Cool and Spicy » Mikeou

Artbook Stash Part 1

anonymous_object — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:22:46 +0000

Here is the first part of my big artbook haul that I posted about a few days. I selected a few books out of the bunch for a closer look.

Kyourin Takanae Art Works, Ninomiya-kun

This artbook is dedicated to images from Ninomiya-kun, of which I know very little about. That’s ok though because the art is still good without background knowledge of the source. About 2/3 of the book is color content and the rest is black and white sketches and concept art. I do own one older doujinshi by Kyourin Takanae and I thought the style was cute so I decided to give this artbook a try.

The illustrations focus on what I guess are the two main female characters and they monopolize the majority of the pages. Not a bad thing though as they’re displayed in many different outfits and keeps it interesting. Unlike the doujinshi I have, this book is mostly clean. There is a bit of nudity but not really hentai material here. If you like this particular artist, this book is worth picking up. Otherwise, you might be better off with just some scans :)

Pixiv Girls Collection

Do I really need to explain what Pixiv is? Anyone with an interest in Japanese anime art is likely already familiar with this art community. Lots of Japanese artists post their original artwork on the site and it has exploded in popularity in the past year. This artbook attempts to sort out the best and most popular images into a single printed collection. Considering the huge number of images on pixiv and after going through the book, I think they did a pretty good job at picking the good images.

I can’t possibly name all the artists here, but each image does include the artist’s name (alias, usually), title of their work, and a comment by them. The book is divided into two sections, one for “Illustrations” and one for “Concept Art”. You will find the ever-present Vocaloid images in the Concept Art section. Otherwise, I don’t find the distinction very useful as a lot of the images seem to be able to fit into either section. Anyway, this collection is huge. 162 pages with some pages having multiple illustrations. That might be a downside for some potential purchasers but there is still a good number of full page illustrations. Overall, I like this book. While you can find all of these images online (pixiv, of course!), it’s nice to have some of my favorite images in print form :).

First image is by Sayori who I’ve become a big fan of in the past few months. Love the art. Second image is Miku in “Word is Mine” image.

Kirakira-Reki: Mikeou Artworks

Yay, more Mikeou ^^ This is an officially published artbook by Mikeou though it doesn’t feel much different from her Chronicle doujinshi artbooks. The good thing here is that there is very little nudity here and for an artist like Mikeou, that’s worth mentioning. So, little actual nudity but there are is a sizable number of panty shots. Probably 1/2 of the images have panty shots ^^; The largest part of the book is divided into the four seasons, with a section for summer, autumn, winter, and spring. The Mikeou girls are dressed in clothing (mostly) appropriate for the given season. Lastly, there is an “Other” section miscellaneous characters like Melon-chan.

Mikeou’s work here is, as usual, quite appealing and I definitely recommend checking out this great artbook.

The elusive school mizugi midriff.

Shingetsu: The Art of Chouniku

The only hard cover book in this group, Shingetsu is by the artist who did the character designs for the Disgaea game series. Now, I’m really not a fan of the games. I tried playing them and lost interest pretty quickly (strategizing block distance, height, turns… how fun) but the art behind the series is pretty decent. Etna, Flonne, and Laharl being the most popular and well-known characters and all are present here. This is the main section of the book and while the art is good, I think I like the Novels and Other section illustrations more. The style is a bit different in those sections than the Disgaea art and seems to appeal more to me. Not the best artbook I’ve purchased but a decent buy.

Shugo Chara Illustrations

Last, but certainly not least in my opinion is the Shugo Chara Illustrations collection by Peach Pit. For those who don’t know me, I love the Shugo Chara series. I wrote up a review of the first series a while ago in which I expressed my love ^^. The art here is official work by the Peach Pit duo so it’s styled more like the manga than the anime. An interesting note about this book is that the cover is removable. While that’s not unusual with artbooks, this cover doubles as a big poster. You remove it, unfold the overlapping edges and you end up with a big, glossy high resolution poster :D In the book you will find mostly images of the heroine, Hinamori Amu and her various shugo chara versions. Lots of very kawaii, very moe images here ^_^

This is my first Peach Pit artbook since Shugo Chara is the first Peach Pit series I’ve really enjoyed. Rozen Maiden was ok but didn’t watch beyond the first series. I think getting this book has made me appreciate their style more and I will probably look into getting their earlier Rozen Maiden/Zombie Loan/DearS art collections ;)

Punk lolita Amu and sundress Amu <3

That’s it for part 1 of my big artbook stash. There will probably be 2 more parts coming in the next week so look forward to more pretty pictures :)

