Many of you already know that I’m a big fan of Aoi Nishimata, so it should come as no surprise that when preorders for her Vivid artbook came up, my credit card was already out of my wallet. Aoi Nishimata is a female artist who has worked on characters for visual novels including Shuffle!, Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai, Final Approach, Tick! Tack!, and Really? Really!

Released back in December 2010 by Kadokawa Shoten, Vivid is a collection of Aoi Nishimata’s illustrations stretching back to 2001. The book contains 144 pages, mostly of full colour illustrations, a bargain for 3000 yen.

Vivid comes with one very exquisite dust jacket. I don’t think I need to describe now gorgeous the dust jacket is, just look at it yourself. The gold lettering in the title gives it a sense of sophistication, and the red string tied to the girl’s finger actually runs through the entire book (a very nice touch in my opinion).

The actual front and back covers of the book are more simple, with a checkered pink/white pattern and Aoi Nishimata’s trademark cats. You’ll also notice that the book is hardcover, which helps protect the pages.

The first illustration is an extremely large (poster-size) fold out of a beautiful woman in her wedding gown. I should point out that this isn’t an actual poster, it’s meant to stay in the book. The paper used is very thick and heavy, this book was made to last.

On the reverse side is a bikini girl more suited for a dakimakura cover.

Now we get into the actual book. As I mentioned earlier, the red string from the dust jacket goes through the book, and the first instance is on a piece of wax paper protecting the inside cover illustration.

Here is the illustration without the wax paper in front. Hearts and flowers are major themes in Aoi Nishimata’s works, so this is an excellent introductory illustration.

On the second page is a blue variant of the same image that was on the dust jacket. Before I go any further, I should mention that Aoi Nishimata is famous for “recycling” her illustrations, just look at the gif below.

Is that a bad thing? No, I think it is done intentionally because it works. If you have a style that people like (even if it’s just the same face), then stick with it, even variants of the same thing can look completely different, which we will see later.

The book is split into 5 different sections: Colorful, Rouge, Cerulean, Scarlet, and Peach. The illustrations in each section are mainly the colour of their title (ie: rouge = red, cerulean = blue, etc.) and I will be going through them in order.

I felt like including this image because I liked the girls from Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai.

Here is an illustration of the girls from Shuffle Essence+. If you look closely at Kaede’s dress, you’ll notice that the pattern on it doesn’t change at the folds. This is one of the unique aspects about Aoi Nishimata’s illustrations, patterns on clothing are never broken by folds or layers. You could argue that it’s being lazy, but I find the patterns actually draw your attention to the clothing more if they’re unbroken.

Here is an excellent example of Aoi Nishimata “recycling” an image to make something even better. Besides the colour contrast, subtle changes like the facial expression and flower petals make it look like two different girls rather than a mirror image.

Like I said, flowers are a major theme in Aoi Nishimata’s illustrations.

While I don’t like finding fault with one of my favourite artists, I can’t deny that there aren’t any. Aoi Nishimata draws beautiful girls and beautiful dresses, but comparitively, her skill at drawing hands and clear liquids is horrid (but still better than anything I could do). The girl on the right holding the wine glass shows both of Aoi Nishimata’s weak points. Fingers are often deformed and/or disproportionate, and liquids never seem to refract light properly.

Primula is probably one of Aoi Nishimata’s most-drawn characters, probably because she loves cats too.

These are some of the older illustrations that Aoi Nishimata has done. I remember having a couple of them on my computer before the great hard drive failure of 2003. Since then, Aoi Nishimata’s style has changed to include more attention-grabbing dresses and detailed backgrounds.

Here is another colour variation illustration. The thing they are holding is a heart. One of the downsides of this book and many others is that there is no white space left between the binding and the start of the images. This means that illustrations spanning two pages will always have a section through the middle that you will never see.

You can probably guess that we’re in the cerulean section of the book now.

The red string continues its way through the book. Looking at it now, I think it’s supposed to connect all of the “princesses” in the book.

The scarlet section of the book featured a number of illustrations from the visual novel Really? Really!

It’s not often you see cat girls in Aoi Nishimata’s illustrations. I love how she made the tails and ears look furry rather than solid. In the same illustration, you can also see the obvious difference in size between the fingers on the blonde’s left and right hands.

I had to include this illustration because I simply love Kaede, and I think her bikini’s cute. Unfortunately, it appears Aoi Nishimata’s struggle with fingers also applies to feet.

