Quarterly GELATIN magazine has now been running for a full year, so I guess they decided it's a good time to shake things up. Gone is the almost impossible to unfold poster of the cover art work, and in its place are three pin-up illustrations by three different artists. I think I'll be liking this magazine more with this new addition, I'd guess most people after full color comics would appreciate some extra art work as well.

The pin-ups are B5 size like the magazine, and are printed on a sturdy yet flexible paper that is traditionally used for real art prints. This issue's pin-ups feature the cover art by Redjuice, a set of school girls trying really hard to get to school by Mebae, and a non-Touhou illustration by Aka Ringo ^^ Something interesting to note: on the official cover, the black-haired girl's skirt has been extended ever so slightly to cover her bum, but in the pin-up on the inside you can see it clearly XD

The artists on the pin-ups don't have a comic in this issue, but the photo and interview section for the cover artist (Redjuice) is still in along with an illustration step-by-step guide.

Comics are lovely as usual, with both GELATIN regulars and newcomers. Nanakusa, the artist for Shinigami no Ballad has the first comic in this issue, a 12-page short called "VS MODE". Next up is another new artist named Yuugen, with a 6-page original comic about a witch. Cencoroll designer Uki Atsuya appears again in this issue, with a 10-page comic featuring a science experiment with interesting results ^^

I think this is Matsuryu's first appearance in GELATIN with a comic called "Papemape (ぱぺまぺ)", presumably short for Puppet Master as the English subtitle reads. The artist Kamo (加茂), who is also a contributing and cover artist for the recent visual release Girl's High School Uniform Encyclopedia pays homage to Range Murata with his 4-page comic titled "15 Window." Taiwanese artist VOFAN has another illustration only comic, beautifully colored and 7-pages long.

More return artists this issue with the on-going story by Houden Eizo called "STRAW" as well as another original comic by previously featured artist Shin Hashimoto. Fuyuno Haruaki continues with the fighting school girl theme from the last issue and Hiroki Tsukiyoshi contributes one of the two black and white comics for this issue.

Getting to see even more new art work by Shigeki Maeshima so soon after his art book released is great, and that also marks the return of "DRAGONFLY" which has been absent from recent GELATIN issues. Also noticeably absent is Miggy's usual pencil drawing contribution, but I'm glad about that ^^;

More of the same from Takamichi this issue, I really feel like his comic style doesn't even come close to what he's capable of illustrating so I've really lost interest in that one. The other black and white comic belongs to a team consisting of Eiichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shimoguchi, both of whom are new to me. Mota, GELATIN's mascot designer, also has a couple of pages of art again in this issue.

I don't think I mentioned everyone, but for a full listing of the artists featured, you can always check out the GELATIN website which really keeps up to date. I'll end this post the same way I did my last GELATIN one, with a mention of the eternally postponed Range Murata ANIME WORKS 1998-2006 which according to this advertisement is supposed to come out this month, a full year after it was initially slated to release. I'll believe it when I see it.

• Title: GELATIN 2010 Spring
• タイトル: 季刊GELATIN2010はる
• Pages: 224
• Release date: 03/31/2010
• Buy: Amazon Japan, GELATIN on eBay