Premium Gallery Pieces 1
Posted by Zeb in Artbook Reviews on Aug 8th, 2009 | 9 commentsAs a fan of the Japanese artist Masamune Shirow, I have been following his work for almost 12 years. When Seishinsha announced the release of a new artbook by Shirow, I was of course excited. I already knew that most of the art in the book contained re-prints of work, this didn’t bother me so much as I was glad to see something coming out of the Shirow arena, after almost 4 years of nothing.
Around A5 in size, it comes as a hardcover with thick glossy pages amd a sturdy dust jacket; the start and end pages are a thick textured red card. 87 pages of art in total, some with full page spread, and some with just a square in a black background; the presentation is lovely.
The art itself is a mixture of art from previous Intron Depot artbooks, calendars, Comic Gum covers; and strangely enough some images from Dominion Tank Police and Jashin Hunter. The characters are all females in either fantasy, tech, school girl or military gear. The highlight of this book, for both old and new fans of Shirow, are the inclusion of the three Exon Depot stories.
Exon Depot is a series of three full colour short “silent manga” that Shirow drew.
Judgement – first published inside Comic Gaia #12 1992 and re-published by Penthouse Comix Vol. 2, #24 (1997 July/August).
Wild Mountain Cherry – published by Comic Gaia #8 and re-published in A Decade of Dark Horse #4.
ARMS – published as a premium calendar.
By the time ARMS was released, the other two were nearly impossible to find; so Pieces presents an affordable alternative to fans.|
Another bonus of this book, for fans of Shirow especially, is that Pieces shows the progression of his art from when he first started getting famous, to where he is today.
If you are new to Masamune Shirow and want a nice affordable introduction to him as an artist, I strongly suggest getting this book.
Release: March 1st 2009
ISBN: 978-4-87892-363-0
Recommended Retail: 1440 yen
Artist: Masamune Shirow
The last image shows the artbook without the dust jacket.
| If you wish to purchase this book, please follow the links to the left to purchase from Amazon Japan. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review. Thankyou! Never ordered from Amazon Japan before? This handy guide will help you. |
9 Responses to “ “Premium Gallery Pieces 1”
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About Me
sexy ^6=^
Ya ain’t seen nothing! You should see some of his actual raunchy work
btw its weird, it won’t let me comment on LJ but I can read posts fine. Also is Neo down for you too?
It is pretty tame for Shirow ^_^
Very nice though.
Heheh true true, but then I didn’t show all the images in the book either did I?
I know LJ is having problems. I haven’t had any trouble with seeing, posting etc, but I have a very much delayed notifications. I’ve only just got the message about your blog being updated. Yeah hours later. As for neo, no problems for me.
Cool. Now there’s another art book reference site to look to.
The problem with Masamune Shirow is all her female characters look the same, although the costume design is fantastic.
Actually there’s a button on the top right of Amazon Japan that translate (partially) the pages into English. After that the checkout process is in English. For existing Amazon customers, their information is brought over automatically to Amazon Japan as well.
I was about to say – yes pretty tame for Shirow. But dammit I still love it
Nice review.
Oh I have this book!
It’s small (but not too small) and the hardcover makes it nice and solid.
Some repeat artwork, to be expected, but I was glad my favourite Shirow image was included.
When reading this I came to the conclusion that Shirow has 4 main styles (or variants of his style).
Yum!