Girl's Avenue Vol. 1 was not at all what I expected, and that's a shame because my expectations weren't too hard to meet. I was expecting a chronological presentation of the first half of Girl's Avenue posters that started appearing in Megami Magazines at volume 15. Instead, what I got was a rather disorganized assortment of selected posters, many of which were from issues as recent as the past year. Added into that mix were some of the illustrations that had only appeared in Megami Creators Magazine, so there's plenty of material for them to easily milk this franchise---the next Girl's Avenue art book is already advertised on this one to be released August 2010.

The first 30 pages of the art book are dedicated entirely to Eiji Komatsu's art work as he has done quite a lot for Megami Creators Magazine in terms of covers and B2 posters. He also did the new cover art for this volume, and inside there's a double sided fold-out poster with the art work again. The opposite side has a re-print of the B2 poster that came with Megami Creators Volume 14, which also appears again on a full page in Komatsu's section. Basically, if you've been keeping up with Megami Creators magazine, then you'll have seen all of these illustrations before.

At 32 pages into the art book, we finally get into the Girl's Avenue poster portion of the book. As of now, there have been 102 Girl's Avenue posters featured in Megami Magazine, and out of that only 24 of those posters were featured in this art book. The art works pictured above were all originally posters for Megami Magazine.

The other 12 come from from Megami Creators Magazine, which does have "Creator's Original" illustrations in issues when there isn't a Girl's Avenue poster available. Taking that into consideration, at this rate they can definitely make at least three Girl's Avenue volumes before they catch up to what's already out there. The art works pictured above were all originally drawn for Megami Creators Magazine.

I also found the general arrangement of the book a little sloppy. Instead of the usual artist intro page, interview and then art work order they took a sort of "center piece" approach. Basically, it went intro-page, interview, then illustration, followed by the reverse: illustration, intro page, interview. Sounds confusing when you read it, but it's definitely a non-standard approach. Oh, and if you're curious about the artist for any of these illustrations pictured, just click on a photo and the name will be in the tags.

I'm really not sure if I'm going to collect the rest of these, and I wouldn't recommend Girl's Avenue Vol. 1 to anyone who actively collects or follows Megami Magazine or Megami Magazine Creators; just about all of the images are better presented in their respective magazines. And it really doesn't help its case that so many better art books came out around the same time ^^;

• Title: Girl's Avenue Vol. 1
• タイトル: ガールズ・アヴェニュー Vol.1
• Pages: 140
• Release date: 03/31/2010
• Buy: Amazon Japan