This past Saturday, Ryota Kawade, Eri Suzuki, and Young hosted the latest installment of the Fire Emblem Cipher Livestreams. The focus of this weekend’s livestream was the upcoming release of Series 8 which falls this week on March 17th.
The beginning of the livestream focused on some non-Cipher news that’s already been covered in depth in separate articles, including merchandise from the Faith & Recollection concert, and some new art for Fire Emblem Echoes. Otherwise, we got our first glimpses at some of the goodies that will be included in S8 booster boxes.
The preview promo cards for S9 are of Alm and Celica, made with their new Echoes official art by Hidari. Each card is also packaged with a holographic marker card. Alm’s marker card comes with Cipher artwork of some of the main Lords, while Celica’s uses pixel Lord art. The art was previously used on merchandise from Comiket 91.
Additionally, each box comes with a small pack of sleeves featuring artwork from S8’s featured games. The Awakening sleeves have promotional artwork of Lissa and Sumia, while the sleeves for Genealogy of the Holy War use the official artwork for Deirdre and Holy Blood symbols.
Our hosts also took the time to discuss the postcard promotion for Series 8, even showing off some of the postcards in person. These three different packs of postcards will be available from participating retailers to everyone who purchases Cipher booster packs.
International Cipher collectors will be pleased to hear that AmiAmi is one of the participating retailers for this promotion! All S8 booster boxes purchased through AmiAmi will include two packs of postcards chosen at random.
New Series 8 Cards
One of the highlights of the pre-release livestreams is getting a live look at many new cards. Our hosts and guests were opening packs throughout the presentation, and revealed a good number of S8 cards that we haven’t yet seen.
On the Awakening side, new cards were shown off for Vaike, Kellam, Morgan, and Maribelle, with the latter receiving a signed R+ card. They also revealed that Aversa will be getting a signed SR+ card.
A separate shot gave us a look at digital versions of all of Aversa’s cards, as well as a new card for Nowi.
For Genealogy, there were a lot more new cards to show off, including unpromoted cards for Patty, Tine, Febail, Iuchur, and Iucharba.
Lucky Patty was revealed to receive the last Genealogy SR of the set! Both of her cards were also shown off in greater detail with today’s daily reveal.
Lastly, Seliph and Julia are the final two SR+ cards for Genealogy. They shared a joined artwork together, mirroring the SR+ card artwork for their parents who are featured in the background.
The remaining SR+ card for Awakening is still unknown, as are a good amount of the R+ cards. They will likely leak later this week on Yahoo!Japan before being officially revealed on the main site.
Series 9 Artwork
After the Echoes discussion, Kawade revealed some new pieces of artwork for the upcoming Series 9. From Echoes itself, we get new Cipher artwork for Valbar, Tobin, and Mae.
The other titles featured in S9 are Hasha no Tsurugi, Binding Blade, Path of Radiance, and Radiant Dawn. From Elibe, we get Cipher art for Jemmie and Raigh, and from Tellius, Rafiel and Ike.
The Ike artwork is particularly interesting to note. Kawade has previously stated that the Tellius cards in S9 will focus on Laguz characters, but it’s now clear that some Beorc will also be present.
Series 10 Announcement
During the Winter Livestream, we were teased with a number of Fire Emblem titles that would be included in Cipher in 2017, but there were few specific details given for S10. Thankfully, that has now changed, and we now have firm titles for S10, which will be released sometime in September.
Series 10 will feature cards from Thracia 776, Fire Emblem Fates, and Fire Emblem Heroes! We do not yet know how the cards will be distributed among these titles, or any other details at this time. No artwork was also shown. However, it is likely that an R+X card included with S8 may give us a glimpse of at least one character, probably Leif.
Livestream Guests
Throughout the livestream, Kawade, Suzuki, and Young were joined by a number of guests. The first to appear was Kumi Tanaka, the voice actress for Nowi and Aversa from Awakening.
She had a lot of fun interacting with the others, and read some of the quotes for both Nowi and Aversa in the voices she uses for those characters.
The next guest was none other than Yusuke Kozaki, the character artist and design for Awakening, Fates, and Heroes. He even brought a bunch of Hero Feathers to share with everyone!
During the stream, Kozaki made a sketch of Alfonse to pass around, and even showed off some of the pages of his recent artbook, KYMG3. In addition to his own illustrations, the book features a number of pieces of Fire Emblem artwork.
If you’re interested in purchasing the book for yourself, it can be ordered from CDJapan or Amazon Japan.
The livestream’s final guest was Kenichi Hatori. In Fire Emblem circles, he is most known for his replica weapons. Some of the weapons he’s made were displayed during the stream, including two versions of the Fire Emblem and a Falchion.
They also showed some images of the Falchion as a work-in-progress.
And with that, the livestream comes to a close. S8 releases in just a few short days on March 17th! For discussion and speculation in the meantime, visit us at the FE Cipher Subforum on the Serenes Forest forums.
