Hatsune Miku GRAPHICS Vocaloid Art & Comic

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Truthfully, I didn’t like Hatsune Miku GRAPHICS Vocaloid Art & Comic when it first arrived. But I remembered it recently, so I decided to have another look. I’m more appreciative of the new and exclusive art works done for the collection. But I still feel like art book really lacks focus, and even quality consistency, from page to page.

The 128 page, A4-size book covers a lot of aspects of the Vocaloid fan machine. There’s art from notable character artists, Hatsune Miku music videos, Hatsune Miku Project DIVA, Pixiv art works and comics. But it touches on each so lightly, you don’t get more than a few pages of any section.

The first section was the highlight for me. It showcased artists that would have to attribute their popularity to their Vocaloid art works. Each artist has two pages, one with a new illustration and another with smaller, tiled Vocaloid illustrations. Artists in this section include KEI, ChanxCo, Putidevil, Yunomi, Nagimiso, K2Pudding, Bob, Yoji, Ichika, Shibashon, Kobayashi Onikisu, and Yuu. The opening image in this post by Yunomi is one of my favorite! This takes up about the first 27 pages in the art book.

The next portion moves between 4-panel comics, character profiles, and a few pages on Project DIVA costumes.

Next are 4 pages of Hatsune Miku tribute arts. The artists in this section have worked in manga and light novels, like Inoue Sora, toi8, Lucky Star artist Yoshimizu Kagami, and Kinu Komada. Then we have 6-pages on popular Hatsune Miku videos, followed by a 4-panel comic by Torakara.

The next section of Hatsune Miku GRAPHICS Vocaloid Art & Comic features Pixiv artists’ art works. The list of artists is in the picture above.

Some art is really great! But I’m not a fan of tiny re-prints of Pixiv art work in commercial art books.

Aoi Nishimata’s Vocaloid illustrations get two pages. The last color pages give an overview of the commercial CDs and DVDs that have been released. Cover arts feature along with a little information about each. The last part of the book features 3 monochrome comics, including one done with no dialogue.

The main grab for Hatsune Miku GRAPHICS Vocaloid Art & Comic was the new Vocaloid art for the book. But past that, much of the content felt already dated, and like filler.