Norihiro Yagi CLAYMORE Illustrations Memorabilia is a refined collection of beauties and beasts, though it can be hard to determine which is which at times. Like most artists who started before the digital revolution, he works with real media---pastels, pencils, markers and even oil paints on some of the illustrations. This adds a level of depth, texture and detail to each illustration that is becoming more and more rare in commercial art work these days.

First off, the packaging and presentation of this hardcover, A4-sized art book is excellent. The book itself is housed in a lightly textured cardboard sheath, that when removed reveals the actual cover illustration that's printed to the cover with a glossy, relief finish. Due to the material of the sheath, the illustration really looks drawn on instead of printed, while the text on the sheath is lightly embossed into the cardboard. Excellent choices all around on this design.

The first inside illustration is monochrome, followed by a color spread which are both from the very first volume of the manga. While the illustrations aren't presented in chronological order, these first two symbolically start you on your Claymore journey again. There is nudity in this book, but it's really artistically done and only lightly defined.

Norihiro Yagi CLAYMORE Illustrations Memorabilia is 128-pages long and pretty much entirely illustrations until page 122, which starts the index. There is an additional monochrome illustration even after the index as well.

And the monochrome illustrations in general are incorporated very neatly throughout this book. I like that Norihiro Yagi didn't just include any monochrome work, but rather ones that really look like they belong in an art book. The first section of monochrome memorabilia starts on page 33 and goes to page 49, with full page monochrome works all the way through.

That's another point where this book excels: nearly every illustration is printed full to page, which really allows you to see all the details, marker lines and brush strokes that every picture has to offer. The printing is very high quality too, so you won't notice the print dots unless you're looking for them.

One small flaw is that the two-page spread illustrations aren't printed with overlap, so they're pretty much cut off with the tight, hardcover binding. But, it's not as big a deal as you might think because most of the illustrations are done portrait-style and occupy a single page. In total, only three of the color illustrations are printed as spreads.

The last section of monochrome illustrations goes from pages 88 through 121. Even though I'm not usually a fan of so much monochrome in an art book, it really just looks excellent in this one and feels like the illustrations (and even the order of them) were really carefully selected. Even though Norihiro Yagi CLAYMORE Illustrations Memorabilia is priced a bit above the average for an art book of this size, its quality and presentation more than make up for the price difference, making this art book feel truly collectible ^^

• Title: Norihiro Yagi CLAYMORE Illustrations Memorabilia
• タイトル: CLAYMORE画集 Memorabilia
• Pages: 128
• Release dates: 07/02/2010
• Buy: Amazon Japan, eBay