blog:nattoli, tag:AZ PLAY

Ideolo of NEKO WORKi released an all Touhou illustration book for Comiket 78 called Carnival Fantasy which for the most part features colorful single character illustrations of many of the main Touhou girls. Ideolo has an interesting almost paper cut-out like style to his illustrations, and it really shines in this collection with stylized backgrounds to match.

Gitabon 03 Illustrations was released for Comiket 78 and includes Guitar's (ぎた) art works from 2009 through 2010. This is the third full-color doujinshi he's released, and like others before it, it features his original mascot character Dokuro-Usako.

Chayamachi Suguro is the artist for the manga adaptations of Nitro+ CHiRAL's Togainu no Chi and Lamento - Beyond the Void. If you've ever seen the art work for either of those you'll know that while it stays true to the designs from the visual novels, the line work is often intentionally rough and sometimes basic, making her work unique among the Nitro+ CHiRAL artists.

Rin-Sin Visual Art Works is the second art book released by Rin-Sin but considering the last art book came out more than nine years ago, it was well overdue! Though Rin-Sin doesn't work on many different series, he's done a lot of illustrations from current hits like Queen's Blade as well as Ikkitousen: Dragon Destiny, Great Guardians and Xtreme Xecutor.

Koto was first talked about here with her Pixiv Market release, Marchen, which featured all original illustrations. This time around, Koto has released Partita Vocaloid Fan Book, a full color collection of Vocaloid illustrations that includes tributes to many of the popular songs like Magnet and Eager Love Revenge along with the new design for Hatsune Miku Append.

I was first introduced to Ein's art work through the art book The New Generation of Manga Artists Vol. 4: The Omnibus Collection, a publication I'm sure many other anime fans ran into at some point. While Ein's signature style is beautiful girls in hi-tech scenery, it's not always in demand and his art work outside of light novel covers can be hard to find, so I was delighted to see his Long-Cake Pico Pixels doujinshi release for Comiket 78.

Moeru Classic Heroine Collection is a compilation of illustrations featuring girls from famous, and sometimes not so famous literary works. I found myself at a loss in recognizing many of these characters on sight, but at least I can recognize the artists! Moeru Classic Heroine Collection actually features a lot of the same artists from last year's Moeru Japanese Sword Girls and has a very similar layout and style.

Petite Fatal 4th is another installment of An2A's (said 'Anna') Touhou color illustration fan books and was released for Comiket 78. Like previous installments, it's not very long, but the beautiful styles and vivid coloring just leaves you wanting to see more.

V-Edition 03 Rainbow Lips Books was released by the former Supercell illustrator 119 (Hikeshi) during Comiket 78. It's a full color collection, and unlike his V-Edition 02 release, it's a book instead of a digital collection. Call me old fashioned, but I still can't bring myself to pay good money for small images burned onto a CD.

We Love Mow Mow is a collection of charity illustrations drawn to raise money for farmers who lost livestock during the 2010 outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the Miyazaki Prefecture of Japan earlier this year. Thousands of cattle and pigs were slaughtered to curb the spread of the infection, and farmers bear those costs. All of the profits for We Love Mow Mow were donated, the bulk of which were received during Comiket 78.

I don't know what it is about trading card game illustrations, but I've really never been interested in them. So knowing ahead of time that Ar Tonelico illustrator Nagi Ryou's Comiket 78 release T.U.R.N Collection of TCG Illustrations would be exactly that, I wasn't initially committed to buying it. It didn't help that the resale price for the doujinshi on Toranoana was ￥1470, which is really quite high for a 24-page doujin considering I've bought new art books for less.

I received FLCLISM++ at the same time as Nao Tsukiji's new art book, and I think that qualified as the first strike against it; I immediately had something to compare FLCLISM++ to that was in the same price range---Nao Tsukiji Illustrations NOSTALGIA was a whole ￥200 yen more. And as hard as it is to separate style and presentation normally, FLCLISM++ managed to do it, placing style way above the purpose of presenting the art work.