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.

Likely old news to most, but here goes:

The Ah! My Goddess PS2 game is scheduled to release in February 2007. In unrelated news, the release date for Fate/Stay Night Realta Nua has been pushed back from December to January 2007. So I will not be getting Saber for Christmas, but at least I will have both Saber and Belldandy to entertain me throughout the worst part of the winter!

The official MMV homepage for the A!MG game has been updated with a ton of new information about the gameplay system and stuff. Ignoring the hilarious mispelling of "Hild" all over the site for a moment, let's talk about...
( Behind the cut: Limited edition game goodies revealed! )

Oh yeah, and since a few people have emailed me about this: Yes, there is a gorgeous and (yay) cheap Hidenori Matsubara artbook coming out on November 29th. Promised is: 65 pages of Sakura Taisen, 51 pages of Goddess, and 27 pages of Gankutsuou. It comes with an A3-sized pinup, dunno of who or what. Illustrations from Gungrave, Kenshin, Fushigi no Umi no Nadia (or Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water), and other series are supposedly included. The Amazon page mentions character designs up the wazoo, so that may account for the bulk of the material in the book. (Hopefully not, though: I'd rather see some of his illustrative artwork!)

12/5 Edit: My review of the book now posted here.

x-posted to ah_my_goddess

0. Ah! My Goddess 3D adventure PS2 RPG game. Because quiz games are lame.

1. Reading the draconian instructions to figure out the rules for the send-away service for this month's limited-edition Suzumiya Haruhi and Blood+ telecards. I mean, studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

2. Red Garden. Yes, it's GONZO, and yes, there's opera music used in the preview, but that doesn't automatically equal pretentious suck. (Gankutsuou also had opera music in the preview and it was not full of pretentious suck. I swear!)

3. Winter Garden. Finally, some DiGi Charat that I won't feel totally guilty for enjoying. ^^;;

4. Suzumiya Haruhi capsule toys in October. For those of you who can't afford the Haruhi or Mikuru PVC, or who missed the send-away Haruhi-absuing-Mikuru Animage figure (which BTW was more expensive and decidedly more crappy than the other PVC figures, but whatever).

5. Shana OAV, Death Note anime, second part of the Death Note movie. Tie.

6. Achi Teacher's annual get-drunk-and-rowdy party on Friday. A tiny little part of me actually does want to see all of the teachers at Achi drunk out of their minds. Just a tiny part.

I got the last of my Sailor Stars R2 DVDs in the mail today. The last volume came with the shiny pretty new artbox, which has pretty new artwork of the Starlights on it. (Yay!) And you know what? Although I've complained previously that I wasn't able to reserve copies of all of the first-press editions before they sold out... I got all first-press editions from CDJapan, anyway. Yup, all six of my DVDs were first-press editions, they came with the collector's puzzles and everything. Hooray!

Now I only have to buy the last two disks of Gankutsuou, and I think I'm done buying R2 DVDs forever. (But oh, DVDs from Britian and India and Japan are so tempting... Yet so expensive...)

So I know that Sailor Stars is finally (finally!) piddling out on R2 DVD, but it took me up until today to save up enough spending money to actually, you know, buy said DVDs. When I logged onto CDJapan, however, I found to my disappointment that the first press editions of most volumes are already sold out. BOO. That means that I don't get the bonus puzzle that comes with most of the DVDs. Thankfully, I reserved a first press copy of volume 6 - that's the one that comes with the artbox - but other than that, I kind of boned myself for waiting this long. I mean, what's the point of shelling out an obscene amount of money for an R2 DVD if I can't even get the collector's bonuses? I mean, the non-first-press DVDs are still the same price but come without the extras, which stinks.

I've never seen an R2 DVD sell out of first-press editions while still in the pre-order phase at CDJapan. So, um, I guess this proves that Sailor Moon is still an obscenely popular fandom in the English-speaking world. Make that an obscenely popular fandom among those of us who have the money and the means to buy DVDs. Make that a super-obscenely popular fandom compared to just about any other fandom that could be buying DVDs off CDJapan. Hello, anime companies, are you paying attention to this?! ADV, I'm looking at you. License Stars, have it do well in North America, and hopefully this will convince you that shoujo can sell, so you'll get Princess Tutu and Pichi Pichi Pitch out of your basement storage and onto the store shelves where they belong... (*cough*)

So, I guess this is a heads-up to those of you on my flist who are intending to buy the Stars DVDs: Hurry. Get them now, before the first press editions are gone. (Unless you've already bought your DVDs, then, well, good for you. Tell me if the puzzles are pretty or not.)

So yes, I spent more money than I intended to today, rushing to pre-order what remaining first-press editions of Stars were left at CDJapan. It's hard when I have a limited budget and so many anime titles on DVD to tempt me. Gankutsuou and Ah! My Goddess are coming out on DVD this month, and I still need to save money to complete Fullmetal Alchemist and Kyou Kara Maou! on DVD. I also intend to buy Elfen Leid to add to my collection, someday. When I'm a millionaire. Ahem.

( More Mahabharata Icons! )

( Yet another OTP meme, I guess, but it's the first one that I've ever bothered posting. )

And to finish off this post... OMG I'm so excited I get to see imorca on Friday!

Oh, and it feels good to be creatively writing again. I probably won't be able to keep it up once my job in Minneapolis starts in September, but right now, it's nice to get as much of it out of my system as I can.