At the tumblr post where this image was originally found (see below), the artwork was titled “Beatless” and credited to “Redjuice”. An accompanying never-archived link currently takes the unwary reader to cultish Christianoid ravings about chemtrails; sic transit gloria mundi.
Fortunately, DeviantArt is much less fickle, and this image is described there as “Novel BEATLESS cover artwork.” According to Wikipedia, Beatless is indeed a serial novel illustrated by Redjuice. Otaku Mode describes it as:
One-hundred years into the future. A world in which society is mostly operated by humanoid robots called hIE. With the introduction of an ultra-advanced AI that surpasses human intelligence, beings that mankind is yet to fully comprehend made from materials far too advanced for human technology begin coming into being. Lacia, an hIE equipped with a black coffin-shaped device, is one of these. In boy-meets-girl fashion, 17-year-old Arato Endo has a fateful encounter with the artificial Lacia. For what purpose were these artificial beings created? Amid questions regarding the coexistence of these artificial beings and humans, a 17-year-old boy makes a decision…
We are, perhaps, all to be pardoned if we assume that his decision is “Yes, I will fall in lust with her and then jump the hell out of her artificial bones.” You know you were thinking it right along with me!
The series has subsequently inspired three spinoff manga series and a spinoff television anime series. This is the artwork as it appeared as novel cover art:
Otaku Mode offers this information about artist Redjuice:
First place winner of the 6th Sneaker Taishō Award for his work Senryaku Kyoten 32098 Rakuen. His work Enkan Shōjo (Kadokawa Shoten) is also published under the same label. He has also been nominated for the 30th Japan SF Taishō Award and 41st Seiun Award for Anata no Tame no Monogatari (Hayakawa Publishing), as well as nominated in the Best Japanese Short Story of the Year category for the 42nd Seiun Award for allo, toi, toi.
The official Beatless website has a gallery of his work, and there is more in his gallery at DeviantArt.
This post is a reblog with added provenance from a 23 November 2013 post at Infernal Wonders. Its original source was this post at the Un flujo de Fotones tumblr. (A backup Internet Archive post link is here.)
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