Some of you may recognize this illustration from the Maid Cookie review I did a while back.

More colour variants.

The final illustration is a princess with the red string tied to her finger. There is also a message here, but I have no clue what it says.

After flipping through Vivid several times, I have to say that it is one of the most impressive artbooks I own. The book itself was assembled with quality in mind, and the sheer number of illustrations made me feel like it was money well spent. Aoi Nishimata may not be a perfect artist, but her character designs and magnificent use of colour more than make up for the areas where she lacks. I think Vivid is worth getting even just for the princess illustrations with the red string. They are definitely the highlight of the book and the way it ties all of the sections together was very creative.

If you’re interested, the book is still in stock at Hobby Search.

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“May peace prevail in the world.”

That is the motto used by the main characters of Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai, Takashi, Hayato, and Shuusuke. Its meaning is clear, but its significance is kept shrouded in mystery.

The thing that first drew me to OreTsuba were the character designs, which were done by one of my favourite artists, Aoi Nishimata. A lot of Nishmata’s work is for eroge, and OreTsuba happens to be one of them, so before the anime even aired, I knew to expect a lot of fanservice. If you can’t handle dirty talk, panty shots, or accidental exposures, then I can tell you right now that you won’t like OreTsuba. Beneath all of that fanservice, however, there is a story about the struggle to restore  peace to a fragmented world.

One of the downfalls of OreTsuba is that the first few episodes failed to deliver any semblance of a plot. The viewer is overloaded with a wave of characters by following the daily lives of 3 distinct men with seemingly no relation to each other. It becomes rather cumbersome trying to keep track of who’s whom and what exactly is happening. Admittedly, if it were not for Nishimata’s character designs, I would have dismissed this anime as trash and stopped at the first episode.

It’s not until the 4th episode that we see the method to the madness. At this point we discover that Takashi, Hayato, and Shuusuke are in fact the split personalities of the same person (whom I’ll refer to as Haneda). Things start to get interesting from there as the actions of one personality can affect the daily life of another. OreTsuba also has an interesting take on how split personalities work, with some of them able to communicate with each other, some that are unaware of other personalities, and some that are so dormant that no one knows if they exist or not. The fantasy world of Gretagard, within the mind of Haneda, also brings into question the mental stability of some of the personalities.

While I liked the idea of Haneda’s different personalities interacting with each other, I thought it lacked some elements that would’ve made it believable. First of all, one of Haneda’s personalities is always active, no matter that time of day it is. The human brain does run non-stop, but that does not apply to the body. Haneda is split between Takashi during the day, Shuusuke in the afternoon/evening, and Hayato at night, all of whom are out and about when they are in control. I am surprised that the body did not collapse from fatigue. Secondly, it is impossible to figure out how each personality came to be. There were no hints as to what kind of trauma caused Haneda’s mind to split. The amount of time spent on the activities of each character (Hayato looking for Kobato’s bike, for example) could have been better utilized explaining the complex history of Haneda rather than condensing it all into the last episode.

With regards to the fanservice, most of the time it’s just some panty flashing, but there are some more extreme moments. X-ray vision and the need for “keep out” signs is present in most of the episodes. The most adult scene was when one of the girls “extracted” some poison from Takashi (I’ll leave it to you to figure out what that means). I guess one of the ways this series increases the number of girls that they can include in the cast is by giving each personality their own mini-harem. In essence, you have 3 harems worth of girls all in one anime.

In the end, OreTsuba felt like it was an anime being pulled in two drastically different directions. At times, it seems like nothing more than some near-nude anime girls playing around, but the next instance it seems like a probe into the depths of the human psyche. The result is a series with a great idea that failed to deliver. If you like Aoi Nishimata’s designs and some fanservice to go with it, then I don’t think you would be disappointed with OreTsuba, but for the average viewer, you’re better off with a different series.

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Some of you newer readers may not know this, but I travelled to Japan for a month last year and brought back a bunch of goodies, this was one of them. I found this unique product in a store in Akihabara, in fact, almost all of the large anime stores were selling it. Prices ranged from 600-800 yen, but I can’t remember what I paid for it.

As you can probably infer from the name, this is a box of cookies. If anyone can read Japanese, maybe you could tell me what ingredients they used in this. I also noticed that these cookies have expired for quite a while now, just goes to show how long I’ve had it tucked away.

