By
TReina -
Friday, July 6, 2018
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I'm back for another visual artbook review and this time it's SHIROBAKO and the glorious thing is that this entire book is simply filled from start to end with glorious illustrations of the cast! The main focus of this book is of course the main five girls (or more specifically, Aoi, Ema and Rii-chan) but fret not because the other cast members also have their own share of screen time in this illustration book as well!
The cover has a very beautiful glittery shine that is on both the front and back covers. However, if you don't like it, this same illustration is present in a page inside of the book itself!
Firstly, the book treats us to a range of illustration featuring different cast members that worked together with the main five during the series, such as the artists, producers, directors as well as other members of the production team!
Following up, we have solo shots of the main five girls to act as part of a pre-introduction before we move on to the main bulk of the book, which would be the illustrations.
Most illustrations only take up a single page and while they are usually unique illustrations in the book, there are two instances where very similar artworks are used. One of them is seen in the image above, where the left has Aoi and Ema in more conservative clothing than the illustration on the right.
There are quite a few artworks which span two full pages and in many of such instances, the other cast members would have a cameo appearance as well!
There are actually quite a few illustrations featuring the female cast in hot springs and also at the beach (swimsuits) which shouldn't be that strange considering that the main cast members are all females :/ Otherwise, the other recurring theme in this book would include donuts, which is the favorite get-together food for the main five!
I totally love works like this where they feature everyone!!!
A little more than halfway through the book, we are rewarded with another set of solo shots. The main five girls are given two pages each and I've chosen to show the illustrations dedicated to Rii-chan.
The other female cast members that are essential to the series are given a single page each. I do wish that equal love was given to them though, as they grew on me quite a bit as well.
The males are typically grouped together into a single illustration though...
In addition, we also have several chibi to keep us company and while the left illustration of them in their usual outfit is quite normal, it's nice to have them in their yukata outfits! These look psyched up to be turned into merchandise so I hope we'll get rubber straps of these at some point.
One thing I really love about Shirobako is how they always take the extra step to showcase the behind the scenes of anime production. In the OVA, we even had the chance to watch the series that the Shirobako cast worked on, such as Aria, so being able to have illustrations of the Shirobako cast with characters in these works really help to increase the feels for the series!
Enjoyment
While some of the illustrations are repeated and can be found online, it's definitely fresh and good to have a physical copy of these illustrations as well as many more which are new. I love collecting artbooks and I think that this book definitely gave a very new outlook to what Shirobako had to offer.
I wished that there would be more artworks that encompassed the anime which the cast was working on throughout the series as I did find their storylines (in the OVA) to be interesting and the design of the characters were amazing as well. I would have loved to know and learn more about them.
~ Reina-rin
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