Pointless Artbook Show-off Post – KEI’s Gallery, Higurashi Summary Book

Author: nova

Since I thought my ABe Lain illustration book looked kinda ronery on the shelf all by itself, I decided to order it some company. All thanks to the internet it didn’t take me long to find something that sparked my interest. But before I get started, let me apologize for the extremely poor quality of the pictures. An ancient digital camera was really all I had at the time.

Makes a great match with my funky mattress.

First up was Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai Official Character and Summary Book. The title of the book hardly leaves any room for questions, it’s essentially everything ever about the second season of Higurashi TV anime titled Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai. The book begins with character files, a full spread each, accompanied with some portraits of them with different expressions (gotta love RAGE-Shion). As a useful feature the character files list some highlight moments for each character, so in case you want to check out Shion going totally batshit again you don’t have to blindly run around wondering which episode it was. There’s a sheer fuckton of text about each character, so for a higutard with some knowledge on them damn moon runes this is probably about as conclusive as it ever gets.

The book proceeds with a lengthy analysis of the story background, each page riddled with helpful screencaps and relationship charts. Then comes the part I was looking forward to most – illustration gallery. Which turns out to be somewhat of a disappointment. The illustrations look nice and all but are few in volume, measly four pages. But the book makes up for this somewhat with a plentiful section of grayscale line drawings of all notable characters as well as scene backgrounds. It also features brief summaries of each episode in Higurashi Kai and a whole ton of detailed info about…well, everything. If reading Jap is no problem, this book will most likely provide you with answers to any questions you ever might have about the Higurashi franchise as far as the TV anime seasons are concerned.

Of course, the final section of the book is dedicated to a series of interviews of all the major character seiyuus and the anime production staff. Nakahara Mai should really reconsider her hairdo, it looks like yesterday’s spaghetti after I eated it. The cover art is beautiful, although the very glossy surface is scratched easily and will be covered by filthy fingerprints before you know it. The paper quality won’t probably win any prizes but does its job and the sheets are quite sturdy, compensating for the lack of hard covers.

But this wasn’t the end of my investments. Since ordering a single art book from the other side of the world wouldn’t be very cost-effective, I decided to throw in another one: KEI’s Gallery, an illustration book by a doujin-artist Kei Garou whom some may remember as the original character designer for the popular Vocaloid girl Hatsune Miku. Now, there is a shit ton of art on Miku circling around the net (hell, at one point she was all you could see at some danbooru-sites) and more is pouring in all the time, but few come even close to the original. Of all the Miku illustrations I have seen the ones in this book are easily the best. Not that it was all Miku though – it’s clearly the main selling article for the book but a fair share of its volume is dedicated to various non-Vocaloid themes. In any case Vocaloid or not, I find it hard to describe how awesome the illustrations look. Kei’s solid skill in general artisty is unquestionable but it is his signature style of heavily utilizing watercolor paintbrushes that really makes the illustrations in the book stand out as a cut above the rest. The book itself is made out of very high quality coated paper with paperboard covers.