 Before I get around to the actual cookies, lets take a closer look at the box because really, that’s the only reason why someone would buy this.

The font for “Maid in Tokyo” is some kind of stylized handwriting, the type you would expect to see when you think of high-class maids and butlers. Unfortunately, the name “Maid Cookie” and the flavours “Milk & Maple” don’t look anything special, taking away from the classiness of the box.

The main feature on the cover is this cute little maid cat girl, which was illustrated by famed artist Aoi Nishimata. Some of you may know that I am a big fan of Nishimata’s work from my artbook posts. Her most famous works are probably the characters from the eroge/anime Shuffle, but she has worked on other series including all of Shuffle’s spin-off series, Final Approach, and the currently airing Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai. If her name was not on this box, I probably would’ve walked right past it without a second thought, just like Clannad bread, Haruhi juice, and Evangelion candy.

If you have ever seen a collection of Aoi Nishimata’s works, you’ll notice that besides drawing cute girls, she also likes to draw these adorable cats. Anyone who has played or watched Shuffle should remember that Primula always carries around a cat plushie, which was probably added in due to Nishimata’s influence.

On the back of the box is also a short bio on Nishimata and the URL for her website. Sadly, I can’t read Japanese so I can’t translate what any of it says.

The sides of the box have the name along with the cat girl from the front.

After thoroughly examining the box, it came time to finally open it. Considering the rough handling this box went through on the flight back and all the dents on it, I was expecting to find cookie bits all over the place. I was pleasantly surprised to see this:

The cookies were all individually wrapped and nicely laid out in three columns. The inside cover of the box also included more illustrations (albeit line art) of the cat girl with diffrent expressions and of the cats.

Here’s a close-up of the illustrations. My favourite out of the bunch is the second from the right, on the bottom row. She has what I consider the most “moe” expression.

The cookies are separated into columns using two dividers, with 4 cookies per column. They’re also laid out in such a way that the rough-handling that this box got on the flight back didn’t toss them around at all.

There are two flavours that come in the box. The beige-coloured packes contain milk-flavoured cookies while the chocolate-coloured packages contain maple-flavoured cookies. The illustration is the same on both types, but I would have liked a bit more variety.

Now on to the cookies themselves.

The first package I opened had a cracked cookie, so I guess it didn’t come out of the flight back unscatched. It was a milk-flavoured cookie and had an illustration of one of the cats on the inside cover. While these cookies are past their expiry date, I figure they should be fine to eat. If I disappear tomorrow though, I probably died from food poisoning.

The cookie was a bit oily, but it smelled like fresh cookies and had just the right level of crunchiness, not so hard that you get crumbs all over the place, but not soft either. I was also shocked by the fact that it tasted just as it smelled, fresh. The “milk” flavour actually just means regular, because it tasted like a regular cookie.

Next up was one of the maple cookies. It looks exactly the same as a milk cookie except for the illustration on the top. It had pretty much all of the same characteristics as the first cookie. A notable difference was the smell of maple, though I didn’t actually taste it. In fact, the maple cookie actually tasted a bit burnt to me, not as good as the milk cookie. Both cookies left my mouth with an oily feel, so I’m assuming they used a lot of oil to make them.

So was this box of Maid Cookies worth the 600-800 yen? As a big fan of Aoi Nishimata, I say yes. The illustrations and the packaging are lovely and would make a nice display for guests at an anime meet or any other otaku-themed gathering. The cookies themselves aren’t bad either, they certainly don’t go stale after a year.

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Along with E2′s (Etsu’s) Girls Girls Girls! volume 2 illustration collection, I also bought the volume 3 illustration collection. This volume focuses on the cover girls of all the E2 Magazines from volumes 1-16, the poster girls from volumes 1-15, and the pick-up girls from volumes 1-7.

On the inside cover is another illustration of the same waitress girl on the front cover, but with different coloured clothing and background. The illustration was done by artist Tony Taka, who seems to have quite a few of his works published in E2 Magazine. If anyone out there think this girl looks familiar, it’s because Tony Taka did the character designs for ”Sora no Iro Mizu no Iro”, which you might have seen. You can see the similarities in the screenshot below (especially in the eyes and face):

The book also features other artists that regularly appear in E2 Magazine. Here is an illustration done by Aoi Nishimata, who worked on the character designs for SHUFFLE!, Tick Tack!, and Really? Really! I guess that’s why all of her works remind me of Kaede, Asa, Nerine, Sia, and Primula ^.^

This illustration was done by Misakura Nankotsu. I like the school uniforms that the girls are wearing, it reminds me of School Rumble. In case you can’t read the text behind them, it says “Kumanozawa Foolish Sisters”.

