Paper Moon

Yay, it came today!

The artbook comes with an original A3-sized pinup of Sakura, which is the same as the image used on the cover.

The Ah! My Goddess section covers the span of Matsubara's artwork from the first season of the 2005-2007 TV anime, to the movie, to the OAV. Now I was expecting character designs, but got pretty much zilch - there is one page with a few quick sketches of Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld; the rest is full-color illustrative artwork. Quite a lot of it is full-page prints, which is nice. All of the TV anime first season DVD covers are here, and four out of five of them are full-page prints, so yay. Artwork used on the first three DVD boxes, the soundtracks and character singles, and many promotional posters and magazine illustrations are printed here too. Matsubara's movie and OAV artwork is included as well. Thus, disregarding the second season of the TV anime, the book is a comprehensive collection of the Ah! My Goddess artwork *done by Hidenori Matsubara* to date. (Of course a lot of stuff that isn't drawn by Matsubara is not included, duh.) It's all stuff that you've seen before, and honestly some of it (particularly the poster reprints) is available in a larger format elsewhere, but whatever.

The Sakura Taisen section is really the highlight of the book. For you fans out there, you'll know that Sakura Taisen official artwork is spread out thin between about ten different artbooks, so getting such a nice chunk of it in one fell swoop is a real treat. Again, character designs are restricted to a single page of sketches of Sakura, Erica, and Gemini. The rest is all illustrations. Deliciously enough, many of these illustrations were only available on programs and gifts sold at the Sakura Taisen musical shows. Which means that, unless you've actually been to one of these shows in Japan, the Sakura Taisen section of this artbook consists of a lot of gorgeous, full-page, full-color artwork that you've probably never seen before. And trust me when I say that Matsubara's watercolor paintings are to die for.

The Gankutsuou section is large, but also largely meh. If you own the Gankutsuou Complete artbook, then you've seen 90% of this stuff before. All of the magazine illustrations reprinted herein are half-page versions, with a few notable exceptions (like that Newtype pullout poster and the Comickers cover, full-page, yum). There are new reprints of the novel covers and pullout posters, but none of them are full-page versions. There are prints of two original phone cards that I had never seen before, and a reprint of the Albert's Diary book thingy cover that was new to me, as I have not yet seen the book.

Also included: full-to-quarter page galleries from Free Phone Line, Gungrave, Rurouni Kenshin, and Nadia.

Yes, because I am insane, I am going to scan all of the Ah! My Goddess TV artwork to post you know where. I also intend to scan the best of the Sakura Taisen stuff and upload it to animepaper.net.