You can always tell when I love an artist to distraction…I buy their artbooks. ^_^ I have so many that I never tell you about for lack of Yuri, like One Rainy Day by Wakamatsu Kaori – another artist whose postcards you may have gotten in a Lucky Box. Today we’re going to talk about Hoshino Lily, whose art exploded across your screen with her utterly gorgeous work on Mawaru Penguindrum.

Hoshino’s art is reminiscent of Saitou Chiho’s work, so you can totally see why Ikuhara pegged her to work on Penguindrum. The same long, gorgeous bodies, the same sensuality, but a completely different sensibility and color palette.

In Hoshino Lily Illustration Works (星野リリィイラスト集　宝石廻廊), this “Gallery of precious stones” includes work for advertising, color pages from manga magazines, anthologies and Comiket catalogs. There’s a fair amount of BL in the collection, a sprinkling of Yuri and straight couples and/or groups.  She’s great at implying intimacy without nudity.

If you enjoyed her sprawling figures and sensual atmosphere in Penguindrum, you’ll find this an enjoyable collection, as I did. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 9

We’re at the portion of my pile where almost all I have left are novels and miscellany. ^_^ My next order is weeks away, so if there’s a perceptible slowdown in reviews, don’t fear, there’s more to come. I’m about 2/3 of the way done with the Heartcatch Precure novel, and it’s better than expected.

Back in 2014, I admitted my fondness for artist Eri Kamijo’s work when I reviewed her artbook GIRLS. Well, she’s got a  new artbook out and it’s just magnificent.

Dear  is everything I like about her work and more.

The cover is one of her color studies, with judicious use of metallic color on the butterflies, to give the image depth. The book itself is a hardcover, with a delightful mix of her color studies, media illustrations,  and sketches. The color illustration art for various media included things like this a master image of a stunning Artemis for the Last Chronicle card game (which is a little less garish than the card image.)

There are a number of Yuri pictures in this collection, as well as a number of adorable straight couples.

Ultimately what I like best are her extremely clean, but natural pictures of random people doing everyday things, like having a morning cup of coffee or checking a wristwatch, in the section of the book labeled “Fashion.” There’s something about her work that just makes me take a deep breath and relax.

Ratings:

Art – 10

If you like pretty women and well-executed art, you can’t go wrong with Dear by Eri Kamijo.

One of the nerdliest things one can do in Japan after walking down the main drag of Akihabara, gaping at the tacky flashiness of it, is to get on the Chuo Line to Nakano. Right outside the North Entrance is a well-used looking shopping arcade, the Nakano Sun Mall. When you enter the arcade, it looks utterly normal with discount health and beauty goods and discount sock and shoe stores, interspersed by small fast food places, cafes and other places to rest one’s weary feet and get unhealthy food. Just like any mall anywhere.

But if you keep walking towards the back, then go up to the top floor and work your way down, you’ll discover the most amazingly rag-tag collection of stores that want to sell you old crap at fairly steep prices. ^_^ This is the home of the Nakano Mandarake, which is spread out in pieces among many other stores filled with fan favorites of days gone by, weird crap you think is weird, old toys, posters, albums, and other things that are not your obsession, but holy crap, are they selling that old Suica card for more than $500? (Yes, they were.)

There are a lot of collectibles stores. We tend to throw money at the Robot, Robot on the top floor for gashapon figurines that we want to pay a premium for, so we get the one we want and in the Mandarake book store for older printed material that we’ve never seen elsewhere. But if you’re into collectible cards, anime cels, train cards, trains, coins, cel phone customization, and of course, discount socks, Nakano Sun Mall is a great way to blow an afternoon and a lot of money. Pro tip for American shoppers: Don’t buy figurines here. Or indeed anywhere in Japan anymore. You can get them cheaper off Amazon and save yourself from carrying them home. In fact, don’t buy anything current or popular in Nakano. You will pay too much. Nakano Mandarake is best for the old, the obscure, the WTF and the OMG. This time I found both a WTF and an OMG. ^_^

The OMG was 2006 artbook called Akogare – Takahashi Makoto Art Collection, (あこがれ―高橋真琴画集) by Takahashi Makoto, who you may remember as the creator of proto-Yuri manga Sakura Namiki.   Takahashi-sensei’s style is incredibly distinctive, his girls are exceedingly stylish, whether they are western fairy tale princesses, or formally dressed Japanese girls. Their faces are round and healthy and pink cheeked, their eyes sparkle with joy.  Even when they face hardship, as they do in the retellings of well-known fairy tales, a slightly doll-like smile curves up their lips. These are girls who faces will never see wrinkles nor become careworn. Their beauty is eternal and unreal.

The collection is called Akogare, but I’m not sure if we, the reader, are meant to admire the beautiful china doll faces we’re seeing and the fairy tale princesses or we are being admired by the faces who smile at us from the page with fixed emotion. Girls are shown mostly in single portrait, staring directly at us, with the occasional fairytale, doll-faced prince as company.

The collection appears to span 1960 or so through 1990. From the mid-60s on, anyone would recognize the O-hime-sama look of the characters. And toward the mid-70s, his work developed a very baroque sensibility that was popular right into the 1990s.

Some of his best work, from the mid-20th century girl’s magazine Monthly Shoujo Friend is included. These pictures have faces that would play well even now in girls magazines.  There are a very few pieces from his work, Tokyo-Paris. Nothing, however from Sakura Namiki.

My favorite picture, in fact is the one on the back cover that shows two women walking through a garden, one turned to look at the other.

Ratings:

Overall – 8

For more information about Takahashi Makoto-sensei, current exhibits, etc., visit his Official Site. He’s still around, you can see him in some of the photos of the his exhibit last spring, カワイイの原点・高橋真琴展「ROOTS OF JAPANESE KAWAII」.

Above all, I’m delighted to have discovered this treasure. I’m fairly certain I would not have had the opportunity to see this collection without the acid trip down memory lane that is Mandarake. ^_^

So, what was the WTF? Wait, wait, we’ll get there….

If you have ever won a random prize package from Okazu, you may have received a postcard by the artist Eri Kamijo. I have a particular fondness for her work and every time I’m in Japan, I haunt the local Tokyu Hands for postcards by her, then I scan the images in for my screensaver and give the cards away. ^_^

There are many things I like about Kamijo’s work and I’m not entirely sure I can articulate them all. She enjoys drawing women, and it shows.  Her line work is appealing, her use of color is joyful and delicate. She draws with an adult sensibility, eschews service for beauty and shows women as strong, cute, bold, magical. A nice chunk of her art is Yuri-ish.

I discovered her artbook GIRLS while shopping at my local Mitsuwa bookstore and fairly shrieked with joy. When I opened the book up, I was blown away by a few of the pieces, and was thrilled at the whole. You can see some of her work here on her Gallery, including Madoka Magica fan art. The book includes other derivative works, such as pictures of Hatsune Miku and a Safire from Ribon No Kishi  that was created for Osamu Moet Moso Motto.

I’m sitting here paging through this book…again… and oohing and ahhing over the pictures, even as I write this review. If you like beautiful design, clean, attractive, elegant art, effective use of color and  appealing women, I highly recommend Eri Kamijo’s work.

Ratings:

Art – 10

I love this book.^_^

Thanks to Liz, who found this on Amazon.com as well: Girls – Eri Kamijo Illustrations Art Book. (The price includes its ride over from Japan.)