carnelian

CARNELIAN's Benigyokuzui Vol. 30 is filled with all new illustrations and pays tribute to several recent anime series, including ones that are guy-centric. Released for Comiket 80, it includes fan arts from Blue Exorcist, Tiger & Bunny, No.6, [C] - Control, Mawaru Penguindrum and several more.

For Fancy Frontier 18, CARNELIAN released another volume of her series, Benigyokuzui Taiwan Version 02. After the impressive full-color Benigyokuzui Taiwan Version 01 the second volume feels like an even greater disappointment. Though it's also described as "full-color", in reality every other page features a line-art version of the accompanying illustration.

Benigyokuzui Taiwan Version 01 is CARNELIAN's latest collection of color illustrations. And as you may guess from the title, it wasn't released in Japan, but rather at Fancy Frontier 17 in Taiwan that was held in February.

CARNELIAN's Benigyokuzui Vol. 17 came out a little over a year after Benigyokuzui Vol. 15, so I was pleasantly surprised that there wasn't any illustration overlap between the two doujins. That isn't to say there's no overlap from some of her other releases, but that's for another review.

After the review of Benigyokuzui Vol. 27, I was inspired to go back a ways and look through some of CARNELIAN's older doujins, which lead me to today's review for Benigyokuzui Vol. 15. It's one of the few older volumes that is full-color all the way through, with both fan arts and original works getting a full-page presentation.

CARNELIAN's Benigyokuzui Vol. 27 is less like an illustration doujinshi and more like a product catalog, seeing as how the majority of illustrations included come from merchandise releases. And speaking as someone who seldom buys the extras, it's a welcome addition to my small pile of CARNELIAN art works.

In May this year, the Eshi 100 Gallery Exhibition opened in the Akihabara UDX building and ran for a brief 5 days showcasing new illustrations by some of the most recognized artists in Japan. The gallery exhibition theme was the very open-ended idea of 'Japan', allowing for amazing creativity from the artists along with many different conceptual representations. This gorgeous exhibition was collected as a book, Eshi 100 - Contemporary Japanese Illustration and sold during the event.

Fancy Frontier is a comic convention much like Comic Market, except it's held in Taiwan. Even so, it attracts a lot Japanese artists who do exclusive art work for the convention, and Splendid Banquet - Taiwan Limited Illustrations is a great example of that. Artists like Aoi Nanase, Kisaragi Mizu, Tony Taka, Ramiya Ryo, REI, Amamiya Polan, Tokumi Yuiko, Mutsumi Sasaki, Noriyuki Matsumoto, and Carnelian have all done covers for the Fancy Frontier Magazine, and this art book collects their cover illustrations from 2005 through 2007.

Carnelian's newest release Benigyokuzui Vol. 25 is decidedly fan art centric, featuring her versions of popular characters such as Ranka Lee and Sheryl Nome from Macross Frontier along side Bayonetta and many more. And unlike many of Carnelian's previous Benigyokuzui volumes, it's A4 in size and printed on glossy pages instead of the usual textured pages.

CARNELIAN's Benigyokuzui Remix 20-21-22 is the most recent color collection from the artist, not including her Comiket 77 releases. Benigyokuzui Remix is pretty much as the full title states, a re-collection of the individual Benigyokuzui volumes 20, 21, and 22.

CARNELIAN Art Works IV is a recent release of a combination of older and newer materials. If you follow CARNELIAN's work and releases, no doubt they're all images you've seen before. But the reason they're all collected together in Art Works IV is because this is the pamphlet to the fall 2009 gallery exhibitions organized by Art Jeuness, a group that promotes the arts and illustrators in Japan.

Out with the old, and in with the new! Last year, Toranoana sold a set of New Year's postcards (which also doubled as lottery tickets) illustrated by 10 different artists, with the likes of Shimada Humikane and CARNELIAN among them. In this set, the girls are all dressed as the Chinese zodiac animal for the year, the Ox. Though... since they're girls, they're cows!