Diego briefly escapes from the drudgery of the white-collar salt mines to bring you another review. Today, the spotlight falls on Cielo – the last in a three-volume series of hardbound books featuring the manga art of ARIA author and illustrator Amano Kozue.

As with my previous artbook posts, only low-quality shots of selected pages are provided here. If these samples succeed in piquing your interest, please support Amano-sensei and the publishers by purchasing the artbook. (Don’t ask us to provide high-quality images or scans; we just won’t do it.)

CONTENTS

Strictly speaking, Cielo isn’t an ARIA artbook – it’s more of a general portfolio covering several manga titles and an assortment of shorter works. On the other hand, there’s no hiding the fact that Amano-sensei’s most popular series gets star billing in this volume (as it did in the last two), and with the related series AQUA rounding out the collection it’s easy to see why this artbook will be of interest primarily to fans of the ARIA franchise.

Cielo contains 36 pages of colour art from ARIA, 8 from Roman Club, 8 from Crescent Noise, 8 from an assortment of shorter works, and 20 from ARIA’s sister series AQUA. 9 pages of monochrome art are also included.

Samples from the ARIA and AQUA sections are presented below.

MY THOUGHTS

There are few – if any – discernible stylistic differences between the art featured in Cielo and the works collected in its sister volumes, so I’ll start this section off with a lightly edited extract from my review of the first artbook:

Like the manga series and its anime adaptation, the art of ARIA and AQUA seems to have been designed specifically to induce a feeling of calm refreshment on the part of the viewer. Amano-sensei’s style favours a soft palette – including shades of blue and green, the colours of the sea – and employs a masterful use of shading to create vistas that are both strikingly beautiful and remarkably easy on the eyes. Human figures are usually drawn in poses that suggest not action, but relaxation: sitting serenely on the edge of a canal with the sea lapping at their feet; perched on a high spot gazing up at the azure sky, with the ocean’s gently rippled surface spreading out underneath; walking in an open arcade at sunset within sight of the sea-green harbour.

I can’t really pick a favourite out of the three volumes, even if pressed to do so. Amano-sensei’s art is consistently good from first to last, with each successor offering not so much a development in style but more of a broadening of scope, with the same artistic touch expressed in a wider variety of scenes. In other words, Cielo offers us more of the same – which in this case is an admirable thing.

Like its two predecessors, this hardbound volume comes in a transparent plastic slipcase – an inconspicuous protective feature that I’d like to see become standard-issue for artbooks. In the case of Cielo, the title of the artbook and the usual back cover details (price, barcode, etc.) are printed on the slipcase, leaving the actual covers of the book mostly unmarred by text.

At 3,130 yen (about US$34-35) a copy, Cielo isn’t exactly cheap, but for a dedicated admirer of Amano-sensei’s work in general – or of the ARIA series in particular – it’s an investment well worth making.

AVAILABILITY, COST, ETC.

Cielo was first released in 2006, but a reprint was issued in 2008 so availability shouldn’t be a major concern.

Here are the acquisition details for my copy (mostly from the original sales receipt):

Place acquired: Animate, Akihabara (Tokyo) branch
Date and time acquired: 26 March 2009, 8:46 PM
Acquisition cost: 3,130 yen (including tax)

In addition to Animate, I remember seeing all three Amano Kozue artbooks in the Akihabara branch of Comic Toranoana (artbook section, ground floor of the doujin wing). AsoBitCity, Mandarake and other stores – including major bookshops – should also have copies on stock, but I can’t attest to that personally.

If you’re based outside Japan, consider ordering the book from an online retailer. Amazon Japan, for one, is selling Cielo at the prevailing Akiba street price and will ship internationally, although the shipping costs can be ruinous: from 2,200 yen (including the per-item handling charge) for Asia to 4,700 yen – which exceeds the price of the book itself! – for South America. As always, poke around for the best deal (list price and postage) before buying.

THE LAST WORD

Must buy. A real treat for ARIA enthusiasts.

Reviews of the first two volumes in this artbook series are available here and here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 2:06 am and is filed under Anime, Manga, Reviews.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.