s character designs, but in a world that’s already bursting at the seams with anime girls, who could be blamed for thinking a cool horse is more compelling?

Unsurprisingly, X users have been thrilled by the notion of a draft animal upstaging the game’s actual star, doing their own counter-cropping to center the unjustly censored steed instead. Others found evidence to corroborate Kishida’s claim, managing to dig up surviving listings on Japanese online shops that were created using the prerelease prototype box art, still prominently featuring the entrancing equine.

As funny as this all is, it’s a little tragic to know Koei Tecmo made such a drastic miscalculation: As Umamusume taught us, you never have to choose between a horse and an anime girl. Simply make a horse that is an anime girl instead.