Udon have announced the Shining blade& ark material collection would be released in west(like Shining wind and hearts artbook), the release date is planned for the end of the month.
I have the artbook in japanese, it's an excellent artbook with ton of artwork (every illustration and character art, location, weapon, ennemy...) but also some long interview about the games, the staff and even maybe some reference (It was in shining heart interview we learned Maxima(Sakuya title) was the name give to the leader of the shining force in honor of Max)
The artbook is actually in preordrer on amazon
Oh and the artbook already give an important info about the games. The director of the games (Sawada was producer) is the director of the first and the third Valkyria Chronicles, Takeshi Ozawa, he was just adviser and producer on Valkyria 2 because he was working on Shining Blade.
And actually, Tsuyoshi sawada had an assistant for the production, Kei Mikami, who was producer of the second Valkyria and third valkyria
Its important, because they are not part of media creates but from Sega(the Sega wow staff who made the original phantasy star, Sakura wars, Street of rage, Shinobi, Skies of Arcadia and valkyria chronicles). So mediacreate is just subworker just or on the game, they are not directing it
So Shining blade and Ark (and maybe resonance) are the first non arcade Shining directed by a first party studio since ROTDD, the second since Final conflict.
It's also confirm Shining licence is very important for Sega japan as SegaWOW is one of their main studio.