PRISMTONE Range Murata Anime Works 1998-2006

Reading Time: 5 minutes

The long awaited PRISMTONE Range Murata Anime Works 1998-2006 released after more than a year of postponements. This 344 page art book showcases Range Murata’s art works in a variety of different presentation styles from colored sketches to monochrome roughs.

This A4 size book comes shielded in an outer vinyl cover. There’s a warning about the vinyl cover stuck onto the front, too, so you won’t mess it up. I was able to fit it back on easily enough after removing it.

Blue Submarine No. 6

Blue Submarine No. 6 is the first series. The book dives right into the section after a see-through, tissue paper title page. This late 90’s OVA series was visually ahead of its time, with the designs to match. There are no Mutio sketches, since Mutio and the other “creatures” are Takuhito Kusanagi designs. Murata has one illustration of Tetsu Hayami and Mutio at the beginning of the section. The character sketches have clear labels on the tab bordering the top of each page.

There are two fold-out posters in the Blue Submarine No. 6 portion, with an illustration on each side. There are a total of 14 pages in color, with the rest sketches in this 96-page section. Range Murata’s sketch work is gorgeous in most cases, but the ones for Blue Submarine No. 6 aren’t as dynamic as the rest of the book.

The posters have no numbers and don’t count towards the page numbers. Out of these poster pages, many have multiple illustrations on each panel of the fold-out. Multiple paper types appear in the book as well, with color illustrations on smooth matte pages, and slightly rougher pages for the monochrome sketches.

Last Exile

Last Exile is the centerpiece of this art book. It has more art work in terms of color works, posters, and sketches than the other series featured. There are four posters in total, with one of the posters being a 4-panel long image. The opposite side showcases four separate illustrations. Although none of the images are new, many were initially in magazines and box sets, so they haven’t been seen much.

The incorporation of the posters pages in really well done. In most art books, posters are either in the very front or very back of the book. It makes it so the book won’t warp or bend in the poster areas, because the binding is different at the front of glue-bound books. But the posters in PRISMTONE appear throughout the book, and due to the overall weight, the tightly packed pages will help keep it flat even when shelved. Only time will tell though!

From a quick comparison, the contents in the Last Exile sketch portion of PRISMTONE are from the SPHERES doujinshi series that Range Murata self-published years ago. So if you have those, you’ve seen it all.

But… aren’t these posters great? That more than makes up for the repeated content.

Mardock Scramble is the last anime series in the book, with a total of five color illustrations, which includes one panel of a poster page. There are 31 pages of monochrome illustrations. Many look more finished than most sketches, with elaborate dress designs and clean shading. It was canceled years ago as an OVA series, Mardock Scramble is back in the works as a movie, though the characters aren’t by Range Murata.

The index at the end of the book is on the inside of a poster sheet. It’s only useful for the color illustrations. The monochrome sketch works are together under “Character Design Works.” However, the monochrome sketches have comments, with additional insights into the drawings from Range Murata. At the very end is a half-sized magazine titled “Memorial Products Showcase” showing the merchandise available from Last Exile and Blue Submarine No. 6.

I think that despite of the heavy amount of sketch work and repetition from other books, I really like PRISMTONE Range Murata Anime Works 1998-2006. It’s creatively made, and surprisingly there were works in there that I hadn’t seen before. There’s probably some bias to account for, as Range Murata is one of my favorite artists.