I went to the Toranoana main store in Akihabara today and picked up some artbooks as well as the CD catalog for Comiket 76 which I’m going to, hopefully… I decided to also take pictures of other things I got recently, like my new subnotebook. You can pretty much tell what the artbooks are by just looking at them (yay English.) The two games that don’t have English titles are Ryu ga Gotoku Kenzan and Nobunaga’s Ambition Kakushin.

Atlus finally got the preorder bonuses to Amazon, which means they could finally get the bonuses to the unhappy preorderers such as I. It was kinda worth the wait. Because of it, we don’t have to deal with the material being bent to conform with the DS box.

This makes me wish Romantic Fool did more art for games… and more art non-featuring the creepy, injured one-eyed girl. I rather like his art featuring …uh… melons instead, if you know what I mean. Anyway, feel free to take a peek at the melon filled mini-poster below, as well as the reversible cover for the game.

Romantic Fool

So, I finally got my order of Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis on Wednesday of last week. I’ve hardly gotten a chance to play it, however, since I have this SSBB tourney to participate in and have various other schoolwork to do. Oh, I like how I listed them in that order >.>

Regardless, since I did get the premium box set, I decided to upload pics for you all. Please enjoy them below. Before anyone asks: yes, I totally did take these pictures on my laptop becuase I have no other empty space in my tiny dorm room. -_-;;

Initially I didn’t want to post until I’d gotten all of the loot, but since the stuff is arriving so slowly, I decided to put it into two posts. I actually got more stuff than usually at the winter comiket. I still don’t think I got everything I wanted though. Darn deputy service and its deposits and bidding limits. T_T

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I made a post last week highlighting that Mediaworks had just released a sequel artbook to Guren called Kaen. Well, I received said artbook a couple of days ago and now have my impressions of it.

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I actually got this a few months ago, but my computer was having problems and some things happened and I never got to use my scanner on this book. Eventually, I gave up and decided to go with a few pictures (please forgive the uber poor quality of the first pic, I suck with cameras.) Anyway, this artbook features the work of Kozue Amano, the artist behind ARIA (which I’m sure you can tell from the over.) The full title of the artbook is Cielo: Kozue Amano Illustration Works III. Yes, this is his third book. Unfortunately, his other books are uber rare now, so good luck at finding them for anything below twice their original price.

One of my favorite things about the book is its build. As you can see from the first thumbnail, the book comes with a hard plastic cover, which leaves only the book’s binding exposed to the cruel outside world. The book itself is hardcover, which is nice. If it’s one thing I hate, it’s bent binds in softcover books. Annoys me to no end. It’s a surprise that this book only costs about 300 yen more than the average softcover artbook. I’m sure they could’ve gotten away with a bit more. This artist seems popular. At least, popular enough for all of his previous books to have sold out.

The artbook is split into six sections: Aria, Roman Club, Crescent Noise, Short Stories/Extra Works, Aqua, and Monochrome works. I must admit, I’m very unfamiliar with his work. I have yet to read a single chapter of ARIA or AQUA. I’m not sure if the work in this book is new or not. Usually, in these kinds of books, they’re just reprints of earlier released art (telephone cards and such) but usually the sources for the artwork are noted on the page. In this, they are not. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. The art in the book is excellent regardless.

But unfortunately, I can’t show you guys any scans from the books. My spare laptop is having some HDD troubles and I doubt that I could make it last long enough to do a single scan (much less run The GIMP to clean the scan up for a bit.)

When I’m sure that my computer will actually work long enough to scan some pictures, I’ll upload some pictures and reviews for you guys, until then, I’ll just give you the names.

• Korean Illustrations: Art by various Korean artists, including the very famous Kim Hyung Tae.
• Girls Girls Girls!: The title says it all. Pictures of various bishoujo by various artists. The cover is by Tony Taka.
• Sweet Girls: Basically the same as abouve just with different various artists. I forget the cover artist’s name at the moment >_<
• Kozue Amano Illustration Works III: Cielo: Probably my favorite of the bunch. Most of the artwork, quite predictably, is based on Aria, no surprise there.
• Nanatsuiro ★ Drops Artworks: Features art from the game of the same name. Art by Noizi Ito.

Usually this would be some type of review or impressions, but I decided it wouldn’t really be worth it for a calendar. I rather decided to scan and upload the calendar to mediafire here. Have fun!

Edit:The file changed, please download the updated version.

My loot from C71 finally came. It seems like so little for the money that I had to pay for it (deputy fees and international shipping are a killer.) I’ll probably post some scans on Megatokyo or something later.

From left to right: (top)Genshiken Vol. 1 & 2,2x2 Shinobuden Vol.1 (middle)Yoko Koto Kiku, Leave it to Piyoko Vol. 1, Sgt. Frog Vol. 1 & 2 (bottom)Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days Vol. 1, Rozen Maiden Vol. 2, Welcome to the NHK Vol. 1

Yep, got a ton of new manga again. This post is a bit late since I didn’t have anything to take the picture of the books with. I’ve already finished all of them. If I were to pick a favorite, it would easily be Welcome to the NHK. It was very hard for me to put it down while I was reading it and I am eagerly awaiting the second volume (aah, doesn’t come out until February.)

Now here’s a post that’s been long past due. I got these things a couple of days before my new laptop, but I’ve been delaying writing this post for a while (because I’m lazy?) Anyway, over the week I’ve gotten a bit more anime related items from overseas.