[REVIEW] CCS vol01&02 - Nakayoshi 60th

[cutesherry.livejournal.com]

Well, with volumes 3 and 4 only moments away from being released in Japan, it thought it might be a good time to make a review of volumes 1 and 2 released last month!

Please do keep in mind this post contains my personal views, it's not a perfectly objective description of the books.

I own examplars of 3 different editions of CCS, so I thought I would make a comparison:

-There is the first edition, bland cover, it got a dust cover, a Clow/Sakura card inside as bonus, and the inside cover is 2 color illustrations with a Sun/Moon version of one same character. The pages are all in black and white.
-There is the deluxe edtion, hard cover, dust cover with a different illlustration than the first edition, the dimensions of the book are significantly bigger, there are color pages inside (splash pages + the inside covers artworks of the first edtiion were included as extra pages in the book), and the Clow/Sakura cards included in the first edition are included as part of the dust cover.
-And than there is the newest edition: the Nakayoshi 60th anniversary 2015 version, bland cover, with dust cover with new illustration and gol printing, all the pages are in black and white at the execption of one: the textless cover's artwork, there are no illiustrations in the inside cover, there is a card as bonus.
>>My personal verdict: the 2000's Deluxe Edition is still unbeaten. All in all, hard cover + bigger dimensions + color pages are stilll the best for me!






About the Nakayoshi 60th anniversary Edition:

Is it shiny? It certainly is! The gold impression on the cover is defintiely beautiful, as you can appreciate on the following photos:



Back/Front/Inside/Bonus cards:








Digital Content:

Inside both books comes a leaflet: one face was an advertisement for the 3rd and 4th volumes with a preview of vol03 cover, and the other side got the information necesary to access the digiital content made available with this new edition: the entire book's pages so that you can read CCS onl your PC/smartphone/tablet until August 31th, 2018 + one unpublished color illustration.



Is there any issues accessing the digital content?

None at all. it's available wordwide so this is not a Japan only thing and it's as simple as can be, the totally normal registration > go to https://codigi.jp , use Chrome's tool to translate the page to english and register!

ID
confirm ID
password
confirm password
codigi code
(terms of use)
Sign Up

When you are inside, you can go on and add up more codes that will give you access to more books, and browsing the volumes themselves is like any other ebook reading out there in the world.


About the exclusive color illustration, it's located at the very last page of the books, it's pretty much like it's 'one more page' in the ebook, which is disappointing because I would have liked it to be of better resolution, but the quality is just...meh! D: The only way to get it is through print screen too, so yeah, what yoiu see bellow is actually the best version possible that can be extracted as far as I know...
The only positive thing I see about this, is that the option of an artbook being released in the future is not gone anymore, which I thought it was when they said they would be sharing the unpublished artworks digitally, but with this quality and the fact they will only be sharing 9 little artworks out of almost 20 Clamp's drew this past year and a half, I think they definitely can release some sort of book printed well with the latest CCS art.
The most likely "candidates" as unpublished artworks are: (I'm only counting artworks from 2014-2015, other unpublished illustrations from previous years I left out...)
-14 artworks mobile game
-2 Ichiban Kuji illustrations [1st lottery and 2d lottery] [there is a 3rd lottery in August with a new illustration announced too, but I'm not counting it, too late]
-1 Animate Kuji SxS wedding artwork
-1 CCS Exhibits 3Sakura artwork

Total: 9 new covers + 9 digital artworks + 1 extra (is it extra or will it replace one of '9 digital artwork'...?) digital artwork in the final volume 9 = we get 18/19 color illustrations through this new 2015 edition.

Take your pick of the above as the potential artworks to be included as digital content in the next 7 volumes to come of CCS!

Artwork included at the end of volume 1:



Artwork included at the end of volume 2




And finally, there is also the following message:



It seems like it's announcing that there will be a new illustration included in volume 9 :)