Ironically, I already did a post on Mutsumi Sasaki’s second artbook; this here is his first book, a self-explanatory collection of his work from 1998-2005. In terms of style, it goes without saying that you can expect the same kind of content that was in Est – which is to say, a skillful combination of moe and bishoujo. His first book is a hardcover, which is nice, but it has appallingly few pages considering the hardcover format, and some of the content overlaps. Is it still worth it? That’s a fair enough question, but first let’s take a look through the scans.
You should know what I’m going to say by now: images are scanned by me and probably aren’t worth saving, but you can click on them to enlarge them.
First picture in the book, which instantly reminds me of Touhou.
I believe these two were somewhere in Est as well.
Background looks sorta cheesy, but I suppose that’s not important.
She almost looks like a character out of a shoujo manga. Not that I’m complaining.
I don’t have too many scans this time due to overlapping pics and the fact that some of these images are very similar to his Est artbook. That said, I shouldn’t undermine the quality of this publication; it’s well worth it if you’re into his style, and most of the pictures are not in Est either. It’s satisfying to look through, and though it’s a bit shorter than average, it’s still nothing to complain about.
The only problem I have is when I compare it to Est. While overlapping isn’t a huge deal, I can’t help but feel that his second book is better. I can’t tell if he’s grown from an artistic standpoint, but something about Est felt more full, more complete. It’s like a good sequel to a good game: they’re both good, but something about the second one feels more polished. It’s an ambiguous way of describing an artbook, but that’s pretty much how I feel about it.
To summarize, I’d recommend it if you like his character designs in general, but if you’re a casual fan or typical artbook collector, you’d be better off with Est. On the other hand, if for whatever reason you have money to burn and you already have Est, then you probably won’t regret your purchase; it’s simply a matter of what options are available to you.
~ ETERNAL
つづく