Carnelian’s work seems to always have very large oppai, if you don’t believe me just look up “Kao no Nai Tsuki” (“Moonlight Lady”) or “Yami to Boshi to Hon no Tabibito”, note that both are NSFW.

Another illustration by Tony Taka. What I like about his works are the soft faces that his characters have.

Can anyone who reads kanji tell me the name of this artist:

Tinkle’s work is also very well-known, and you can probably tell why from the illustration below. All the detail put into all the frilly clothing really makes their art stand out. There was also another one of their works on the adjacent page, but with bare oppai showing, I thought it best not to post it here.

A girl in a white dress with a pink umbrella taking a stroll through the woods. Sounds like a picture-perfect scene, and Aoi Kimizuka portrayed it very well here.

I really like this illustration done my Kantoku. He also does quite a few illustrations of popular anime characters.

Another work my Tinkle. Notice the frilly clothing.

Somehow pink hair and green eyes seem to fit perfectly when drawn anime/manga style, but look so weird in real life.

This fox-girl was done by Hiro Suzuhira, who also worked on the character designs for SHUFFLE! alongside Aoi Nishimata. It looks like Suzuhira provides a little  more fanservice with a bit of panty flashing :)

Here’s another work by Hira Suzuhira that I just loved. The detail in this illustration is amazing, especially the little flowers on the girl’s fingernails.

Once again I can’t read the name of this artist, but I like the art style.

Here’s another piece by Misakura Nankotsu, this time there’s no school uniforms. I wonder how often you’d find a girl lying on the floor in her underwear and smiling at you.

This girl reminds me of Nunnaly from Code Geass, drawn by Aoi Kimizuka:

More of Tony’s work. I think he likes tall, slim girls with brown hair.

This one looks really nice, but a bit scary at the same time.

Cute nekomimi girl by Teinkuru.

And at the last section of the book are the E2 pick-up girls:

Back cover:

Like the second volume of the Girls Girls Girls! illustration collection, this one was definitely worth the buy. The book contains 103 pages with over 70 illustrations, some of which span two pages. I’m really looking forward to the 4th volume now ^.^

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At first I thought she was a character from Shuffle, but then I realized that there were no girls that looked like her. She was actually drawn by the artist that designed all of the girls for Shuffle, Aoi Nishimata. Aoi is this edition’s featured artist, hence why her work is on the front cover.

On the first page we are greeted by a rather colourful image of what appears to be a girl wearing some fruit under the sea which is under a cake? I never really understood art, I just know it’s pretty. There’s a url for a site at the bottom left corner of the page that you can visit for more of these types of images.

The first section of the magazine is devoted to Aoi Nishimata and shows off some of the characters that she has designed.

I like this page because it has my two favourite characters from Shuffle, Kaede and Sia ^.^

I don’t know much (actually I don’t know anything) about any of the other artists in the magazine so I just picked out a few works that I thought were well done:

Extremely cute catgirl, I’m glad her tail is “censoring” this image though. The border services examined this magazine while it was being shipped to me and if there had been anything inappropriate showing, it would have been disposed of, luckily there wasn’t.

Some of you may recognize the following two images from the Girls Avenue section of previous Megami Magazines.

There were quite a few shimapan (striped pantsu) works in this issue. I picked out the two that I liked the best:

On the back cover of the magazine is some advertising for Fortune Arterial. I never got the point of those kinds of games, they’re mostly text so you don’t really get to do very much.

And of course, as always, the magazine came with a two-sided poster.

The first side has the girl on the cover drawn by Aoi Nishimata. I think it’s a fitting poster for this time of year when there’s still snow falling outside.

The other side of the poster has School Swim Suit Mecha Nurse Girl Nana by Eiji Komatsu. I don’t know much about her other than that she’s getting her own figure made by Orchid Seed soon.

I liked the artwork shown in this issue of Creators more than the previous one, but I guess it all depends on your personal preference. I really liked the girls from Shuffle, so it was nice to see some more characters made by the same artist.

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