Last Exile – Aerial Log -

Posted by Zeb in Artbook Reviews on Dec 17th, 2005 | 0 comments

Title	Last Exile – Aerial Log -
Artist	VARIOUS/Range Murata
Published	20/02/2005
Publisher	GONZO/Victor Entertainment
Content	136 pages in total; Hardcover A break down of the sections of the book go thus: Visual Archive – 10 pages featuring cel art from the anime (2 to 3 images per page); Range Murata Works – 6 pages of black & white sketches by Range Murata of characters with notes; Story Index – 32 pages of notes and cel art (in colour) from various episodes in the anime; Staff Table Talk – 7 pages of text (in Japanese) from staff who worked on the anime including interview with Range Murata; Large Encyclopedia – 17 pages of text (in Japanese) with a few black & white sketches; Mechanic Report – 16 page colour guide to the various ships from the anime; World Report – 14 pages of text (in Japanese) with a few sketches on the world of Last Exile; Setting Date – 31 pages of black & white sketches by the animators of characters; Staff & Cast – 2 page listing of staff and cast of the Last Exile anime
Extras	Double sided poster; one side featuring the cover art by Range Murata, the other side featuring art by an unknown artist
Cover Price	¥3200
ISBN	4-8443-5783-2
Rate	Poor
Purchase	??/??/2005 \| Graphic Novel Cafe \| NZ$??.??
Comments	I will freely admit that when I bought this artbook, I was looking forward to seeing pages on pages of beautiful artwork done by Range Murata for this anime. Considering he was the character designer for the anime, and that his art was featured on every single Japanese dvd cover, and that he had done so much work for all his ‘Spheres’ doujinshis, it was a huge dissapointment for me when I went through this book, and discovered that out of the 136 pages in it, only 6 pages featured art by Murata, and black & white sketch art to boot. What the!? This was supposed to be the definitive book for Last Exile, and as such it should have contained more of his work, or atleast the images used for the Japanese dvd covers! Gah… despite this dissapointment, I’d like to point out that I did not let my bias affect my rating of this book. As per the content run down above, this book contains a wealth of information on the world of Last Exile, but unless you can read Japanese fluently, the book is quite worthless to most Western fans of this anime. With such a large amount of text, and large sections where it’s only text, I find this book completely unhelpful in terms of appreciating the anime and the work that went into it. The 32 pages of screen caps from the anime may be in colour, but the size of each screen cap (approx. 5cm x 3cm) are so small, and you have about 21 squished into each 2 page spread, including the accompanying text; that you cannot really appreciate anything at all. This book is the epitome of an anime fanbook gone bad, it just comes with prettier packaging. Presented in hard cover, the wrap around dust jacket is made of a lightly textured matt card, while the pages within are a slightly glossy variety. The poster is nothing special either, featuring the same art thats on the cover on one side, and somewhat mediocre art by another unknown artist on the other side. For the cost of this book, you’d be better off trying to source one of Range Murata’s Spheres doujinshi books, or getting your hands on the Last Exile Vol.7 R1 Special Postcards which feature the cover art Murata did for the Japanese dvd release. Only get this book if you are a serious fan of the anime, and have to have everything Last Exile related.

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