May doujinshi stash

anonymous_object — Sat, 31 May 2008 00:49:41 +0000

I received a shipment of Yahoo! Japan Auction items through Shopping Mall Japan last week, but I was too occupied with going to Acen to post anything about it. Since I’ve already mentioned that I don’t want to debind my precious artbooks, I have decided to take photographs of sample images from each item instead of trying to scan pages from a bound book which results in not only a cropped scan but also bends the spine of my books. So please don’t mind the photos with parts of my fingers in the shot ^^; It was kind of difficult to hold the books open and in position and take a photograph (even with a tripod). Also, some of them aren’t fully in focus across the entire image and the flash reflected too much in some parts. Hopefully, I will get better at this process with more practice XD

Cotton Garland 1 + 2
I found out about the Closet Child circle from images on shuushuu and after hearing good things about these two doujinshi collections, I decided to pick them up and I’m really glad I did as they contain some very cute illustrations ^^ The Cotton Garland books follow a fashion catalog theme (lolita based, of course). Each page displays girls in a brand of clothing complete with descriptions and prices for each piece in the set. Each image has a fashion “designer” (aka the artist of the image). Some of the artists found here are Konoe Ototsugu, Asaki Yuzuno (the two members of Closet Child), as well as Kaya Kuramoto, Rami, CHOCO, Ryuran, Kaori Minakami, LLO to name a few. It’s a nice collaboration of various guest artists. I love these two doujinshi and I highly recommend them.

Chronicle 2 (and other Mikeou works)
I’m not a huge fan of Mikeou (PINK CHU CHU circle) but she(?) does have some nice art and I had heard good things about Chronicle 2, so I decided to pick up this doujinshi artbook. While it technically is doujinshi, it feels like a commercial artbook. It’s chock full of color illustrations and about as thick as a commercial artbook. If it has an ISBN, I would consider it a commercial artbook ;). As for the art itself, Mikeou likes to draw ecchi… and is good at it! XD While there is no nudity, some of the images push it close. However, this is definitely the cleaner side of Mikeou’s work and most of the images are perfectly tame with girls in swimsuits and skirts and are quite cute. The printing method (at least on the cover) seems different than most other artbooks I’ve scanned. There was little screening when I scanned at 600dpi and didn’t really need much cleaning ^^

The auction I bought Chronicle 2 from also included 2 other doujinshi by Mikeou: Clover 2 and Honto no Kimochi. Clover 2 is a Sister Princess fan book with black and white illustrations and has a couple ecchier images. Honto no Kimochi is a manga doujinshi and is more hentai than either of the other two ^^; I only took a pictures of the cleaner images from Clover 2. Oh, and I didn’t mirror the cover image of Honto no Kimochi, the title really is written backwards for some reason (though that is the back cover, not the front since the front has some nudity >_<).

Colorful Pop 3 + 4
After seeing some scans of these doujinshi on my image board, I took a liking to the artist’s style and decided to grab these two editions of the Colorful Pop series. Colorful 1 and 2 seem to be a bit more rare but I may try to pick them up if I can find them for a reasonable price. The main artist here is Izumi Tsubasa (hisuitei circle) along with some guests such as WNB Mark’s Tatekawa Mako and Hasekura Chiaki. There isn’t a common theme among all the images… some have neko mimi, maids, kimono, and seifuku. Volume 3 is printed on thick, rough paper (almost like thin cardboard) while volume 4 has glossier paper. Both are full color with many beautiful images. Recommended ^^

Drink Me
After reviewing Tsukiyo Chakai, I decided I liked Tinkle’s work in paper form versus digital, so I went searching for more illustration books :) This isn’t a new doujinshi (released in 2006′s C70) but it’s still quite nice. It’s a 22 page full-color illustration book of loli! Ok, not entirely, but close. Very cute. Also, there is one slightly naughtier image with nudity.

Puchi Puchi (Petit Petit) 2
I can’t remember why exactly I bought this because there’s not much to this set of items. I think I was just searching for random WNB Mark items and stumbled across this in an auction right after SC38 for a few hundred yen. It’s basically a large clear file, an 8 page collection of monochrome illustrations, and a postcard with Haruhi on it. The clear file is probably the best part. It’s a large, shiny clear file with Louise from Zero no Tsukaima on it. Pretty cute. The Haruhi postcard is not bad either, but being a postcard, is pretty small. The monochrome book has some decent illustrations. I just wish they were in color ~_~ There’s a white line in the monochrome scan I made, not sure why but I didn’t rescan it >_<

I’ve actually got several more items that have received since this package that I still need to cover. I just haven’t gotten to it yet (been busy), but look forward to it in the next week or so!