Fabrica Theologiae Trinity Blood Illustrations

As per the pictures below, the entire package comes housed in a custom made box, and within, the book is nestled in bubble wrap to protect it. Lifting it out, you’ll find the book encased in a thick black hard cardboard slipcase with the title of the book, and the artist’s name printed in gold foil in a caligraphic script; the title printed on a thick gold plate. Slipping the actual book out, you’ll find the book has a thick hard cover, covered in a soft black velvet. The title of the book and the artist are again embossed onto the cover with gold foil. The book is just over an inch thick, and A4 in size.
The opening pages include an index of sorts, and then you’re straight into the artwork itself.

Page after page of beautifully detailed artwork, featuring all the main characters from Trinity Blood novel, of which THORES Shibamoto drew all the illustrations. While the anime itself looks amazing in terms of character design, the illustrations in this book provide something the animation just couldn’t. So much fine detail, and an amazing use of colour. I can’t begin to describe the detail the artist puts into each piece, nothing is left out.
Truly, I hadn’t really known of this artist’s work prior to seeing this book, but I can now call myself a fan without hesitation.

The reason why I don’t give this book the highest rating though, is because while the book is big, out of the 256 pages, you’ll only find 128 pages of illustrations. Why? Because most of the images are seperated by blank pages. When you open the book, you open it not in the vertical/portrait manner you normally open an artbook (left to right, or right to left) but horizontally/landscape. As you flip through the pages, not only do you quickly discover how heavy the book is, but it’s the top “page” is blank, while the bottom page contains the illustration, with only 9 images which are spread over two pages. I can see why they did it this way, the book being so heavy, it would be utterly tedious/tiresome to constantly flip the book around to appreciate the image on each page. That doesn’t stop me from feeling dissapointed that there is so much wasted space, especially considering the price of this book.

There is a 2 page interview with THORES Shibamoto at the very end of this book, this being the main bulk of text in the book. Everything else is just images images images

This is a massive book, but I think it’s worth getting if you’re looking for something different. The presentation of the book is first class, but because of it the price of the book may be beyond some people. Fingers crossed they release a “regular” version of this book; but in the mean time, get this if you have the chance and the money.