Anime Art Books

[HyugaKojiro]

Originally Posted by themp3000

Time to commit some light necromancy. I’ve been jumping into art book collecting recently, because I obviously have too many hobbies already and I can’t juggle them all already. I’ve mostly been picking up releases from PIE International and have been immensely pleased with the level of quality of each book. RightStuf has, within the past couple of months or so, been adding books from them. I can’t recommend them enough. Such amazing value for the price.

I’ve picked up their Aphrodisiacs The Work of Ayumi Kaisai (this one is explicit), Boys Illustrations Inspired By The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, Best of Bishonen and Honojiro Towoji Illustration Works so far. And I’ve got another 4 books on preorder from them. I may grab a couple more before then. All from PIE.

I’ve been hesitant to buy art books from US publishers because I feel like they’d cut corners and use cheap paper and it wouldn’t be quite as nice as the Japanese releases. Like, I’m considering some from Yen and Viz but I’m not quite there. There’s a lot of art books to acquire until I’m at that point. It’s a lot of trial and error pruning my wish list down but it’s fun and I really enjoy discovering and broadening my horizons.

Not really a fan of the content matter but the art in Aphrodisiacs The Work of Ayumi Kaisai is something to behold.

As far as your concern about quality, recommend checking amazon for reviews or youtube for high-res book flipping vids. Personally the only bad quality release I've come across was Ghost in the Shell README: 1995-2017 by Kodansha USA. It's OOP now but has extremely thin paper stock.

Also something to note is that art books can go OOP like any other physical release. Some publishers do a better job than others to keep their books in print but something to keep in mind.