What are the Mother Hobonichi Techo covers?

Among the Hobonichi Techo's annual cover lines, the Mother covers are the personal ones: the planner Itoi's company makes, wearing the games Itoi wrote. The line recurs across Techo formats, Original, Cousin and Weeks, and sells through Hobonichi's store each season.

The flagship designs are documented on Hobonichi's own pages. A Cousin cover carries the Franklin Badge as an embroidered patch, Hobonichi noting the badge's run through all three games, from Pippi in Mother to the Carpainter fight in Mother 2 to Mr. Saturn polishing the Courage Badge in Mother 3. A second, 'Mr. Saturn (Doing Fine)', is lenticular: tilt it and Mr. Saturn spins, the image built from photographs of the original guidebook clay figure. A third, 'Strikes Back!', reproduces Mother 2's opening scene.

The covers close a loop this Library keeps meeting: the clay figure made in 1994 to illustrate a guidebook now animates, by lenticular print, the cover of a planner sold thirty years later by the author's own company.

Because Techo covers are seasonal, each year's Mother designs are dated objects in themselves, and the secondhand market treats retired covers the way it treats any limited print run.