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Well, checking in here for the first time in... a while. Things have been going pretty well. Last night I finished the paperwork for making an offer on a house! I'm not sure they'll accept it, but it's worth a try. I've been looking at homes for several months now, and decided to pull the trigger on one finally. The process has been quite an experience, though I mean that in a good way as it's been a relatively painless experience. If this one doesn't pan out I still have a few months left on my apartment lease to hold me over while I explore other options. Holiday break was nice... I took a few days off work and pretty much just vegged for the week (made easy thanks to a front that blew in, man I love sleeping in when it's cold). Back at the office today in body only; brain is very much still in vacation mode, heh. On my way to work this morning I was thinking about how long it's been since I did any writing... well, that wasn't code/work/forum/etc. Over the holiday break I was doing some reading, part novel, part Japanese grammar study, and it just had me thinking about language again. I may have to dig up my old story drafts from college and work those over if I even still have them (if not, I remember enough to reconstruct the parts I'd keep). One thing that kinda hit me a while back like this lightbulb coming on was just how far down you can boil most stories down to a basic level, and then build from there. I mean, I've always known this, but for some reason I was always fighting this urge to go backwards, to start with complicated and try to make something simpler out of it. Tags: life
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A package was waiting for me when I got home from work last night. Without further ado, SHAFT quality:
| Right out of the box, even still in the bubble wrap, the Production Note looks impressive. The weight (almost 4.5lb) was not a surprise, but actually holding the thing in my hand, yeah, this is no cheap couple-dozen-page paperback here. From the outside, it looks like a very sturdy and well designed package up to par with expectations of something with this kind of price tag. |
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| The grey and black contrast well and give the packaging a "tome" look, while the cutout in the grey slip case leaves a splash of maroon in the center, with a glittery Madoka sparkling when the light hits and Inucurry's "Madoka Runes" peeking out along the spine. The front and back "spines" share the same layout, with different colors. I'm not sure where I'll park this thing yet, but if it goes in my bookshelf like a normal book, this classy design will be a suitable forward face. |
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| Taking off the grey sleeve (which is made of a sturdy cardboard stock about 1mm thick), you can see the rest of the black slip-cover thing (of the same cardboard material) and the rest of the text, including the runes spelling out 'Madoka Magica' down the length of the cover. Also, RUFFLES because you can never have too many RUFFLES! |
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| Prying back the matte black encasing, we finally get to the actual book cover itself, a bold, glossy dark red hardback, and this time the runes are a reflective silver with white lettering below and inside. The cover seems to scratch very easily, as just unpacking and repacking the book a few times since yesterday evening has already left several hairline scratches that are not hard to see in lighting bright enough to be reading the book. I would recommend not lying the cover directly on surfaces such as wood or even rough cloth if you wish to keep the cover from being scratched up. |
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| Flipping open the cover, two things immediately stood out. First, how the front inside cover of this book showcases what is one of the last frames in the entire show, though here we have silvery silhouettes. Secondly, as you can sort of see in the picture, the hardback cover is actually only attached to the back of the book binding. The spine and front cover are not attached, and the inner binding is actually more like a paperback. Perhaps the book was designed this way in order to preserve the hardback cover's spine; because it folds back without bending, the more flexible inner spine's binding is all that will be stressed while reading the book. |
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| One soot black cover-page later, a thin sheet of trace paper containing a full page sketch of everyone's favorite Kyubey smiles its eerie, unblinking smile up at you, and under that page was one of the little limited edition goodies (or so they say), a little cutout of one of Ume's Kyubey drawings. It's kind of cute, in a creepy way. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. For now, I just left it in the book. |
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| Now for the main attraction... It should be noted here that the ~350 pages advertised is a misleading figure because many of the pages are one-sided but still count as two pages for numbering. The first 40 or so pages are double sided like pictured here, but the remaining 300 pages are one-sided. The paper is pretty good quality; thin enough to feel smooth (and also thin enough for the line-work to show through the other side of the sheet) but thick enough to not feel fragile. |
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| The remainder of the book is divided into several sections: Pages 49-150 covers character design sketches, pages 151-182 covers some Inucurry sketch work (mostly witches), 183-242 is prop design (weapons, jewelery, etc.), 243-310 covers art design which consists mainly of background art sketches, and the last few pages contain some earlier artwork from Ume, including such things as an alternate design for Homura's outfit and a sketch of Kyoko in a skirt (pictured on the wiki). Way too much to take pictures of everything, but here are a few more samples. |
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Next is the second of the two books in this set. The smaller of the two, this book of Inucurry's artwork makes up what it lacks in size with arguably the more interesting content in this collection. Similar to its larger counterpart, this book has a rune-strewn hardcover which is attached only to the back of the pages bound inside. The upper half glossy while the lower half is matte, and overall the cover is both more scratch resistant and uses a color scheme better at hiding scratches as well.
