I buy mostly artbooks from series I like, and sometimes the art collection of an artist I like.
Some of the ones I highly recommend are the
X-infinity ~ tons of pretty boys clamp style XD
Tsubasa - album de reproductions - highly recommended if you enjoy clamp art

Hmmm... I have to go through my stuff before I write more XD

Chronicle - Hiro Suzuhira Artworks. Has to be one of, if not the best art book I have bought to date. Hardcover, comes with a two sided poster, one side is the black version of the dust jacket.

This is hard, I love most of my artbooks. XD

Probably my current favorite would be the new Zombie Loan (Peach Pit) artbook . ( http://www.akadot.com/product_info.php?products_id=25689 ). Scans of that series are rare (before this book) and this large books is absolutely packed full of them. Lots of pages with the characters and no background so they would be easy to wall too. I don't really like the other Peach Pit titles, but I've always loved their artwork and this book really shows off how fantastic they are.


I probably have more Harukanaru Toki no Naka De artbooks then anyone else alive, my current favorite is probably the Harukanaru Toki no Naka de: Shishin Visual Book (on akadot). It comes in it's own slipcase because it has fold out posters of each of the guys, plus the extra artwork in the book includes some watercolor looking pictures that are very beautiful (although kind of small). I prefer the anime style over the video game artwork for this series so I'm biased towards this book. XD

My last current favorite is a little weird, I really love the Animedia for Girls collection. The artwork was mostly stuff we've seen elsewhere but for the price you really get a lot of beautiful text-free images and it's easy to scan! I really REALLY hope they make more of them!

MINE Blue by Mine YOSHIZAKI is a really amazing book in that it's just packed full of illustrations. It's small (B5 or 3 I think) but it has around 300 pages of illustrations and that in and of itself is an accomplishment for an art book. He does the art for Sgt. Kero Kero, Arcade Gamer Fubuki, Seven of Seven, and several games. It's really nice and cute overall.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Yoko and Nia Portraits
Though you've likely seen everything they have to offer, they're still really gorgeous art books, that I especially like because of all the different styles the characters are drawn in. Though, as far as illustration quality went, the Yoko one was better

Does anyone have this one? I really like the cover, and the gallery doesn't seem to have everything that's in it :<
I really like the style, so I'm kinda thinking of buying it.

I don't even have to buy that Blade of the Immortal artbook to know that it's going to be good.


Of the ones I do have, my Vampire Princess Miyu one is excellent. I also have some game guides that pretty much double as artbooks, and the Final Fantasy Ultimania series is very nice.

Saa-chan

Does anyone have this one? I really like the cover, and the gallery doesn't seem to have everything that's in it :< I really like the style, so I'm kinda thinking of buying it.

There's a review of that book here with several pictures: http://www.pireze.org/blog/?p=375 and here with some additional pictures: http://my.opera.com/takebook/albums/show.dml?id=567720

Looks really nice actually :o

Thanks for the heads up nat < 3 I think I'll grab it when my winter break comes around~ I'm eying (sp> doesn't looking right) a few other ones. I don't have experience with artbooks that don't belong to a mangaka/series >_<; I like Adumi Tohru and Keiichi Sumi styles. Any good stuff by them that I can hunt down and buy? Has anyone ever gotten a used artbook?

From what I've seen just about all the Adumi Tohru books are packed with beautiful illustrations. Some of the books are smaller then others, and lots of the older ones are so popular you can find them just about anywhere. I think you can get previews of most of their books at these sites:
http://sasmira.livejournal.com/ - this one lists title and author so easy to find
http://gallery.digik.net/all/

I've never gotten a used artbook but I've been tempted lately. There are a few books I want that aren't published anymore. I'm a little skeptical though, and I refuse to buy books from ebay (the shipping is too much of a rip off), so I'm not sure if I will ever go through with it.

Saa-chan, would you give your opinion if the Spiral Alive 3 book is worth it? From the basic math (60 pages divided by $40) I would say it's not worth it. Even if there are 10 pages of brand new artwork.

I buy used. I bought a bunch of books second hand at the Mandarake book stores in Japan and I buy from JP Queen when possible. I also buy used on e-bay. I don't see much of a difference, usually some page yellowing but the books are old and even stuff I have that I bought in 2000 is yellowing. And I'm unlikely to go out of my way to stop it ^^

One thing that does get me about used though, is ending up with books that came from a smoker's house. You can always tell, they just reek. It happens sometimes with JPQueen since they don't mention it on their site.

Thanks girls :D
I like the spiral 3 artbook better than the nabari no ou one. It is a little more on the expensive side considering the page count, but there are lots of pretty spreads. No filler or blank pages like the nabari one. The book itself is high quality like the previous two. Overall, I guess I'd still recommend it.

I've never bought anything from benippon. I was looking into it since it had the adumi tohru artbook pieta. They don't list the weight, but I found it on hlj. When I was trying to checkout, they kinda doubled the shipping weight on me... I was like :S I tried to order from hlj... but they are backordered already.

Does anyone have Stella and Cielo? I really like the art... I'm trying to decide if I should get them.

Let's see. If I was to recommend one artbook out of those I've bought, it would be the Code Geass: Rebels book, though I'm sure most of the people here already have it.

If not, a lot of the material you will definitely have seen before. Geass is obviously a popular series so more people have done the scans. Plus, many of the pictures were originally featured in the anime magazines as well.

But as I mentioned before somewhere there's something nice about physically having the book, and as artbooks go I thought this was a very high quality product. It's wall-to-wall big, beautiful pics, high quality paper and is just generally nice throughout.

The other book I would recommend would be Ugetsu Hakua's "Flamboyant" art book. Again, you'll have seen most, if not all of the 'big' artworks as scans, but it's still a good book - lots of colour pictures of his beautiful, unique art style.

These two are the only books where I've bought multiple copies so I can have a mint condition one as well as the de-bound and scanned version. Though there was one more book I wanted a clean second copy, but it's pretty old now so I could only find one copy and that was "Risky Dolls" by Takahiro Kimura.

Kimura is my all-time favourite anime character designer and this artbook is crammed full of a wide variety of his stuff. However, it's a pretty old book now, and so is very difficult to find. Also, probably only recommended if you already like his art (his chara designs include Geass, where he was the guy who adapted Clamp's sketches, and GUNxSWORD, but those are too new for this book, Godannar, GaoGaiGar, Dirty Pair: Flash, Betterman and some games).

Those are basically the three books where I didn't feel cheated by the number of colour pics and I'm always happy to look through them again :).

So my Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side - Visual Collection book finally got here. I'm probably the only fan of this series on AP but seriously it is so worth the money. The thing is super think with tons and tons of pretty shiny artwork. I was also worried it would have a lot of overlap with the first book, but there is basically no overlap at all. Definately worth a buy if you like the Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side series. :D

I have Calendar Film and a few other books coming tomorrow. Hopefully they can leave the package by my door >_<;; I'll write a blurb if I actually get a hold of the package tomorrow :D

Did they leave the package without you there? I haven't tried the note approach for a couple years, and I wonder if they still let it go :D

That, and let us know how the books turned out (especially Calendar Film :3 )!