[REVieW] Tsubasa ILLuSTRaTION CHRoNiCLE

[cutesherry.livejournal.com]

Tsubasa Illustration Chronicle was released a few days ago in Japan, on December 2d.
It was presented as a 'mini artbook', with exact the same dimensions as the manga volumes and 68 pages.
It doesn't have a dust cover and the only new artwork is the cover of the book.

********************************************************************

Well, my opinion is simple and clear: I do not consider this as an artbook per se, but more like as a complement to the manga volumes > as you know,the tankubons do not have any color pages inside, so I think of this book as an extra volume with all the illustrations we would have liked to see inside the manga.
And as such, it's pretty nice to own, I'm really happy to own it :)

********************************************************************

The TWC illustrations inside are:
-3 covers of the manga volumes
-2 covers of the bluray included in the special edition of vol 1 & 2
-1 cover of the case of the PlayButton included in the special edition of vol 3
-4 covers of the Shounen Magazine Special issues in which TWC was published
-1 illustration of a clearfile given as a gift with an issue of shounen magazine special
-12 color splashes for the chapters themselves.
For a total of 23 illustrations of the Tsubasa World Chronicle series, as announced.

Now, what is to say about the illustrations from TRC?
Pretty much nothing, to be honest... They chose random artworks from the TRC series: some are covers from the Deluxe edition, some are covers from the regular edition, some are color pages from the chapters etc... all in all, those are all known pictures that were already all compiled in the 2 artbooks released years ago.

What actually pleased me, surprisingly, were the black and white chibis we got in the very last pages: chibis of the characters as waiters, original drawings of chibis used to make keychains/photo frame which were sold last year, and the little chibis that are actually the cover of a tumbler that could be won if you participated to a game included in one of the shounen magazine special.

Comments

[moms-art.livejournal.com]

so the TWC Illustration is good or not? did you satisfied buy it? i wanna to buy it, so i want to hear your opinion first hehe.

[cutesherry.livejournal.com]

Please consider first that my opinion is definitely biased: I didn't buy anything Tsubasa related since the series ended in 2009, so having this little book in my hands made me smile just seeing it :)

As I said in my review above, the book is the exact same dimensions as a TRC manga, and with only 68 pages, it's REALLY thin: 4 mm, and don't weight much too, obviously. It feels like you are not holding much in your hands to be honest ^^;

I confess it's a bit hard to think about it as an 'artbook', 'mini' or not.
Nonetheless, being the same dimensions as the manga: would you have complained or second guessed it if these color pages had been inside the manga volumes instead of compiled in a separate illustration book? Most people would have been happy to see these color pages included inside their manga book ^^ And this is exactly how I decided to think about it.

>Can you really appreciate the art when the dimensions are so reduced?
Obviously not! Bigger would definitely have been better, no question here!

>But still, is there any other way now, or in the future, to get the full collection of TWC artworks?
The answer is 'no' again: TWC Niraikanai Hen has ended already and CLAMP is totally immersed in CCS right now, the chances of them starting a new Tsubasa series and release enough illustrations to make a whole big A4 artbook (like the previously released 'album of reproduction 1 & 2') would take at least 4-5 years in the best case scenario. And I think the publishers knew it too: which is why they took the decision to release this mini artbook for the fans to have the clean color illustration, a 'better than nothing' solution.

All in all, I am happy to own it, though half are TRC old illustrations which I had really no interest in ^^;

I hope I answered your question! :D

[moms-art.livejournal.com]

Thankyou for your answer.

I decided to buy it, like you said before. it was so long time i did'nt hear anything about TWC and i really miss them. and think that maybe i will bored cz i know half of the artwork,I prefer think that the artbook can make me nostalgia and happy cz i really miss all the character.