blog:nattoli, tag:AZ PLAY

Ever wanted one of those huge anime girl pillow covers, but didn't want to pay that much for it? Or better yet, ever wanted a dakimakura, but didn't want to admit to wanting it and so hope to someday unintentionally acquire one? Well, make sure you buy this month's Dengeki G's Festival Anime magazine.

Pandora Hearts ~odds and ends~ by Jun Mochizuki just came out at the end of last month and is a huge, 168 page collection of Pandora Hearts art work, with a little extra. The book itself is really thought out with design pages, cut outs and colors to best present each illustration.

Nagi Ryou (凪良) is probably best know for the game designs of Ar Tonelico. And if you haven't seen those, then he's probably pretty new to you. Nagi Ryou also has a circle called S.E.C., though as far as I know he's the only one in it.

Influence was a Comiket 76 release, featuring Nagi Ryou's take on anime and art work that influences him. I would guess Neon Genesis Evangelion was the greatest influence as it gets the most pages, but of course that might also be coincidence.

Buying doujinshi can be quite expensive when you bid on already inflated auctions, where you'll still have to pay for shipping, service fees, and wire transfer fees through a deputy service.

While auctions are great for buying truly rare items, you should always check Japanese online stores like Messe-Sanoh, Toranoana, Melonbooks, and Mandarake before placing a bid. Not only can you get an idea of the "retail" value of a doujinshi, you can also see if they happen to have it in stock. All of the shops mentioned except for Mandarake, only ship internally (to Japan addresses). To work around this, deputy services--companies that buy these items on your behalf for a service charge--are plentiful.

My Amazon order came in yesterday evening, but I was too tired to really go through it at the time so I saved it for this morning. It totaled 3 art books and 6 magazines :D

I'm going to do proper reviews for all of these, but I'm going to do a summary post in case some of this is on your 'to buy' list too.

I started playing BlazBlue with my husband back in July. At first, I was completely awesome at it. And then my learning curve flattened out and he started to win more than I did. I hear the way to go is specialize with one character, but I can never keep interested in a game that way. At least that's my excuse ;P

VALKYRIES is a full color, gorgeous collection of illustrations by Yoshikatsu Mishima. Though only B5 size and 26 pages in length, each illustration stays on theme and really packs a punch!

My attraction to Chisato Naruse's art work was re-kindled this past summer, when I finally bought her commercial art book Fabriese. After a quick search I found her doujin circle, Tanpopo-ya and was able to check out her releases. "For friends?" is 20 pages, but only if you include the covers. I notice that Chisato Naruse also includes the covers in her count and has it listed as 20 pages on her website.

I'll start out by saying, this book was not what I expected. But not in a bad way, I just had thought it would be something else ^^; 5th Year Memorial is a 54 page collection of art work that Kantoku (カントク) drew for his home page over the past 5 years.

I picked up this doujin on a whim with several other items from Comiket 75. I had never heard of Toshimasa Komiya (小宮利公), but the Hatsune Miku picture on the cover caught my eye, so I bought it ^^; Has anyone else heard of this artist before?

In April 2000, the fourth issue of Megami Magazine came out. I think it was at about this point that Megami became a better magazine---mostly because it finally had a ton of posters per issue. It was still ironing out a few quirks though; it still contained multiple extra long posters (three and four panel ones) as well as some series repetition (4 posters from Ah! My Goddess).

Though Noise Pollution was not on my initial 'get' list for Comiket 76, as soon as I saw a few sample illustrations on Toranoana, I bought it. I loved Code Geass, and I especially love it when artists have styles that stay true to the original, and in this case, improve upon it.