And finally, more than a year after Macross Frontier heroine Sheryl Nome received her own dedicated art book, Macross Frontier Visual Collection Ranka Lee has been released! You might recall that in between, there was another Ranka Lee "art book" that hardly had any art work, but this time, it's the real deal.

Like the Sheryl Nome collection, Macross Frontier Visual Collection Ranka Lee is A4-sized, 64 pages and only ￥952, pre-tax. But if you're not in Japan, you don't have to pay the tax anyway ^^; The cover art is newly drawn for the collection as are several other illustrations.

I'd even go so far as to say, there are more illustrations in the Ranka Lee art book than there were in the Sheryl Nome book. Or maybe it's that many of the illustrations do not also feature Sheryl, like they did in the other book. Then again, there was a whole extra year of Newtype Magazine illustrations to go through, as many of the 'last page' Macross Frontier feature illustrations from the issues are included in this book.

It also definitely helps that the voice actress interview and sketches were really cut down in comparison to the Macross Frontier Visual Collection Sheryl Nome book, leaving room for more color illustrations. The interview with Megumi Nakajima is 4-pages, surrounded by 9-pages of screen shots, song excerpts and Ranka Lee's costumes. Everything else is art work this time.

This angelic picture of Ranka, along with one other illustration were the only overlapping art works from the bad Ranka Lee collection, RANKA Macross F Official Book, and the illustration above appeared with text on it in the other book. I'm surprised there was even anything salvageable ^^;

There are a good amount of illustrations that aren't newly drawn, but I just hadn't seen before now in the collection, in part because there was still a lot of Macross Frontier merchandising with the movie that I didn't pay attention to. Many of the illustrations also receive a full page display, with half-page illustrations reserved predominately for works that were initially magazine spreads. Hard to say if it's intentional, but it is consistent through out.

Finally, like in the Sheryl Nome book, the last few illustrations are tribute works, done by artists that weren't directly involved in the production. Macross Frontier Visual Collection Ranka Lee is as expected, a great collection and a complete steal for the price. I'm just glad this series of books didn't get shelved, as it turned out to be well worth the wait ^^

• Title: Macross Frontier Visual Collection Ranka Lee
• タイトル: マクロスＦ　ＶＩＳＵＡＬ　ＣＯＬＬＥＣＴＩＯＮ　ランカ・リー
• Pages: 64
• Release date: 02/20/2011
• Buy: Amazon Japan, eBay