Hello and welcome to another wonderful Guest Review Wednesday! Today we have a new Guest Reviewer today! tikkitavi is one of the friendly gang you’ll meet on the Okazu Discord, and he kindly offered to walk us through Nakatani Nio’s Yagate Kimi Ni Naru artbook. Please welcome tikkitavi and give him a warm welcome. The floor is yours, tikkitavi!

I like to say that I’ve been interested in Yuri since the days of Xena:Warrior Princess, but it took Bloom into You to spark my current regard for Yuri. I love the series on several levels, so when I discovered that Nakatani-sensei had an artbook named Astrolabe (アストロラーベ) available, naturally I had to add it to my collection.

In terms of content, this is a pretty complete snapshot of Bloom into You color and monochrome illustrations before 2020. The artbook was published in early 2020; given production lead times, it’s not surprising that it lacks images from later works such as the third Saeki Sayaka novel. I felt the lack most in that there isn’t a single image of Yuu, Touko, or Sayaka after high school in the artbook.

However, it includes promotional artwork, art for goods, SNS stickers, earlier Yuriten images, and the like, in addition to the expected book and video packaging art. (The SNS stickers and web art are particularly cute.) Most of the art features Touko and Yuu, plus a smattering involving Sayaka; for those interested in other characters, they appear quite rarely.

Beyond Bloom into You, it includes a couple of collaboration pieces that add characters from other series. There are also a handful of illustrations created by Nakatani-sensei for works such as a novel by Iruma-sensei (writer of the Saeki Sayaka novels) and art for the Ѐclair series.

There are only two pieces original to the artbook; the cover, and an extra end spread. A five-page chapter detailing the production of the cover art is a nice bonus, especially for artists and those interested in the steps involved in creating digital art. A photo of Nakatani-sensei’s work area augments this. Beyond this, Nakatani-sensei wrote captions for all the major works and a short afterword. I admit, I would have liked to see more new content, perhaps a short manga or the like.

Fans of the series, who understand the character’s relationships, will see the Yuri on almost every page; the weighted looks and intimate moments are a joy. Nakatani-sensei’s muted palette and clean imagery works well here. For those seeking anything more salacious than holding hands, they will need to look elsewhere.

Physically, the volume is typical for Japanese anime and manga artbooks. 128 pages, softcover, perfect bound, printed on a smooth heavy weight paper; a plastic slipcase pushes it slightly above average for the type. One could still wish for hardbound with a lay-flat binding, though that would be pretty uncommon (and expensive); but it would have helped with the two-page spreads quite a bit.

Ratings:

Production – 8
Content – 8
Yuri – 9
Service – 1 (a couple images of Yuu and Touko in swimsuits)

Overall – 8

Generally, I felt this was a quite nice but not exceptional artbook, a satisfactory addition to the library of anyone who appreciates
Nakatani-sensei’s work.

Erica here: Thank you very much! It’s good to know what the contents include! Artbooks are always a great mystery unless we get a chance to see inside. We appreciate you giving us this guided tour. ^_^ Astrolabe is available in print on Amazon JP, CD Japan, and as a e-book, on JP Kindle or Bookwalker!