Truthfully, I didn't like Hatsune Miku GRAPHICS Vocaloid Art & Comic when it first arrived amidst many better art books at the beginning of March. But having been recently reminded of it, I decided to have another look through to see how I was feeling about it. I'm slightly more appreciative of the new and exclusive art works done for the collection, but for the most part I still feel like art book really lacks focus and even quality consistency from page to page.

The 128-page, A4 sized art book covers a lot of aspects of the Vocaloid fan machine including art from some of the more notable character artists, Hatsune Miku music videos, the video game Hatsune Miku Project DIVA, Pixiv art works and comics. But it touches on each so lightly, you don't get more than a few pages of any section.

The first section was the highlight for me, as it showcased artists that would have to attribute their popularity to their Vocaloid art works. Each artist was given two pages, one with a full-page new illustration drawn for this book and another page with smaller tiled Vocaloid illustrations they have done in the past. Artists in this section include KEI, ChanxCo, Putidevil, Yunomi, Nagimiso, K2Pudding, Bob, Yoji (Ｙおじ), Ichika (壱加), Shibashon (シバション), Kobayashi Onikisu, and Yuu (憂). I found the opening "Magent" image in this post by Yunomi and the one by Yuu to be my favorites ^^ This takes up about the first 27 pages in the art book.

The next portion moves between a couple of pages of 4-panel comics, character profiles for Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin and Len, and a few pages on Project DIVA and the many costumes offered in the game.

This is immediately followed by 4-pages of Hatsune Miku tribute arts by notable artists like Real Bout High School Samurai's Inoue Sora, toi8, Lucky Star artist Yoshimizu Kagami, and Kinu Komada. After this portion is 6-pages on some of the popular Hatsune Miku videos (with the low quality stills from the online videos printed in the book ~_~) followed by another few pages of a 4-panel comic by Torakara (とらから), a different artist from the previous one.

The next larger section of Hatsune Miku GRAPHICS Vocaloid Art & Comic features Pixiv artists' art works of Hatsune Miku, with the selection of artists listed in the picture above.

Though there is some really great art in this 17-page section, I'm just jaded with seeing tiny re-prints of Pixiv art work in commercial art books. Each artist gets one page of tiled, small illustrations.

There is a small two page section of Aoi Nishimata's Vocaloid illustrations, and then the final color part of the art book gives an overview of the commercial CDs and DVDs that have been released. Cover arts are featured along with a little information about each. The last part of the book features 3 monochrome comics, including one done with no dialogue in an art style reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics.

The main grab for Hatsune Miku GRAPHICS Vocaloid Art & Comic was the new Vocaloid art work drawn exclusive for the book by so many notable artists, but past that much of the content felt already dated, and much like filler.

• Title: Hatsune Miku GRAPHICS Vocaloid Art & Comic
• タイトル: 初音ミクGraphics VOCALOID ART&COMIC
• Pages: 128
• Release date: 02/26/2010
• Buy: Amazon JAPAN