I love the inside cover. |
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| Right inside this book, two of the other special goodies were tucked away: a Charlotte bookmark and a really strange and amusing postcard. I supposed here is as good a place as any to also mention that both of these books have a pretty tight binding that really does not lend itself to scanning or copying. I don't want to risk tearing them up by trying to flatten the pages. |
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| Here's a closeup of the postcard. It amuses me. Especially WRYYYY Kyubey and mustache Homuhomu. |
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| The first part of this book contains almost four dozen full color spreads of artwork mostly used as background in the witches' mazes, starting with the picture on the left here and ending with the one on the right. While it is cool to be able to examine the artwork on its own on a page, the artwork feels like it's lacking some of the vibrancy it had in the show. Perhaps because of the rougher, matte finish of these pages, rather than the glossier pages that some art books use, combined with the fact that there are a lot of blacks and dark color tones in this Inucurry art, the pictures kind of have an almost washed-out feel, like when the brightness is turned up too high on your TV or monitor; the blacks don't look black. Is it worth making a big deal about? I don't really think so, but it is worth mentioning. |
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| Following the full color pages is another 90 pages of miscellaneous sketches, storyboards, and other reference art. A lot of it is concept art; much sloppier than the stuff in the first section of the book, but cool nonetheless. I wasn't really surprised to see that some of the concept art is even darker in tone than what made it to the show, but still find it pretty interesting to think about what might have been; like if the fight against Elsa Maria had been a little more like the storyboard found in this book, or like if creepy candy nurses performing questionable medial procedures had been a more prominent element in episode three. |
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| And finally, one last bonus item was included in this set. This sketch of Madoka is... really nice. I wasn't sure my set, not being one of the ones from Comiket, was even going to include it, and I was glad to find it. Despite the fact that I bought this book set, I really don't care that much for the Madoka Magica character designs outside of the context of the show. I think they're great character designs for the show, but as fanart and character goods fuel, they really don't appeal to me. But this picture...something about it; somehow this sketch of Madoka falling through a cloud cover pierced by rays of light is just really beautiful. I'm tempted to frame it, actually... |
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This is really a great set. Glad I snagged one of these when I had the chance. I put my order in when there were 10 left on CDJapan, and they sold out within the hour. Eternal thanks to a comrade over on ANN who tipped me off to the availability. I am interested to see if these get another print run in the future so those who missed out can add this to their collections (or shrines, if that's your thing, I guess). If they don't, I guess it'll have been my mistake to not buy more than one to resale later to fund a car or mortgage payment some day! You can find more info, some translations, and a lot more pictures over at the wiki. Update: 5/10 - Used scanner at work to get a better scan of the sketch of Madoka. Tags: anime, consumerism, pics
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Goodness, feels like ages since I posted anything. Funny how that happens when you have a job that isn't boring (no, two months of no updates is not all the PSP's fault). Seems like a lot has happened without much happening, if that makes sense. Speaking of work, this month (this week in particular, I believe) marks one year (back) at this job. And this month also marks the thirty sixth month in a row that I haven't had a non-holiday/weekend break longer than one day (at least that I can remember)... I need a vacation but my to-do list still has 18 things on it (probably 8 months worth of work, at least, if I were to take a guess) and despite my boss' urgings to take a break, I feel guilty about taking vacation with so much to do... @_@ Last night I got one of those clean up urges targeted at my closet... which was actually rather organized, but I went through and threw some stuff out; mostly old PC game boxes. I still had original boxes and receipts for games like TIE Fighter, Command & Conquer, and MechCommander. Man, good memories of those games. Said urge may or may not have had something to do with my recent desire to get the hell out of my apartment because of my new upstairs neighbors who wake me up between 2 and 5 AM two to four times a week with their stomping and fighting and shouting. Ugh. Tags: life, work
Current Mood: busy
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Well, since tenk's post had me thinking about it, and JSG did one, too, I figured why not throw in my ten cents? Last fall, I posted a few recommendations but some of that stuff was brand new and didn't have room to talk about everything, so this is a good chance. Looking at this again, most of these commentaries turned out to be rather longer than I'd planned, so apologies in advance, but maybe you can get something out of my this. :) I will borrow tenk's little disclaimer here before moving on: "Some entries might not be in a genre you're interested in, and that's totally expected. I'd be shocked if anyone was in full agreement with me about the merit of every title I list. You may choose to watch something and not like it personally, but I would hope that even if that was the case, you might say 'It's not my thing, but it does deserve some accolades.'" ( I'm also borrowing tenk's guidelines, though I've made some minor customization. )Tags: anime, anime review, pics
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