「Book Review」Love Live! Movie: Visual Artbook

「Book Review」Love Live! Movie: Visual Artbook

By TReina - Monday, February 13, 2017 - No Comments

Ever since the introduction of Aqours, fans of Love Live! has understood that the fandom is approaching its demise. Even the game has slowed down the release of cards from 1 set in 2 events to 4. Nevertheless, Bushimo has turned the majority of its attention to Aqours, leaving Mu's with the shorter end of the stick -- that is, a new team for their art.

Honestly, I am not a very big fan of Aqours. I do have my best girls there (Riko and Maru) but even they can't compete with the place Mu's had in my heart. Furthermore, I dislike about half of Aqours cast compared to Mu's, and find the obsession with You too heavy even when contrasted against Maki's, hence limiting the goods that are produced and the costumes featured in the goods to those You-centric such as Koi ni Naritai Aquarium. Perhaps if You were my best girl, I would have different sentiments, but she isn't so... *shrugs*

Seeing as I am so reluctant to get that many Aqours goods (I have a few), I decided to stop the artbook collecting with Mu's. My last batch that came in is the one with the Movie (this review) and the illustration book Vol. 4.

It's no secret that Honoka is my third best girl in Mu's and that might have made me slightly biased but she looks so cute here! I really do like the Angelic Angel outfits though they might have become slightly overused!

From here on, I'll be diving into a review of this book but do note that I will not be providing scanlations of any sort and neither will I be providing any clean image of any, let alone all, the pages of the book. If you wish to purchase the book, it's still on Amazon.jp (where I got my copy from) and they do ship directly to Singapore.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get down to business!

This is the book cover and it comes with only Honoka. This is the front and the other side only stretches on her illustration to her back. Something special about this would be that the cover is actually shiny, except for Honk), making it a good statement piece to grab attention if displayed.

Removing the actual cover gives this pink cover of the book itself, decorated with items that have slight links to Love Live! and the movie where they went overseas. I don't actually see any strong connections so if anyone has a clue do let me know.

As with most of their illustrations, the first page comes with a poster of the cover, which is that of Honoka. If anyone is wondering how the other side of the cover looks like, here's a clue. Unfortunately, I only gotten myself a single copy and will not be removing this poster. My rule of thumb is to have at least 2 books before I consider butchering a copy for pages.

First comes slight recaps of the movie with some screencaps and description. Maybe it'll bring back some good memories of the movie!

Next up are the songs featured in the movie, followed by a front-side-back view of their costumes. I have never known or understood what criteria are needed for choosing the screencaps because look at that Honoka side-profile, she's anatomically hideous. I'm sure there are better screencaps they can come up with than that, honestly.

Other than Angelic Angel, other songs like SUNNY DAY SONG and Bokutachi wa Hitotsu no Hikari were also featured.

As if this whole book isn't already about memories!! The next section features an introduction to the 9 girls one by one. I swear they have this in every single one of their books.

For this section I took a picture of Honoka's page, but rest assured the other girls have their own double-page introductions too.

Seiyuus are up next and they have their own smaller small corner. This is more of an interview section and each seiyuu strikes a pose at the end of the page. I like how Emitsun is displaying how to perfectly pull off the strange anatomy in SIF cards, while Nanjo is just being all stiff~

More images of the 9 girls up next and most of them are individual. Here's where we take a memory trip down to when Love Live's art isn't so polished. But then again, they go back to this style once in a while (Initial Mu's SSRs, I'm staring at you guys) so it might not just be an ancient thing.

 And to zoom in.

 Nico are you feeling fine? You look like you're about to fall. 

Here, hold my hand for support.

This is the "Just for Laughs" corner because here's where Bushimo actually listed explicitly what Movie goods there are. It might have been a good catalog if I were interested in getting them all and keeping track of what I have and will buy, but I'm not and so this looks like a heavy marketing scheme, that in my honest opinion, fails.

It's just a waste of space really. I'd rather get more art or even the grotesque screencaps Bushimo likes to insert randomly.

 Oh look, something that actually looks cute! 

Too bad I have it already, I guess...

Following that we have a group art of Printemps--

 Lilywhite--

and BiB---?!?!

 WHO

 WHO IS THIS?!

[x] Twintails

[x] Red Ribbons

[x] Black hair and Red eyes

Oh, it's Nico.

Please don't do this to Nico, Bushimo...

Collab artwork up next!

An illustration of Nico that finally gives her cuteness justice.

I know this exists, but it's just hilarious.

And more goods. Seriously, Bushimo?

Worth of book 7/10

I say worth based on how much I think the book is worth the money I spent on it, which was about 2500+ yen. It isn't a lot but there are better things I could have gotten with the same amount. Though, do take my words with a pinch of salt as I'm rather out of the Love Live! fandom already and I'm more or less done with the things Klab and Bushimo has been pushing out to milk money from this fandom. That being said, this book was collected because it's the second and last Movie thing I own and I got this as a form of closure to the Mu's part. Despite this, I don't expect myself to go running to the Aqours side anytime soon, if ever, either.

What did I find nice about this book?
I love the cover. It was more than half of the reason why I got the book and the A3 poster inside of Honoka, that's amazing. I enjoyed looking through the songs and the outfits. Love Live outfits are usually cute, I'll give them that. In addition, I enjoyed the collab art also -- not so much of the artstyle but more of realizing collabs I never knew existed otherwise.

What did I not like about this book?
The art gets a bit wonky at times. They like to revert back to the ancient, strange looking art styles at times, evident by all my nico-picking. But they are really just a few of them in here. Screencap choices are strange, as usual. I should have gotten over it a few books back but I haven't. This book had a repeated screencap too, which was the Eli Angelic Angel screencap in the Song corner, repeated in her character introductions. Not a big point, but repeated screencap that's glaringly obvious...

And last but not least, the catalog of goods. That's ridiculous. I understand that this is a book about the Movie and people might enjoy looking at the array of goods provided but that's not an excuse of tossing in the Goods page... Twice.

Would I buy this if given the choice?
Quite frankly, I would. For the Honk cover and poster.

~ Reina-rin

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